Swertia angustifoliaBuch.-Ham. ex D.Don

WFO wfo-0001063864 Accepted WFO 2026-06 5 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–e · 1 observation

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 1 time, so some figures below are different views of the same plant, taken on the same day, rather than different individuals. They are usually different parts of it: the leaf, the flower, the bark.

Swertia angustifolia, photographed by Siddarth Machado
fig. a Siddarth Machado, CC BY 4.0 / 2016-12-04 / obs. 42148593
Swertia angustifolia, photographed by Siddarth Machado
fig. b Siddarth Machado, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 42148491
Swertia angustifolia, photographed by Siddarth Machado
fig. c Siddarth Machado, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 42148729
Swertia angustifolia, photographed by Siddarth Machado
fig. d Siddarth Machado, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 42148870
Swertia angustifolia, photographed by Siddarth Machado
fig. e Siddarth Machado, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 42147307

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

The specimen a real sheet, in a real collection

Herbarium
The New York Botanical Garden
Accession
05146680
Filed as
Swertia angustifolia Buch.-Ham. ex D.Don
Det. by
K. Fujikawa 2017-01-01
Collected
J. Murata 2002-12-02
Origin
MM
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC BY 4.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. The holding institution does not serve this sheet’s image to third parties, so there is no photograph here. The record is real and the link goes to it. Where we hold no openly licensed sheet for a species this section is simply absent, and where a sheet never recorded who determined it, that field stays empty rather than being filled in. Roughly half of all herbarium sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 13 botanical countries

Regions where Swertia angustifolia is native: China South-Central, China Southeast, Hainan, Assam, Cambodia, East Himalaya, India, Laos, Myanmar, Nepal, Thailand, Vietnam, West Himalaya China South-CentralChina SoutheastHainanAssamCambodiaEast HimalayaIndiaLaosMyanmarNepalThailandVietnamWest Himalaya
Native distribution of Swertia angustifolia, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Assam ASS ASIA-TROPICAL
Cambodia CBD
East Himalaya EHM
India IND
Laos LAO
Myanmar MYA
Nepal NEP
Thailand THA
Vietnam VIE
West Himalaya WHM
China South-Central CHC ASIA-TEMPERATE
China Southeast CHS
Hainan CHH

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Also published as 27 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Ophelia affinis Wight & Arn.
  • Ophelia angustifolia (Buch.-Ham. ex D.Don) D.Don ex G.Don
  • Ophelia elegans Wight
  • Ophelia florida G.Don
  • Ophelia porrigens G.Don
  • Ophelia pratensis Edgew.
  • Ophelia pulchella D.Don
  • Ophelia pulchella var. minor D.Don
  • Ophelia pulchella var. pumila Griseb.
  • Ophelia vacillans Hance
  • Swertia affinis C.B.Clarke
  • Swertia angustifolia var. florida (G.Don) Burkill
  • Swertia angustifolia var. hamiltoniana Burkill
  • Swertia angustifolia var. pulchella (D.Don) Burkill
  • Swertia angustifolia var. wallichiana Burkill
  • Swertia dielsiana Hosseus
  • Swertia elegans Wall.
  • Swertia esquirolii H.Lév.
  • Swertia exacoides Burkill
  • Swertia florida Wall.
  • Swertia kachinensis Lace
  • Swertia lacei Craib
  • Swertia paupera Burkill
  • Swertia pulchella C.B.Clarke

and 3 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.