Snow Lotus
Quite unlike the wetland-dwelling sacred lotus, the snow lotus is found high in the eastern Himalaya. Despite its remote habitat, however, the cottony white flower is disappearing. The plant is overharvested for use in traditional medicine and also faces pressure from climate change. With funding from National Geographic, Jan Salick and her ethnobotany team compared wild specimens with those in a herbarium collected over the last century. She found the number of species is dwindling and some species are dwarfing due to selection pressure because only the smallest flowers remain unpicked. In addition, warming temperatures are allowing fast-moving weeds to creep up the mountainsides and overtake the slow-growing snow lotus. (Saussurea laniceps)
Photograph by Wayne Law
|
