Hypericum bellum (Nomenclature)
Shrub 0.3-1.5 m tall, often forming low thickets, with branches dense, erect or arching. Stem red to orange, 4-angled and slightly ancipitous at first, very soon terete; internodes 10-80 mm long, usually equalling or exceeding leaves; bark grey-brown. Leaves petiolate, with petiole 0.5-2.5 mm long; lamina 15-65(-78) x 7-43 mm, broadly ovate to broadly rhombic-ovate or subcircular, obtuse to rounded or emarginate, often apiculate, margin usually undulate, base truncate or subcordate, paler or glaucous beneath, chartaceous; venation: 3-4 pairs main laterals (the upper not distinctly intramarginal), with midrib obscurely branched distally with or apparently without ± clear lax tertiary reticulum; laminar glands dots and short streaks, ventral glands absent or ± dense. Inflorescence 1-7-flowered, from apical node, subcorymbiform, rarely with flowering branches from lower nodes; pedicels 3-14 mm long (-30 mm in fruit); bracts foliar to narrowly elliptic, persistent to deciduous. Flowers15-25(-39)mm in diam., cyathiform; buds broadly ovoid, obtuse to rounded. Sepals 3-9 x 2.5-6 mm, free, imbricate, subequal, erect in bud and fruit, narrowlyly elliptic to obovate, rounded to subapiculate, with margin entire or finely eroded-denticulate towards apex and often scarious; midrib rarely conspicuous, veins not prominent; laminar glands linear, c. 12. Petals golden yellow to butter-yellow or rarely pale yellow, not red-tinged, incurved, 15-25(-30) x 11-21(-25) mm, 3-5 x sepals, broadly to narrowly obovate, with apiculus subterminal, rounded, margin entire. Stamen fascicles each with 25-65 stamens, longest 6-11 mm long, 0.35-0.4x petals; anthers deep golden yellow. Ovary 4-6 x 3-3.5 mm, narrowly to broadly ovoid; styles 3-5 mm long, 0-6-1 x ovary, free, suberect to divergent, outcurved near apex; stigmas small. Capsule 10-15 x 6-10 mm, narrowly to broadly ovoid, often puckered. Seeds dark reddish-brown, 0.8-1 mm long, narrowly cylindric, ± carinate, shallowly scalariform-reticulate.
Scrub or forest margin, open dry grassy slopes, sometimes by streams or in cultivated ground; (1440)1800-3900 m.
China (NW. Yunnan, SW. Sichuan, SE. Xizang.
H. bellum was first introduced into Europe from Yunnan by the French Jesuit missionary Pierre Monbeig, and Otto Stapf of Kew named it H. monbeigii in the late 1920s. This name, however, was never published. Recent European cultivated material originated from later introductions from Tibet by Ludlow & Sherriff.
H. bellum forms the eastern end of the morpho-geographic trend starting with H. beanii. Its sepals are subcircular to narrowly oblong but always rounded, the styles and stamens are usually shorter, and the leaves vary from oblong-ovate through broadly ovate to broadly rhombic or subcircular. The Tibetan extreme form,with an undulate leaf margin, is probably the only form cultivated now in Europe. The petals are usually golden yellow to butter-yellow, but a pale yellow form is in cultivation.