Hypericum ascyron subsp. gebleri (Nomenclature)
Plant 0.5-1m tall. Leaves 30-60 ´ 4-15 mm, narrowly lanceolate or narrowly elliptic-lanceolate to oblong-linear or oblanceolate, base usually cuneate. Flowers 45-50 mm in diam. Sepals 1.5-7 mm wide, narrowly oblong or oblong-lanceolate, rounded or usually obtuse to acute. Stamens yellow. Styles c. 2.5-3.5 mm, about half as long as ovary, free. Capsule cylindric-ellipsoid.
Kazakhstan, Russia (W. Siberia: Altai; E. Siberia: Angara-Sayan, Dauria; Far East: Zeya-Bureya, Uda, Ussuri, Sakhalin, northern Kurile Is., Kamchatka), Mongolia, China (extreme W. Xinjiang, Heilongjiang, Jilin?), Korea (north).
When making a survey of Chinese specimens in 1993, I had not decided then to recognise subspecies in H. ascyron. I do not, therefore, have detailed records of the occurrence of subsp. gebleri in the north of China.
Reichenbach's illustration of H. salicaria (see synonymy of subsp. ascyron) shows a plant with narrow leaves basally rounded and small flowers with narrow but unequal foliaceous sepals, short free styles and a pyramidally ovoid capsule. If this apparent intermediate form between subsp. ascyron and subsp. gebleri has arisen independently of the Chinese intermediates, then subsp. gebleri would be diphyletic in origin. The epithet gebleri would then go with the Altai plant.
Maximowicz (l. c. above) stated that H. ascyron var. brevistylum Maxim. was H. gebleri Ledeb. unless the narrowly ovate-oblong leaves made it different; by 1882 (Bull. Acad. Imp. Sci. Saint Pétersbourg 27: 431) he had decided to include it in that species.