16. Taraxacum sect. Borealia Handel-Mazzetti, Monogr. Taraxacum. [xi]. 1907.
北方蒲公英组 bei fang pu gong ying zu
Plants medium-sized, rarely robust. Leaves usually mid-green, not thickened, sparsely arachnoid to subglabrous; petiole broadly winged to narrowly winged; leaf blade shallowly to deeply pinnatilobed to pinnatisect; lobes most often patent. Scapes usually growing laterally from leaf rosette, not from center. Outer phyllaries green to blackish green, ± not imbricate, lanceolate to ovate, loosely appressed, erect or erect-patent, usually with a paler broad to narrow border, margin glabrous to sparsely ciliate, apex with a conspicuous horn or sometimes only so in later capitula. Ligules yellow or whitish. Achene grayish straw-colored brown, rarely brown or reddish, usually 4-5 × 0.9-1.1 mm; body shortly spinulose above, usually subabruptly narrowing into a conic to subcylindric 0.5-1.4 mm cone; beak usually 6-11 mm, thin. Pappus white or yellowish white.
About 80 species: mostly in circumpolar subarctic regions, many in mountains of C Asia; three species (two endemic) in China.
Several species of Taraxacum sect. Borealia were described from the vicinity of the Chinese border: T. karakoricum Soest from the Karakoram of Pakistan, T. stanjukoviczii Schischkin from Upper Badakhshan of Tajikistan, and T. pavlovii Orazova from SE Kazakhstan. They have not been found in the material available but their occurrence in China is not improbable.
Variation is often but not always observed in the development of horns in the outer phyllaries. The first capitula to blossom often have flat or callose outer/inner phyllaries while later capitula have a distinct horn on the phyllaries.