I am currently helping Dr Tsering Norbu, Director, Materia Medica (Medicinal Plants) Department of The Dalai Lama's Tibetan Medical & Astrological Institute in Dharamsala, N.India with providing Scientific Identifications for hundreds of Himalayan species utilised in Tibetan Medicine. I would welcome any suggestions for the attractive Silene which he provided an image of growing in Spiti, a Tibetan borderland district of Himachal Pradesh (bordering the W.Himalaya) in N.India.
The late Dr Ralph Stewart (who lived to be 102) got his doctorate from Columbia University in 1916-17 on the 'Flora of Ladakh' (known as Little Tibet, which I amvisiting this fall). He worked as a Presbyterian Missionary, then Principal of Gordon College, Rawalpindi, Pakistan - in his spare time he explored for plants. Upon retirement he was Research Associate at Ann Arbor, MICH. Within his life's botanical work: AN ANNOTATATED CATALOGUE OF THE VASCULAR PLANTS OF W.PAKISTAN AND KASHMIR (running to 1028 pages) he stated (in 1972), "The Lychnis-Silene complex would be a suitable Ph.D. thesis for an ambitious student. The synonymy is difficult and too many names have been proposed..." Any budding experts out there?
