Oreocharis comprises about 80 species of Gesneriaceae distributed in the Old World tropics and subtropics. It also includes ten small and monospecific Chinese genera within Oreocharis. During floristic surveys of southern Yunnan between 2010 and 2013, a few young scientists of Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden (XTBG) collected an unknown plant of Oreocharis that morphologically did not match the description of any of the known species.

    The specimen is similar to O. hirsuta Barnett, differing from the later by its smaller cordate to ovate leaves; cymes with 1–5 flowers, corolla tube narrowing gradually from base to throat, constricted at the throat, corolla lobes mostly more than half as long as the tube; filaments sparsely glandular-pubescent and pilose, style sparsely glandular-pubescent.

 Based on a detailed examination of the morphological and anatomical characters of this plant and possible relatives, the young scholars regarded it as a new species. They named it as Oreocharis tsaii, then described and illustrated it.

  Oreocharis tsaii is only known from southern Yunnan and grows on rocks or cliffs in valleys, at an elevation of ca. 1400–1500 m.

The new species has been published on Phytotaxa. URL: http://biotaxa.org/Phytotaxa/article/view/phytotaxa.195.2.9

Oreocharis tsaii Y.H.TAN & J. W. LI (Image by Tan Yunhong)