Herbs, perennial. Rootstock vertical, stout, densely clothed at apex with dead petiolar bases. Stems rather long and slender, 25-55(-85) cm × 1.5-5 mm, lower 1/3 leafless, with 4-8 leaves above, branched. Radical leaves: petiole 4-10 cm; blade 6-11 × 3-5 cm; cauline leaves subsessile; blade narrowly oblong-ovate in outline, pinnate with 5(or 6) pairs of leaflets; basal pair of pinnae smallest; lower and middle leaves 8-17 × 3-5 cm; upper leaves much smaller. Leaflets shortly stalked, subpinnately or ternately divided with leaflets cut into 2-5 broadly obovate usually mucronate lobes. Racemes 7-15-flowered, dense, elongating in fruit; bracts obovate-rhombic, 3-7 mm, cuneate at base, tapering to a pointed apex, entire or lowermost usually divided, often slightly erose-dentate apically; upper bracts smaller. Pedicel 6-7 mm, 9-15 mm and slightly arcuately recurved in fruit. Sepals ovate to lanceolate, 3-4 × 1-2 mm, dentate. Corolla either cream with distinct red margins to lower lip or muddy pink-purple, narrowly crested; spur of upper petal straight or slightly sigmoidally curved, cylindric, 9-12 mm, obtuse; nectary 1/2-2/3 as long as spur; lower petal with a narrow straight basal 1/3, slightly and broadly saccate at middle, with sharply contrasting crimson or purplish brown margins in distal 1/3; inner petals 9-11 mm. Stigma with 8 papillae. Capsule narrowly oblong, subtorulose, 10-20 mm, 3-6-seeded. Seeds slightly flattened, ca. 2 mm, smooth, with large elaiosome. Fl. and fr. Jul.
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