Herbs, perennial, 15-40 cm tall, glabrous. Rhizome short, tight, knotty, with 1 to few prominent persistent roots at base, with 1 to few sterile leaf rosettes. Stems 1-4, erect to ascending, or later diffuse, ridged, leafy and branched, from axils of previous year’s rosette leaves. Rosette leaves: petiole 5-30 cm, vaginate at base, vaginae becoming fleshy in autumn; blade green adaxially, deltoid, 3-10 × 2-8 cm, abaxially pruinose, glabrous or very finely papillose, 2(-3) × ternate (to sub-bipinnate); pinnae petiolulate; ultimate leaflets base long cuneate, decurrent on midvein, entire to deeply lobed, apically cut into rounded mucronate teeth or lobes. Cauline leaves all clearly petiolate, like basal leaves but often less divided and with larger more coarsely cut leaflets (lower cauline leaves small, long stalked, early withering). Racemes 3-8 cm, 7-18-flowered, much elongating in fruit to 7-14 cm; bracts obovate, 4-8 × 2-8 mm, entire or lower ones deeply 3-7 palmately divided into acute to shortly acuminate lobes, upper ones often oblanceolate. Pedicels 4-10 mm, in fruit elongating to 6-12 mm and spreading-arcuate, longer than bracts. Sepals late caducous, white, rounded, 1-1.5 × 1-2 mm, richly circumdentate. Petals pale purple, slightly darker toward apex; inner petals whitish; outer petals with limb spreading, subacute to shortly acuminate, margin shallowly dentate, with narrow entire to shallowly dentate crest; upper petal 19-24 mm; spur straight to slightly downcurved, cylindric, 10-12 mm; nectary 2-3 mm; lower petal 11-12 mm, narrow at base, gradually widened to front 1/3; inner petals 9-11 mm, claw longer than limb; dorsal crest low, slightly overtopping apex. Stigma with 6 marginal papillae: median 2 distinct, lateral ones distinct or confluent; geminate papillae submarginal and on basal lobes. Capsule linear, moniliform, 18-27 × 1-1.5 mm, 10-17-seeded; style proper ca. 2.5 mm, but fruit with seedless apical beak 1-3 mm; replum subpersistent. Seeds 0.9-1.1 mm, smooth. Fl. and fr. Mar-Aug.
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