Herbs, perennial, glabrous, glaucous. Caudex often thick, crowned by fragile remnants of old petioles. Stems erect, glaucous, 20-50 cm, turgid, brittle, leafy, branched, sometimes profusively so, especially above. Lower leaves long stalked (petiole 4-8 cm); blade oblong, 8-18 cm, pinnate with 3-5 pairs of leaflets; leaflets rather distant, subsessile, broadly flabellate, marginally ± dentate or shallowly dissected; lowermost leaflets usually markedly smaller than others. Upper leaves much smaller. Inflorescence branched with spikelike racemes; racemes dense at first, soon elongating, 10-20(-30)-flowered, or lateral racemes fewer flowered; bracts small, membranous, pointed, rarely with a few teeth, not exceeding short pedicels. Pedicel 2-4 mm, ± recurved in fruit. Sepals ovate, 2-3 × 1-1.5 mm, dentate. Corolla yellow, 11-15 mm, narrow; outer petals hardly dilated at apex, shortly mucronate, without or with very narrow and short crest; spur of upper petal 3-3.5 mm; inner petals 9-12 mm. Stigma: see section description. Fruit linear, 12-18 mm, 5-9-seeded; style ca. 4 mm. Seeds in 1 row, shiny, ca. 1.5 mm, with hilum and elaiosome set on a short protruding beak. Fl. and fr. Jun-Aug.
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