Herbs, annual or usually biennial, 10-40 cm tall, glabrous or slightly papillose scabrid on veins and stems. Annual form with slender taproot, biennial form with root like a small pale carrot. Stems 1 or few, erect to ascending, leafy and branched from base. Lower leaves: petiole 4-13 cm; blade glaucous abaxially, green or glaucous adaxially, 3-6 × 3-7 cm, bi-(tri-)ternate; leaflets petiolate, deeply cut into 2-5 oblanceolate obtuse lobes; lobes entire. Upper leaves much smaller, with petioles 2-4 cm, at base with peculiar membranous fimbriate stipules. Raceme dense in flower, much elongating in fruit, 4-10-flowered, peduncle distinct; bracts clearly stalked, ternatisect with sharply dentate lobes, 4-10 mm, upper smaller. Pedicel 5-6 mm in flower, 10-15(-24) mm in fruit, thin, erect. Flowers purplish blue to pink. Sepals white, orbicular, 1-2 mm, deeply fimbriate dentate. Outer petals broadly rounded, obtuse to emarginate, sometimes with small mucro, abaxially with abrupt crest not reaching apex; upper petal 15-18 mm; spur cylindric, slightly bent downward at apex, 6-8 mm; nectary thick, ca. 1/4 as long as spur; lower petal 9-12 mm, claw straight or usually saccate near base; inner petals 8-9 mm, dorsal crests rounded, overtopping apex. Stigma square; marginal simple papillae: 2 median distinct, outer confluent; geminate papillae lateral and on well-developed basal lobes. Capsule obovoid, ca. 10 × 4 mm; style ca. 3 mm. Seeds in 2 rows, ca. 1 mm, with small caruncle.
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