Herbs, perennial, 15-50 cm tall. Rhizome short, tight, knotty, with prominent persistent taproot at base, apically with 1(to few) sterile leaf rosettes. Stems 1-5 from axils of previous year’s rosette leaves, suberect to ascending, ridged, leafy and branched. Rosette leaves: petiole 5-20 cm, vaginate at base; blade adaxially green, ovate, 3-8 × 2-7 cm, abaxially pruinose, glabrous or finely papillose, biternate (to pinnate with ternate basal leaflets), pinnae petiolulate; leaflets ± deeply divided into few broadly obovate obtuse lobes. Cauline leaves: petiole 4-10 cm; blade like rosette leaves; lower leaves smaller. Racemes 3-5-flowered, elongating to 5-8 cm in fruit; bracts obovate, 5-15 × 2-10 mm, entire or lower ones deeply 3-7 palmately divided, upper ones often oblanceolate. Pedicel 5-10 mm, in fruit elongating to 10-25 mm. Sepals ca. 1 × 1 mm, sharply dentate. Petals pale purple; outer petals narrowly and shortly crested, acute to shortly acuminate, limb slightly spreading, shallowly dentate to entire; upper petal 23-25 mm; spur straight, cylindric, 13-15 mm; nectary ca. 3.5 mm; lower petal 12-13 mm, with narrow base widened in front 1/3 to rounded shortly acuminate limb; inner petals 10-11 mm. Stigma with marginal papillae: median 2 apical distinct, lateral ones confluent; geminate papillae submarginal and on basal lobes. Capsule slightly arcuate, oblong, 20-24 × ca. 3 mm, 24-30-seeded; style proper ca. 2.5 mm, but fruit with seedless apical beak 1-3 mm; replum long persistent. Seeds 0.8-1 mm, smooth, not keeled. Fl. and fr. May-Aug.
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