Herbs, perennial, erect, 40-60 cm tall. Rootstock elongate, 1-1.5 cm thick, thicker at apex with dense fibrous residual petiolar bases, sparingly branched. Stems sulcate, leafy in upper 2/3 but branched mainly in upper 1/3. Radical leaves few; petiole 5-15 cm; blade gray abaxially, dull glaucous green adaxially, ovate-oblong, 8-20 × 5-10 cm, simply pinnate with 2-4 pairs of leaflets; leaflets shortly stalked to sessile, ovate, 3-5 × 1.5-3.5 cm, largely and irregularly sharply serrate to obtusely lobed. Cauline leaves like radical leaves, but much smaller, petiolate or sessile, with 1 or 2 pairs of leaflets, decreasing in size upward, uppermost simple, deeply and sharply lobed. Racemes dense, 10-25-flowered, 5-10 cm in flower, much elongating in fruit; lower bracts often like leaflet of uppermost leaf; upper bracts lanceolate, 10-20 × 1-5 mm, entire. Pedicel 6-15 mm. Flowers purple, inner petals pale. Sepals dark purple, ca. 5 × 2 mm, long attenuate, dentate at base. Upper petal sigmoidally curved, apically with broad rounded margins; crest ca. 3 mm high, entire, much extended beyond petal apex; spur decurved, cylindric, 11-13 mm, 3-4 mm wide, obtuse; nectary extended through ca. 2/3 of spur; lower petal apically like upper petal with rather broad front 1/3, slightly saccate middle 1/3, and narrow basal 1/3; inner petals ca. 15 mm, claw slightly longer than limb. Stigma with 8 papillae. Capsule linear, to 20 mm, ± constricted between seeds, 3-6-seeded; style ca. 4 mm. Fl. and fr. Jul-Aug.
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