Herbs, perennial, very glaucous, 5-20 cm tall, slightly fleshy, glabrous or usually with scattered to dense 1-celled hairs. Rootstock vertical, elongate, often branched, upper parts densely clothed with shiny straw-colored residual petiolar bases. Stems simple or often branched, with 1-3 leaves. Radical leaves 7-13 cm, petiolar base vaginate; blade ovate-oblong, 4-7 × 2-3 cm, bipinnate; primary pinnae 3-5 pairs; pinnules 3, 2-6-parted; lobes oblong to obovate, 2-6 × 1.5-2 mm, obtuse, mucronulate. Cauline leaf similar, but shortly stalked. Raceme 5-10-flowered; bracts lanceolate, 7-15 × ca. 2 mm, entire, or lowermost ones ternatisect to pinnatifid. Pedicel 10-20 mm, erect-spreading and straight in flower, arcuately recurved in fruit. Sepals whitish, rounded, 1-2 mm, fimbriate-dentate. Corolla yellow, brownish orange with age, rather narrow and straight, slightly upwardly facing; outer petals shortly acuminate with narrow often dentate crest, crest sometimes absent; upper petal (1.5-)1.8(-2) cm; spur nearly straight, cylindric, 9-12 mm; nectary extended through ca. 1/2 of spur; lower petal ca. 1 cm, distal part sharply reflexed; inner petals 8-9 mm, claw ca. as long as limb. Stigma square, apex with 4 papillae, laterally and on basal lobes with geminate papillae. Capsule oblong, usually with a couple of faint papillose ridges, 10-15 × ca. 2 mm; style 3-3.5 mm, 4-12-seeded. Seeds ca. 1.5 mm, densely papillose-spinulose; caruncle small.
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