Perennial: Stems short, decumbent at the base, thence erect and clothed with numerous crowded erecto-patent, or subsecund, lanceolate, rigid, pubescent leaves, attenuated at the base, dentato-pinnatifid at the margin, with, generally, three teeth or segments on each side, on the lower leaves, two on the upper ones. In our specimens, each plant, or branch of a plant, is terminated by a single very long glabrous peduncle, bearing about four flowers in a raceme at the extremity: their flowers are, however, distant, subsecund, each upon a slender, bracteated pedicel, about an inch long. Corolla drooping, large: tube cleft the whole way down, above purple, reddish below; the limb cut into three, large, obovate, pale purplish blue, spreading segments, with three small, yellow, raised marks at the base, each tipped with a small mucro, and two minute ligulate segments, which are bent back over the top of the tube. Calyx altogether inferior, five-partite, the segments lanceolate, small, appressed to the base of the corolla. Stamens included within the tube of the corolla. Anthers purple, connate, fringed at the top with white hairs. Germen ovate, green, superior. Style a little longer than the stamens: Stigma capitate, two lobed.
Home