Herbs annual, 50--80 cm tall, stout, pubescent, not drying black. Roots ± fleshy. Stems single or few, erect, often branched; branches opposite, slender. Stem leaves opposite or in whorls of 4, sessile; leaf blade lanceolate to linear-lanceolate, to 5.5 X 1--1.4 cm, both surfaces woolly, abaxially densely whitish scurfy, pinnatifid to pinnatipartite; segments 12--14 pairs, triangular to linear-oblong, crenate-dentate. Inflorescences spicate; proximal bracts longer than calyx, short petiolate, ovate-lanceolate. Calyx 8--10 mm, densely villous, deeply cleft anteriorly; lobes 5, unequal. Corolla yellow, with purple-red galea, 1.8--2 cm; tube erect, to 2 X as long as calyx; galea bent at a right angle apically, slender; beak slender; lower lip shorter than galea, glabrous, apex of middle lobe hoodlike. Filaments glabrous or pubescent apically. Capsule barely enclosed by accrescent calyx, obliquely long ovoid, ca. 1 cm. Fl. May--Aug, fr. Aug--Sep.