铁线蕨叶黄堇 tie xian jue ye huang jin

Herbs, perennial, glabrous, glaucous. Caudex often thick, with many heads, crowned by fragile remnants of old petioles. Stems erect, glaucous, 20-60 cm, stiff, branched from base and above. Lower leaves long stalked (petiole 3-8 cm); blade oblong, 4-9 cm, pinnate with 2-4 pairs of leaflets; leaflets shortly stalked or subsessile, broadly flabellate to almost reniform, entire to slightly divided, apex dentate. Uppermost leaves much reduced. Raceme 15-25-flowered (or fewer flowered in lateral racemes), at first dense, becoming lax, especially below; bracts 4-10 mm, apex long acuminate. Pedicel 2-5(-8) mm, not elongating in fruit, downcurved. Flowers yellow, apex pale brown. Sepals lanceolate, 4-8 × 1-1.5 mm, margin dentate, apex long acuminate. Outer petals shortly and abruptly mucronate, sometimes with a short narrow dentate crest; upper petal 16-18 mm; spur 4-5 mm, rounded-obtuse; nectary extended through ca. 2/3 of spur. Stigma: see section description. Capsule oblong, 15-25 × 2-3 mm, including a narrow apical portion grading into style, together 5-8 mm. Fl. and fr. Jul-Aug.

Gravelly areas, desert grasslands; 2300-5000 m. W Xinjiang (Wuqia, Yecheng) [Kashmir, Pakistan].

This species is similar to Corydalis flabellata but with much longer and more long-acuminate bracts and sepals (very obvious in bud stage when the tips of the bracts render the budding racemes a shaggy appearance), longer pedicels, and longer and often more crested flowers.