喀什黄堇 ka shi huang jin

Herbs, perennial, 10-30 cm tall. Rootstock ca. 10 × 1.5 cm, with 1- to many-headed caudex with dry residues of leaves. Stems 1 to few, leafy and branched. Basal leaves early withering. Cauline leaves 4-10 cm, including petiole 1-6 cm (upper leaves shortly stalked); blade ovate to oblong, 2-4 × 1.5-2 cm, abaxially ± glaucous, simply pinnate; leaflets 3-7, ovate, ca. 1 × 1-1.2 cm, fleshy, deeply 3-divided; segments slightly 2- or 3-divided; ultimate segments rounded-obtuse. Racemes (?branched), many flowered, dense, elongating in fruit; bracts broadly ovate to broadly oblanceolate, 3-5 mm, herbaceous with scarious margin, pointed. Pedicel ca. 5 mm. Sepals ovate, 2-3 × ca. 1 mm, dentate or almost entire. Flowers yellow; upper petal 16-18 mm with narrow spur 4-6 mm, with a rather broad slightly dentate pointed apex; inner petals ca. 12 mm; lower petal with a minute gibbosity at very base and narrow claw gradually widened into a broad acuminate slightly dentate limb. Stigma: see section description. Capsule linear, subtorulose, ca. 16 mm; style ca. 4 mm. Seeds in 1 row, ca. 1.7 mm, smooth, with a short beak from under which caruncle protrudes.

● Stony mountains, desert grasslands, clayey soil near irrigation channels; 1200-1800 m. W Xinjiang.