Scorzonera austriaca Willdenow subsp. sinensis Lipschitz & Krascheninnikov, Fragm. Monogr. Scorzonera 1: 120. 1935.

Herbs usually 5-50 cm tall, perennial, rosulate. Rootstock brown to dark brown, ca. 1.5 cm in diam. Caudex woody, often branched, densely covered with fibrous and lacerate leaf sheath residues. Stems solitary or few, erect, unbranched, glabrous. Rosette leaves broadly ovate, ovate-lanceolate, oblanceolate, elliptic-lanceolate, linear-elliptic, or broadly linear, usually 5-20(-30) × (0.5-)1-3(-4.5) cm, glabrous, base long attenuate, margin undulate, apex acute to acuminate. Stem leaves few to several, scalelike, lanceolate to subulate-lanceolate, base semiamplexicaul. Capitulum solitary. Involucre cylindric, usually 1.8-2.5 × 0.7-1.3 cm at anthesis, to 3.5 × 1.8 cm in fruit. Phyllaries abaxially glabrous, apex obtuse to acute; outermost phyllaries triangular to sometimes obliquely triangular-ovate. Florets yellow, usually to 1.5-1.7 × as long as involucre. Achene whitish to pale brown, cylindric, 1.2-1.4 cm, with smooth ribs, glabrous. Pappus dirty white to dirty yellow, usually 1.5-1.8 cm. Fl. and fr. Feb-Sep.

Scorzonera sinensis is delimited from S. austriaca largely by its undulate leaves, which it shares, however, with S. crispa M. Bieberstein (S. austriaca subsp. crispa (M. Bieberstein) Lipschitz & Krascheninnikov) from Crimea and Kazakhstan. According to Lipschitz (Fragm. Monogr. Scorzonera 1: 121. 1935; Fl. URSS 29: 68-69. 1964), it differs from the latter by basally more shortly attenuate, green rosette leaves and undivided stems with more numerous bracts. See also note under S. austriaca.

Mountain slopes, hills, wastelands, thickets; 200-2500 m. Anhui, Gansu, Hebei, Henan, Jiangsu, Liaoning, Nei Mongol, Ningxia, Shaanxi, Shandong, Shanxi [Mongolia].