Perennial or annual, erect to procumbent herb. Roots slender or up to 20 mm long, branched, excluding a dark purple dye. Stem branched, sometimes simple, up to 30 cm long; densely hairy with stiff white hairs (up to 2.5 mm long) with bulbous base, intermixed with soft weaker hairs. Leaves greyish or greyish-green in colour, densely hairy; basal leaves 40-70 x 4-8 mm, cauline smaller, oblanceolate, obtuse. Inflorescence a terminal cyme up to 17 cm long (in fruit). Flowers secund, heterostylic, orange or yellow, bracteate; bracts 6-8 x 1.2 mm, lanceolate, obtuse. Calyx 5-partite, densely hairy, 6-7 mm long, up to 11 mm in fruit; lobes linear. Corolla. hairy to the outside; tube 8 mm (in short styled flowers) to 11 mm long (in long styled flowers); limb 5-6 mm broad, spreading; lobes obtuse. Anthers 1.7 mm long, attached in the middle of corolla tube or at the throat and subexserted. Style forked, subexserted (in long styled flowers) or not. Stigmas 2, compressed. Nutlets 2-3 mm long, dull grey to yellowish brown, ovoid, with a broad base, tuberculate-the tubercles dense or not.

Fl. Per.: May-August.

Type: Hab. ad fluv. Ima in Tschujam.

Distribution: Afghanistan, Pakistan.

The species is variable throughout its distributional range. that Popov (l.c. 176) employs in differentating between A. guttata, A. tibetana and A. thomsonii are not satisfactory. Hooker (l.c.) also rather vaguely distinguishes A. tibetana from A. thomsonii, on the bases of the nutlet being to smooth. Kazmi (l.c. 495) distinguishes the two taxa on characters that largely overlap. In the present treatment I include A. tibetana and A. thomsonii as synonyms of A. guttata. Popov (l.c.) and Kazmi (l.c.) mention purple spots on the corolla of A. guttata which I have failed to observe.