Perennial herbs (20-) 30-50 cm tall, glabrous, fleshy; tuberous rhizome stout, subglobose, 4-10 (-12) cm in diam. Radical leaves present or absent, usually 1 or 2. Stem leaves 3-5, alternate to subopposite, often with a scale at its base, biternatiscect, fleshy, glabrous, somewhat glaucous, 5-15 cm long and about equally broad; lower leaves usually only 2, long-petioled, similar to radical leaves; upper sessile, smaller and often with an axillary raceme; primary segments usually long petioluled; ultimate segments very shortly petioluled to subsessile, (1-) 2-3 (-4) cm long, (5-) 10-15 mm broad, oblong-elliptic, entire to slightly and irregularly lobulate. Racemes terminal, 5-10 cm long, often with axillary branches below, each many flowered, somewhat elongating in fruit. Pedicel 2-5 (-8) cm long in fruit, somewhat thickened, ascending. Flowers 5-6 mm across, yellowish. Sepals 5-8 mm long, ovate-oblong. Petals much smaller, scale-like, convolute, 1-1.5 mm long, or less than half as long as the stamens, narrowed below, obovate to deltoid or suborbicular to laterally bilobed. Capsule 10-15 mm in diam., broadly obovoid to suborbicular, vesicle-like, indehiscent but eroding irregularly at the tip; seeds 1-4, suborbicular, 2-2.5 mm in diam.

Type: Uzbakistan, Kizil Kum, in sand, 23.4.1842, Eversmann (LE).

Distribution: Turkistan, Syria, Iraq, Iran to W. Pakistan.

Differs from Leontice leontopetalum Linn. by its smaller fruits, ascending pedicels and oblong-elliptic leaf-segments with usually irregularly and slightly lobulate margins.