I.C. Hedge & A. Paton

Perennial, suffruticose herb with a thick woody rootstock, often of screelike habit. Stems prostrate-ascending, 10-40 cm, slender, purplish, round-quadrangular with a mostly patent eglandular indumentum. Leaves thick-textured, rugose, 4-17 x 4-11 mm, broadly ovate or triangular, crenulate to crenate, cuneate or truncate, with a rather dense indumentum of short eglandular hairs and with or without numerous sessile glands abaxially. Petioles 2-10 mm. Inflorescence 4-sided, terminal, condensed. Flowers subtended by broad elliptic to broad ovate, 5-13 x 4-9 mm, bracts entire, cuneate, acute, purplish brown or green, densely ciliate-villose imbricate cucullate. Pedicels 2-3 mm, flattened, erect. Calyx in flower e. 2 mm with a small scutellum, enlarging in fruit to 2.5-3 mm with a large membranous-inflated scutellum 6-8 mm high; upper lip with numerous very long eglandular hairs; lower lip with shorter eglandular and glandular hairs. Corolla 12-20 mm, dull creamy-yellow with pink, orange or purplish markings, spreading-erect, pilose and with or without sessile glands; tube 8-16 mm, rather wide. Nutlets black, c. 1.5 x 1 mm, densely covered with tufts of minute erect white hairs.

Fl. Per.: July.

Syntypes: Kashmir, Zanskar, 15-16000 ft; T. Thomson, Heyde (K!).

Distribution: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kashmir, Tibet (?).

A distinctive high alpine plant growing up to, and over, 4000 m; characteristic features are its scree-like habit, the condensed inflorescences, the long ciliate-villous bracts and the membranous-inflated scutellum in fruit. It is one of a group of closely related high alpine species placed by Rechinger (l.c. 79) and Juzepczuk (Fl. URSS 20: 200. 1954) in subgenus Cystapsis (Juz.) Juz.: such as the Afghan Scutellaria macrocalyx Rech. f. & Fitz, the Soviet C Asiatic Scutellaria physocalyx Regel & Schmalh. and Scutellaria jodudiana B. Fedtsch. Although the latter species was recorded by Kitamura (Flow. Pl. W. Pak. 130. 1964) from Gilgit (Nazbar valley) it is probably based on a misidentification of Scutellaria heydei.