I.C. Hedge & A. Paton

Perennial chasmophytic low-growing caespitose suffruticose herb. Stems arising from a thick woody rootstock, 3-15 cm, woody and brittle at base, slender and herbaceous above, erect or ascending, round-quadrangular with a dense indumentum of long mostly patent eglandular and capitate-glandular hairs. Leaves thick-textured; lowermost scale-like, 2-4 x 1-3 mm, ± orbicular, brown, adpressed to stem, often deciduous; aniline leaves 6-24 x 2-11 mm, mostly at tops of stems, ovate-elliptic, entire, cuneate, obtuse or acute; indumentum dense of long white eglandular and (sometimes absent) glandular hairs, usually with sessile glands. Petioles of lowermost leaves 1-3 mm, up to 12 mm above. Inflorescence 4-sided, inconspicuously so in dried material, few-flowered, condensed, terminal, almost hidden, except for corollas, in the imbricate bracts. Flowers in axils of the elliptic, 3-14 x 4-19 mm, entire, cuneate, acute, cucullate ± sessile bracts. Pedicels c. 1 mm, ± flattened, adpressed to axis. Calyx 1.5-2 mm in flower and lacking a scutellum, enlarging in fruit to 3-4 mm with a testudinate upper lip; indumentum of glandular and eglandular hairs on upper lip, on lower lip with fewer shorter hairs or ± glabrous. Corolla 22-24 mm, whitish pink with darker markings, glandularpilose; tube 17-20 mm. Nutlets 1.5 x 1 mm, smooth, minutely hairy, brown.

Fl. Per.: May-August.

Holotype: [Pakistan] Quetta, Chehel Tun [Chiltan], Stocks 1027 (G!). Isotype (K!).

Distribution: Afghanistan, Pakistan.

Distinct among our species on account of the rather dense indumentum, the caespitose habit, the scale-like lowermost leaves and the whitish pink flowers. It appears to be a relatively common rock-crevice plant within its limited range. Rechinger (Fl. Iran. 150: 82. 1982) placed it in subgenus Apeltanthus (Nevski ex Juz.) Juz. because of the absence of a scutellum; other related species are in Soviet C. Asia and Afghanistan (e.g. Scutellaria leptosiphon Nevski).