Perennial with a stout ± vertical woody rootstock. Stems several, usually unbranched, 10-15 cm, ascending or erect, quadrangular, purplish coloured or not, densely white woolly-lanate when young. Leaves mostly basal or not, 10-20 x 10-20 mm, broadly ovate to almost circular in outline, deeply lobed, with a dense or very dense lanate indumentum of long simple eglandular hairs on both surfaces and sessile oil globules below; petiole 1-1.5 cm. Inflorescence terminal, spike-like, of congested verticillasters, densely whitelanate, 2-6 cm long. Bracts filiform, subulate, shorter than calyces. Calyx narrow tubular - infundibuliform, 8-10 mm, firm-textured, not bilabiate; tube glabrous within; teeth 5, all ± equal, 2.5-3 mm, subulate - spinulose, straight or recurved in fruit. Corolla c. 5 mm, long, brownish yellow, narrow tubular, externally pilose; upper lobe 1 mm, entire, rounded, straight; lower lip with 3 short lobes; tube straight, narrow, without an annulus. Stamens included. Nutlets 2.5 x 1.6 mm, greyish, triquetrous, apically rounded.

Fl. Per.: August-September. Fr.: October.

Described from the Altai mountains (LE).

Distribution: Kashmir, Tibet, Soviet Central Asia, Mongolia.

A distinctive high alpine species. Ikonnikov-Galitsky (l.c.) considered it and three other mainly C Asiatic species as forming the independent genus Lagopsis (Bunge ex Benth.) Bunge, differing from Marrubium mainly in the constantly 5-toothed calyx, but I prefer to regard Lagopsis as a natural infrageneric taxon within Marrubium.

In contrast to our other species Marrubium marrubiastrum appears to have an indumentum of solely simple hairs.