紫花紫堇 zi hua zi jin

Herbs, perennial, 30-45 cm tall, glabrous; stems and petioles of radical leaves attenuate to filiform underground base. Storage roots fascicled, narrowly oblong, 7-9 cm. Stems slender, branched, with 3 or 4 leaves. Radical leaves few; petiole 7-22 cm; blade strongly glaucous abaxially, green adaxially, broadly ovate, ca. 13 × 11 cm, tripinnate; pinnae 3 pairs, long petiolulate, distant; pinnules 2 pairs, petiolulate to sessile, distant; ultimate leaflets elliptic to oblanceolate, 7-12 × 3-6 mm, mucronate. Cauline leaves sessile, lower bipinnate; upper ternate to biternate. Racemes 2-6 cm, 8-13-flowered; bracts 5-12 mm, lower ones flabellate-divided into narrow acute lobes, upper ones lanceolate with fewer teeth, uppermost subulate. Pedicel 4-6 mm, recurved in fruit. Sepals orbicular, small, margin lacerate. Corolla dark purple; upper petal ca. 25 mm, subacute, abaxial crest short and narrow; spur slightly downcurved, cylindric, 16-17 mm, tapering; nectary ca. 2/5 as long as spur; lower petal rhombic, ca. 8 mm, crest small; inner petals ca. 7 mm. Style ca. 3 mm. Fruit not seen. Fl. and fr. Aug.

● Grasslands on mountain slopes; ca. 3500 m. SE Xizang, NW Yunnan (upper reaches of Dulong Jiang).

It is uncertain whether the type gathering, from Dulong Jiang, is heterogeneous, given that one isotype looks like Corydalis nemoralis.