泉涌花紫堇 quan yong hua zi jin

Herbs, perennial, 10-20 cm tall, glabrous. Rhizome intricately branched. Roots yellowish, narrowly oblong, fleshy, often branched, mainly from central parts of rhizome, but also from nodes on underground stems. Stems several, ascending, with (depending on growth place) a pale flexuous branched underground portion (1-)5-10 cm and brownish red aerial parts 10-20 cm, much branched and leafy throughout. Cauline leaves usually 3-7 per stem, nearly always with flowering branches in axils; petiole brownish red, broad at base, 0.5-4.5 cm, or upper leaves sessile; blade green to glaucous, broadly triangular in outline, 2-5 × 2-5 cm, decreasing in size upward, 4-5 × ternately divided; ultimate leaflets cut into narrowly oblanceolate to linear acute somewhat channeled rather stiff lobes, 3-8 mm; leaf lobes not held in one plane, but spreading in 3 dimensions, giving leaf a very crispy appearance. Principal racemes 10-15-flowered, lateral ones 4-10-flowered; lower bracts like upper leaves, 3 × ternately (to subdigitately) deeply cut into linear acute segments, 10-15 mm; uppermost bracts smaller and less divided. Pedicels almost straight to slightly arcuate, 30-45 mm. Sepals whitish, ca. 1 × 1-1.5 mm, deeply lacerate-dentate. Corolla brilliant blue; inner petals whitish, with blue apical 1/3 (especially dorsal crest); outer petals subacute, narrowly crested; upper petal 15-16 mm, with slightly tapering obtuse almost straight spur 7-9 mm; nectary ca. 2/3 as long as spur, thin; lower petal ca. 9 mm, with short claw expanding into broad rhombic limb ca. 6 mm wide; inner petals ca. 7 mm. Ovary with ca. 12 ovules; style 3.5-4 mm; stigma broader than long, with 4 apical papillae; geminate papillae lateral and on basal lobes. Fruit and seeds unknown. Fl. Jul-Aug.

● Steep gravelly humid NW-facing bare slopes; ca. 3000 m. W Sichuan (Shimian).

This is a species with obscure affinities, not similar to anything else.