Plants to 40 cm tall. Rhizome cylindric, branched distally. Leaves 5, not fully expanded at anthesis; petiole 5.5--15 cm, with thick long pilose hairs; leaf blade nearly kidney-shaped, rounded-ovate, or 5-angled, 2.5--7 × 4.5--11 cm, ± equally 3-foliolate, abaxially with white hairs, adaxially glabrous, base broadly cordate; lateral leaflets subsessile, unevenly 2-lobed; central leaflet subsessile or with a 1--4 mm petiolule, deeply 3-lobed, lobes entire or dissected, ultimate lobes triangular to narrowly linear and 2--3.5 mm wide. Scapes erect, elongated in fruit, with hairs; involucral bracts 3.5--4.5 cm, basally connate into a 0.8--1.2 mm tube, apical palmate lobes linear, abaxially thickly puberulent. Sepals lilac to blue-violet, rarely milk-white to yellowish (subsp. flavescens), erect, oblong-ovate, ca. 3 × 1 cm, inside glabrous, outside sparsely hairy. Anthers yellow. Infructescences ca. 5 cm in diam. Achenes ca. 5 mm, thickly puberulent. Persistent styles 2.8--4.8 cm. Fl. Jun--Jul.

Grassy slopes, mountain slopes under forests; ca. 1100 m. Heilongjiang, N Nei Mongol, N Xinjiang [Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Russia; N Europe, North America].