Perennial, pleasantly aromatic. Stems few or several and clump-forming, 20-120 cm, erect or ascending, quadrangular, little or much branched, white--tomentose at least below, eglandular or papillose-glandular. Leaves mostly in lower part of stem, thick-textured, suborbicular or ovate, 10-45 x 10-40 mm, white tomentose to lanate-floccose, cordate, obtuse, crenulate to crenate-lobed; petiole 1-12 cm; leaves abruptly decreasing in size up the stem. Inflo-rescence paniculate, of many condensed, ± ovoid capitate, cymes mostly on long horizontally spreading peduncles. Bracts subulate, filiform, shorter than calyces. Pedicels absent to c. 1 mm. Calyx 6-9 mm, tubular, curved, often purplish, densely floccose-villous when young, ± glabrescent, eglandular or papillose glandular; throat oblique; teeth unequal, very variable in shape and size, usually clearly shorter than length of tube but from 0.5 mm and obtuse, to 4 mm and linear-subulate. Corolla 8-11 mm, mauve, pink to pale violet; tube included in or exserted from calyx; upper lip deeply bifid with rounded lobes. Nutlets narrow ellipsoid, 2-2.2 x 0.8-1.1 mm, pale brown, smooth or with few raised vertical veins, and with a small basal lobed areole.

Fl. Per.: May-August.

Type: [? Kashmir] Between Nako and Chango, Jacquemont 1921 (K!, P).

Distribution: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kashmir, NW Himalaya, Pamir Alai.

A species of dry slopes or screen. Despite its very wide range of variation (even for a Nepeta species) in size, indumentum, bracts and especially calyx characters, the variation is apparently continuous; but local studies on variation would be profitable. One particularly noteworthy specimen is Stainton 8731 from Ladak (Mulbek) which, except for its leaves, has an all-over indumentum of papillose glands and calyces which are straight and the narrow linear teeth are only slightly less than 1/2 the calyx length. No material of the Pamir-Alai Nepeta badachschanica Kudr. has been seen but from its description and illustration it is a clear ally of the multiform Nepeta floccose.

Although Marmorites rotundifolia Benth. and Nepeta rotundifolia (Benth.) Benth. have been indicated as synonyms of Nepeta floccose, I believe this is incorrect and that Marmorites rotundifolia is the type of the independent genus Marmorites (q.v.).