Plant stoloniferous. Stolons up to 16 x 0.15 cm, dark or reddish-brown. Leaves in dense rosettes 20-30 mm broad, dimorphic; outer ones smaller, 6-16 x 2.5-4 mm, oblanceolate, villous, silky when young; inner leaves larger, 20-68 x 4-5(-12) mm, elliptic-lanceolate, subsessile, villous, base of lamina attenuate. Scape 4.5-15 cm long, (10-) 15-22-flowered, villous and sparse glandulose. Bracts unequal, 6-13 x 2-3 mm, lanceolate or broadly so, villous and sparse glandulose. Pedicel 7-20 (-22) mm long, exceeding the bracts. Flowers pink to rose-pink. Calyx 3-3.5 mm long, broad campanulate, villous and glandulose, 1/3- ½ cleft; lobes 1.5 mm long, wedge-shaped, obtuse, villous, ciliate. Corolla lobes unequal, 3-4 mm long, obovate-cuneate; tube urceolate, limb 7.5-9 mm broad; throat constricted, barely annulate. Ovary globose depressed, style 1 mm long, stigma subcapitate. Capsule c. 3 mm broad, slightly exceeding the calyx. Seeds 2-3 in number, brown, ovoid-oblong, angular, c. 2 mm long, vesiculose.

Fl. Per.: July-August.

Holotype: Jacquemont 548 (P, iso. K!).

Distribution: Kashmir, less common in Ladak and Baltistan, and eastward to Kumaon.

The species is closely related to Androsace sarmentosa Wall. with which it has often been confused with or even treated as a variety (Hook. f. 1.c. 498). It differs from that species in having leaves with a narrow petiole, broader bracts and the inflorescence with an indument of villous white hairs (in Androsace sarmentosa the hairs are brown and crisp). Both the species overlap in their distribution in the W. Himalayan regions of Kumaon, Tehri-Garhwal, Lahul, Chamba and parts of W. Nepal, where plants exists which cannot with certainty be assigned to either species. They appear to be intermediates, where the characters of bract size and indument colour are of an intermediary nature.

In Kashmir the species Androsace studiosorum is fairly robust and variable in size, length of scape, number of flowers per umbel and density.