I.C. Hedge & A. Paton

Perennial chasmophytic suffruticose herb with a thick woody rootstock. Stems 5-30 cm slender, erect, round-quadrangular, simple or branched, leafy, with patent or crisped, usually antrorse eglandular hairs below; above with longer patent eglandular and glandular capitate hairs and some sessile glands. Leaves ± thick-textured; lower and cauline ovate to broadly ovate, 8-45 x 7-32 mm, entire, crenate or serrate, broadly cuneate to deeply cordate, acute or obtuse; upper becoming bract-like, 2-3 x 1-2 mm, elliptic, entire; indumentum on lower leaves of very short eglandular hairs, often glabrous adaxially, that of upper usually longer with sessile glands or not. Petiole on lower leaves up to 3 cm, decreasing to c. 1 mm above. Inflorescence lax or condensed, terminal or lateral. Flowers secund, in axils of bract-like leaves. Pedicels 1-2.5 mm, spreading, with small scales or not, not or scarcely flattened. Calyx in flower 3-4 mm long, without a scutellum, enlarging in fruit to c. 5 mm and with a testudinate upper lip with a ridge-like scutellum; indumentum as that of inflorescence axis but usually denser. Corolla 20-24 mm, violet - blue, erect, pilose and with sessile glands; tube 17-19 mm. Nutlets finely tuberculate with small tufts of long spreading multicellular eglandular hairs, black, c. 1.5 x 0.5 mm.

Fl. Per.: May-September.

Type:[Pakistan] Quetta: Ziarat, in crevices of limestone rocks, 2440 m, 13 viii 1887, J. H. Lace 4006 (El, K!).

Distribution: Endemic (Quetta, Sibi).

This and the following species are similar to members of subgenus Anaspis (Rech. f.) Juz. (cf. Rechinger, Fl. Iran. 150: 81-82. 1982 and Juzepczuk, Fl. URSS 20: 207-217. 1954). To these species, recognized by the form of the mature calyx and the nutlet indumentum, may be added Scutellaria fragillima Rech. f. from S. Iran, Scutellaria tibetica Wu & Li and Scutellaria kingiana Prain, both from Tibet.