Perennial, small, tufted, suffruticose herb, with a thick or slender creeping woody rootstock. Stems 5-15 cm, slender, round-quadrangular, leafy, prostrate or procumbent to ascending; indumentum dense, with long retrorse or mostly patent, eglandular hairs. Leaves 8-15 x 6-10 mm, thick-textured, slightly rugose, narrow to broad ovate or oblong, regularly crenulate, truncate or cuneate, obtuse; nervation on abaxial side prominent, raised; indumentum of dense adpressed, stiff eglandular hairs, mainly on veins on abaxial surface and with sessile glands. Petioles to 5 mm; leaves sessile above. Inflorescence 4-sided, condensed or rarely lax, terminal. Flowers subtended by the elliptic to broad-elliptic 4-14 x 3-9 mm bracts which are entire or crenulate, cuneate, acute, purplish or not, imbricate or not, cucullate, with a pilose, glandular indumentum. Pedicels 1.5-4 (-5) mm, erect, flattened. Calyx in flower c. 2 mm with a small scutellum, enlarging in fruit to c. 3.5 mm and with a 3 mm high scutellum; indumentum of dense, long, pilose glandular and eglandular hairs. Corolla (16-) 21-30 mm, pale yellow with a purplish hood, spreading-erect or erect, with short glandular and eglandular hairs; tube (11-) 15-24 mm. Nutlets smooth with adpressed white hairs, c. 1.5 x 1 mm.

Fl. Per: April-June.

Syntypes: [Pakistan]: [Chitral: Jambatai] Harriss 16477 (K!); [Chitral, Parith Gol] Toppin 456 (K); [Murree hills] Deane s.n. (K!); [Murree hills] R. R. Stewart 6180 (RAW?).

Distribution: Pakistan (endemic).

Characteristic features are the rather dwarf habit, thick-textured leaves with regular crenation and the prominent raised venation on the abaxial surface with rather stiff hairs. See comments under Scutellaria paulsenii (no. 12).