Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Slender, erect, often branched annual herbs 1–4 dm tall, ± reddish hirsute.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades 1–5 cm long. Base sessile. Surfaces long–hirsute. Margins deeply pinnatifid, the lobes slender, filiform. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in dense spikes, bracts 1–2 cm long, palmately 5–7-lobed, apex of lobes spatulate–dilated, green at base and becoming rose purple toward apex, hirsute and becoming velvety hirsute toward apex. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx tubular–campanulate, 4-lobed, 10–20 mm long; the lobes linear, pubescent and colored same as bracts. Corolla corolla bilabiate, narrowly cylindrical, upper lip hooded, the lobes connate from base to apex and enclosing the anthers, lower lip overlapping upper lip in bud, nearly as long as hood, crimson to purple, 12–30 mm long, lower lip purplish and often tipped white or yellow and purple–dotted, the hood slender, hooked at the tip and bearded. Stamens 4, in 2 pairs. Ovary superior, 2-carpellate, with as many cells; ovule placentation axile; style solitary, terminal; stigma capitate.

Fruit: Capsules ovoid; ca. 1–1.5 cm long. Seeds ovoid to ellipsoid; ca. 1 mm long; seed coat loose; alveolate; endosperm oily.

Ploidy: 2n = 24

Habitat:

Elevation Range: ca. 2,050 m.