Delphinium pyramidale - Buttercup-Leaf Larkspur

Buttercup-Leaf Larkspur is a perennial herb 2-4 ft high, stem stout, hairless or hairy. Flowers are borne in one or several racemes. Petals are bluish-black, limb of upper ones slightly oblique, 1 cm long, bitoothed at tip, spur 1.4 cm, limb of lower petals 6 x 3.5 mm, elliptic-long, hairy outside with a patch of long hairs at inner base, claw 7 mm long. Stamens are 7-8 mm, hairless. Sepals are blue or purple, velvet-hairy outside and inside, upper sepal 15 x 7 mm, ovate, blunt, spur 1.2-1.5 cm long, about 3.5 mm wide at base, straight or decurved, lateral sepals 1.7 x 1 cm, rhombic ovate, blunt at tip, lower sepals 1.6 x 0.8 cm, narrowly obovate, blunt. Flower-stalks are up to 5 cm, rising up. Bracteoles are 3-8 mm, lanceshaped. Leaf-stalks of lower leaves are upto 40 cm long, hairless or hairy, blades rounded to pentagonal, 6-12 cm wide, hairless to somewhat woolly or hairy along the veins beneath, 3-5 parted for 2/3 to 4/5 of length into broadly wedge-shaped, cleft or incised sawtoothed segments, ultimate lobes ovate to lanceshaped, 2-7 mm wide, with a short sharp point. Upper leaves with shorter leaf-stalks, bract-l ike, lanceshaped to ovate-lanceshaped, upto 15 mm long. Follicles are usually 3, 12-15 x 3-4 mm, hairless or finely velvet-hairy, divergent. Buttercup-Leaf Larkspur is found in Pakistan, Kashmir eastward to Nepal and Tibet, at altitudes of 2130-3600 m. It is common in Kashmir. Flowering: July-September.