ABSTRACT
Perennial, 50-150 cm tall plant. Rhizome woody, thickened, horizontal, contracted, with many slender root fibrils. Stem simple, fine-sulcate, slightly cobwebby, mainly in upper part. Leaves glabrous or slightly cobwebby, deeply pinnatisect (apart from upper leaves), with large terminal lobe and 5-8 pairs of acuminate lanceolate or ovate lobes, margin dentate; lower leaves petiolate, 10-40 cm long, 5-20 cm broad; upper leaves sessile, uppermost leaves entire, large-toothed. Anthodium single at tip of stem, involucre 3-6 cm broad; bracts glabrous beneath, straw-yellow, lustrous, from lanceolate to linear, with scarious brown appendage above; appendage with dense soft long hairs on both sides; appendage of outer bracts broad-ovate, acuminate, sometimes split; appendage of inner bracts ovate, acuminate, reducing inward; in innermost bracts, it is linear, barely broadened at tip, narrowing, hairy; appendages reflexed. Tuft in 2 rows, short-pinnate, soft. Corolla lilac-coloured. Achenes 5-7 mm long. In Altay, in East. Sayan (on Tunkinsk mountain range), 2 n = 24; in Altay, in West. Sayan, 2 n = 26.
