Aconitum kashmiricum - Kashmir Monkshood

Kashmir Monkshood is a biennial herb with stem 12-30 cm high, round, nearly unbranched or branched, hairless.Flowers are borne in very loose cluster of usually 2-5 flowers on long flower-stalks. Sepals, which look like petals, are blue or violet, hairless or the margin of helmet fringed with hairs, helmet 1 cm high, 1.6-1.8 cm long, upto 1 cm wide, scarcely beaked, lateral sepals obovate, without stipe 1.2-1.3 cm long and wide, lower ones 8-9 mm long, lanceshaped-oblong. Petals, which are actually nectaries, are hairless, claw 1.6-1.7 cm, hood 2.5 mm, narrowly cylindrical, nearly entire. Filaments are about 4 mm. Lower leaves are with long leaf-stalks, round or somewhat kidney-shaped, 5-lobed with deeply toothed lobes, wider than long, hairless or with a few hairs below; middle and upper leaves heart-shaped with a wide basal sinus, rarely nearly round indistinctly 3-5-lobed, deeply irregularly toothed, the upper-most stalkless, stem-clasping, heart-shaped or oblong-heart-shaped. Bracts are similar to uppermost leaves, but much smaller, toothed. Bracteoles are absent or similar to bracts. Seedpods are 1.3-1.5 cm, straight, not becoming hairless. Kashmir Monkshood is found in in Chitral, Kagan (Hazara) and Kashmir at altitudes of 2700-3700 m.