Authors: Phil.  

Botanical Description

A more showy species than B. chilensis, forming an oval tuber 2.5 X 2cm on average, with a mass of roots emanating from all over the lower portion rather than a localised point. Leaves grey-green to grey-brown, variable in their degree of hirsuteness, divided into cuneate or obovate lobes, often expanding after blooming is completed. Flowers yellow, not unlike a winter aconite, with twelve to seventeen petals, up to 3cm in diameter, subtended by an involucre divided ternately. Thought at one time to be confined to the Cordillera de Santiago (Chile) where flowering takes place as early as October, but var. patagonica is now known from several stations in the Argentinian Andes, stretching down to Chubut. [Pl.61]

a, B. chilensis; b, B. major;