Authors: Cav.  

Botanical Description

tall in bloom, somewhat glandular throughout and spreading by more or less woody, underground stolons. Leaves in neat basal tufts, oblong-ovate (rarely lanceolate), to 4.5cm long tapering to an indistinct petiole, the margins usually entire, but may be obscurely crenulate. Cymose inflorescences bear four to six golden-yellow, red-spotted blooms with inflated lower lips up to 2.7cm or more long with an elongated, obovate outline and evenly incurved along its length so that the throat is clearly visible. Dry or damp sandy and gravelly soils in open sunny, windswept exposures. Despite long confusion between this species and C. lanceolata, C. polyrrhiza would appear to have a much more limited southerly distribution in Chile and Argentina, covering dry, sandy windswept Patagonian steppe down to the Santa Cruz river and adjacent Andean slopes to the lower limit of vegetation, from sea level to 1500m. Careful study of the two species would clearly indicate that the plant commonly in cultivation and stocked by alpine nurseries as C. polyrrhiza is, in fact C. lanceolata. However, there is a view that the former is merely a multi-coloured form of the latter, and indeed solitary flowered specimens of C. polyrrhiza have been noted in colonies of more typical plants. If this should prove to be the case, and as both plants were named simultaneously, there is no priority, so it would be a matter of choice which to use. Logic suggests C. lanceolata, since this currently represents the most variable and widespread selection of the species.