Authors: L.
Stems 20-30cm high, unbranched, slender, few to many arising in a sheaf from a stout rhizome. Leaves densely borne and overlapping, elliptic to lanceolate, slender-pointed, sometimes glaucous, to 2cm long. Flowers with a slender tube to 1.5cm long, having five short, spreading, oblong to ovate lobes, fragrant, sessile in dense, rounded terminal heads, early to late summer. The best known form has pale pink tubes and white lobes, but in western China and Mongolia at least the flowers can be entirely rich yellow. Stony slopes, often abundant on abandoned cultivation terraces. [Pl.480,481]
