Authors: Juss.  

Botanical Description

ex Poir. (RV). Usually small mat-forming, but rosettes sometimes solitary, 2-4cm high. Leaves linear, l-2cm long but sometimes twice this, rather fleshy and irregularly ciliate with small, scale-like stipules. Flowers l-2cm across, white or bluish with very dark veining, a yellow throat and a spur up to 6mm, borne in a ring at leaf tip level or just below, spring to early summer in the wild. Northern Bolivia, by Lake Titicaca and adjacent Peru, in the damp to dry dwarf grassland of alpine puna moorland at 3600-4500m. V. pusillima is closely allied but has densely ciliate leaves with winged false petioles and lacks stipules. The flowers are yellow, on stalks shorter than the leaves with very short spurs. Closely related also are V. abandia with toothed leaves and V. orbignyana having flower stalks longer than the leaves, the latter with strongly reflexed cilia. These last two species may well be reduced to synonymy under V. pygmaea. Both from Bolivia.