Growing 60 to 150 cm tall. Leaves up to 10 × 8 cm, ovate in outline, deeply pinnatifidly lobed, roughly hairy above, more softly hairy below; margin of the ultimate segments dentate. Leaves higher up the stems often linear lanceolate; margin sparsely toothed or subentire. Flowers in numerous terminal spikes, elongating up to 26 cm, most parts glandular hairy. Corolla lilac, mauve, magenta, purple, violet or blue, hairless. Fruits c. 2 mm long, 3-4-striate, minutely tuberculate.

Bare ground, grassland, roadsides and wasteland.

In flower during July, August and September.

Perennial.

Widespread but infrequent in the southern half of Britain, scarce elsewhere.

Formerly rare in Leicestershire and Rutland, it is increasing as a result of introduction in wildflower seed, etc.  In the The Flora of Leicestershire (Primavesi & Evans 1988) it was only found in 1 of the 617 tetrads.

It was on the 2011 VC55 Rare Plant Register (Jeeves, 2011) but is not on the current RPR (Hall & Woodward, 2022) because records are of introduced plants