Yellow monkshood

Aconitum anthora, the yellow monkshood or healing wolfsbane, is an erect perennial herb of the family Ranunculaceae growing 30-100 cm tall from a fleshy turnip-shaped tuberous rootstock, native to the mountains of central and southern Europe from the Pyrenees and Alps through the Carpathians and Balkans to the Caucasus. The single unbranched stem is leafy throughout and finely pubescent above. The dark green leaves are alternate, palmately divided nearly to the base into 5-7 main segments, each repeatedly cut into narrow linear ultimate lobes 1-2 mm wide, giving the foliage a finely dissected fern-like texture markedly more divided than that of the common Aconitum napellus. The inflorescence is a dense terminal raceme 10-25 cm long of distinctive pale yellow to lemon-yellow zygomorphic flowers. Each flower is 2-3 cm across with 5 petaloid sepals, the uppermost forming a tall narrow helmet 15-25 mm high enclosing two long-clawed nectar-bearing petals modified into a hood-like spur. The fruit is a cluster of 3-5 erect dry follicles releasing winged seeds. All parts of the plant are intensely poisonous owing to diterpenoid alkaloids. It grows in calcareous alpine meadows, rocky grasslands and open mountain woodland.