Large-petaled monkshood

Family Ranunculaceae. Native to Eastern Siberia, the Russian Far East, China, and Korea, where it is found on the forest edges of coniferous and deciduous woods.

Very rare in cultivation. It even grows on the Kola Peninsula in the Polar-Alpine Botanical Garden, but its cultivation is more reliable south of Saint Petersburg.

It has the most intensely colored flowers. They consist of four oblong sepals, up to 5 cm long, covered with soft hairs, blue-purple in color and, before opening, even black-violet, and numerous linear blue-purple petals nearly equal in length to the sepals. This Large-petaled monkshood flowers in May–June, and the fruits ripen in July–August. It is also propagated by seeds and by cuttings, the latter rooting at over 50%.

Many cultivars are known, bred mainly in Canada. Cultivars with various flower colors have been derived from it.