Aconitum kirinense

[Leena]

I have this plant which I have grown as A.kirinense. What are the main differences between A.kirinense and A.volubile? I have grown this from seeds which I got from a friend who had gotten hers from another and originally the seeds came to Finland from Swedish STA, garden amateurs seed exchange many years ago.

My plant starts to flower about two weeks earlier than my A.volubile, but the flowering may overlap some. Flowering time is the main difference I see, and also A.kirinense is more compact (still tall), but I don't know how much shade/sun matters. The colour of the flowers is similar. Leaves are a bit smaller than A.volubile. Flowering starts here in the lat week of June, while A.volubile starts around mid July.
I have seeds from my A.kirinense, but before I give them to anyone, I would like to get opinions about if my plant is right or not.

[Gabriela]

I am not familiar with A. volubile but even if I would be Leena, Aconitums are very difficult to identify and all characters must be taken into consideration (basal and stem leaves, flowers, fruits, seeds....). This is the reason why so many misidentified species are circulating around. Many are really looking very similar on a superficial look.

I have young plants of A. kirinense grown from wild seeds and I can show basal leaves (they didn't flower yet). But this won't really help much.

My best advice for now is to watch the close-up pictures with A. kirinense on plantarium.ru, which is an excellent repository of plant images taken in the wild.
https://www.plantarium.ru/page/view/item/512.html

Here's a picture with basal leaf from my plant, still in a container I planted full with various Aconitum seedlings last year. If planted in the garden it would have flowered most probably.

[Leena]

Thank you Gabriela, these are so difficult.  In my last picture with only leaves, the top leaves are from lower part of the plant but I'm not sure if they are what you call basal leaves.
I think I will enjoy my plant and not offer it's seeds because I can't be sure what it is.

[Gabriela]

The leaves I show are coming from the ground (root), are not growing on a stem (flowering or not).
Your plant looks very much alike, but yes, hard to be sure (there is a detailed description in Flora of China, but not always trusting).

If your fruits and seeds are matching the close-up pictures on plantarium.ru and considering all else, you could share seeds as: Aconitum cf. kirinense (meaning it is very close to the species but based on the data you have are not able at this point to be 100% sure).