A species found growing in alpine meadows and thickets, and possibly in coniferous and deciduous woodland, stream beds or stony scree in the Sayan Mountains, Kuznetsk Alatau, and in the region of Teletskoye Lake across southern Siberia. It has smooth, orbicular, deep green leaves with a rounded or cordate base, often bullate. The margin is recurved, often entire or crenulate-serrate at the base and crenulate or sinnuate-denticulate at the apex. In spring, it produces branching stems of pale to moderately rose-pink flowers, described by Yeo as being orchid purple or petunia purple.

Although there are quite obvious morphological distinctions between B. cordifolia and B. crassifolia, historically, the validity of B. cordifolia as a separate species has been questioned. Antonina Borissova treated it as a variety under B. crassifolia, as B. crassifolia var. cordifolia. In recent years, Govaerts et, al. have placed it in the synonymy of B. crassifolia var. crassifolia. The species name is currently accepted as a synonym of the latter. However, Yeo found that there are several characters in the species that make it easy to distinguish between the two. Thus, he prefers to retain B. cordifolia as a species.