The effects of temperature and composition stratifications on the ignition of a lean n-heptane/air mixture at three initial mean temperatures under elevated pressure are investigated using direct numerical simulations (DNSs) with a 58-species reduced mechanism. Two-dimensional DNSs are performed by varying several key parameters: initial mean temperature, T-0, and the variance of temperature and equivalence ratio (T', and phi') with different T - phi correlations. It is found that for cases with phi' only, the overall combustion occurs more quickly and the mean heat release rate (HRR) increases more slowly with increasing phi' regardless of T-0. For cases with T' only, however, the overall combustion is retarded/advanced in time with increasing T' for low/high T-0 relative to the negative-temperature coefficient (NTC) regime resulting from a longer/shorter overall ignition delay of the mixture. For cases with uncorrelated T - phi fields, the mean HRR is more distributed over time compared to the corresponding cases with T' or phi' only. For negatively-correlated cases, however, the temporal evolution of the overall combustion exhibits quite non-monotonic behavior with increasing T' and phi' depending on T-0. All of these characteristics are found to be primarily related to the 0-D ignition delays of initial mixtures, the relative timescales between 0-D ignition delay and turbulence, and the dominance of the deflagration mode during the ignition. These results suggest that an appropriate combination of T' and phi' together with a well-prepared T - phi distribution can alleviate an excessive pressure-rise rate (PRR) and control ignition-timing in homogeneous charge compression-ignition (HCCI) combustion. In addition, critical species and reactions for the ignition of n-heptane/air mixture through the whole ignition process are estimated by comparing the temporal evolution of the mean mass fractions of important species with the overall reaction pathways of n-heptane oxidation mechanism. The chemical explosive mode analysis (CEMA) verifies the important species and reactions for the ignition at different locations and times by evaluating the explosive index (EI) of species and the participation index (PI) of reactions. (C) 2015 The Combustion Institute. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.