General: Perennial herb from tuberous, spindle-shaped stem-bases, with a few fibrous roots; stems 35-80 (100) cm tall, stout, leafy.
Leaves: Lowest oblong-elliptic, 3-10 cm long, over 1/3 as wide, tips rounded to blunt, the other leaves 5-15 cm long, lanceolate, tips pointed, reducing into bracts above, the leaves generally widely diverging from stem.
Flowers: Inflorescence a slender, open spike, the flowers small, green, usually lightly scented, bracted, the bracts of the lower flowers 2-5 cm long, leaflike, much reduced in upper flowers; lateral sepals 4-6 mm long, broadly lanceolate, thin, 3-veined, spreading, the upper sepal broadly egg-shaped, slightly hooded at tip, 3-5 mm long; petals lanceolate to egg-shaped, fleshy, often purplish-tinged, asymmetric, in close contact with upper sepal, forming a hood; lip narrowly oblong or linear, 5-8 mm long; spur generally much shorter than lip but sometimes nearly as long, inflated, scrotum- or sac-shaped, only slightly, if at all curved; column short and thick, about 2 mm long.
Fruits: Capsules, erect, to 15 mm long.
Notes: Although spurs of P. stricta are generally much shorter than the lips, many plants from Vancouver Island populations have scrotum-like spurs nearly as long as their linear lips. Occasionally, spurs much longer than the lips are found - such plants probably are hybrids between P. stricta and P. dilatata var. leuchostachys. Plants referred to P. gracilis are included within the range of variation of P. stricta - they are florally similar to slender-spurred extremes of P. stricta and differ only in reduced leaves.
The table below shows the species-specific information calculated from original data (BEC database) provided by the BC Ministry of Forests and Range. (Updated August, 2008)
Moist meadows, coniferous forests, swamps and bogs in the montane zone; common throughout BC south of 55 degrees N, rare northward; N to AK and YT, E to AB and S to SD, NM, AZ and CA.
