General: Perennial herb from a short, thick, often contorted rhizome; stems erect, solitary, simple, 10-30 cm tall.
Leaves: Basal leaves alternate, lanceolate to oblong or egg-shaped, the blades 3-10 cm long, the stalks longer than the blades; stem leaves 2-4, nearly linear, reduced and becoming unstalked upwards; stipules brown, strongly sheathing, 1-5 cm long, entire.
Flowers: Inflorescence a single, terminal, spikelike raceme, 2-10 cm long, mostly 1-1.5 mm wide, the lower flowers replaced by small pinkish to purple bulblets; perianths 3-3.5 mm long, white or pink, 5-lobed 2/3 or more the distance to the base.
Fruits: Achenes, 3-angled, dark brown, smooth to somewhat granular, 2-3 mm long, usually not developing.
Moist forest openings, meadows, streambanks and rocky slopes and ridges in the upper montane to alpine zones; frequent in and east of the Coast-Cascade Mountains in BC, rare along the coast; circumpolar, N to AK, YT and NT, E to NF and S to NH, MN, MI, UT, NM and OR; Eurasia, Iceland.
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, 2013)
