General: Perennial herb from a long-creeping, often floating, somewhat woody rhizome; stems prostrate to ascending, 20-100 cm long/tall, smooth and frequently reddish below, becoming hairy and glandular above.
Leaves: Alternate, deciduous, lower ones pinnately compound; leaflets 5 to 7, oblong, 2-8 cm long, coarsely saw-toothed, light green and smooth to sparsely hairy above, paler, glaucous and hairy beneath; upper leaves smaller; base of the leaf-stalks and stipules sheathing the stem.
Flowers: Inflorescence a loose terminal cluster of few to several (or many) stalked flowers, the stalks glandular-hairy; corollas reddish-purple, saucer-shaped, about 2 cm across, the petals 5, lance-ovate to elliptic, 3-5 mm long; calyces glandular and hairy, 5-lobed, the lobes lance-egg-shaped, 7-15 mm long, spreading, enlarging and ascending in fruit, alternating with 5 narrower, shorter bractlets; ovaries superior; stamens about 25, purple.
Fruits: Achenes, numerous, plumply egg-shaped, smooth, brownish-purple, about 1.5 mm long.
Marshes, fens, bogs, lake margins and wet meadows in the lowland and montane zones; common throughout BC; circumboreal, N to AK, E to NF and S to NJ, WY and N CA; Greenland, Eurasia.
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)
