General: Perennial herb from a thick, tough rootstock; stems 1 or more, hollow, erect, (60) 100-200 cm tall, mostly smooth, with a bloom, bases green.
Leaves: All stem leaves, alternate, 15 to 20 at time of flowering, stalks 1-14 cm long, blades round to 5-sided, 2-11 cm long, 3-18 cm wide, palmately divided into 5 (7) main broadly wedge-shaped segments, the segments shallowly 2- to 3-times lobed or toothed, the ultimate segments 5 to 9 (15) and 5-24 (35) mm wide, smooth.
Flowers: Inflorescence a 10- to 90-flowered, narrow, terminal raceme, sometimes branched, the flowers bilaterally symmetric; bracts linear, green to bluish, 2-7 mm long, smooth or minutely-hairy; flower stalks ascending, 1-3 cm long, smooth to minutely-hairy; petals 4, the upper 2 united, pale within, blue-streaked outside, spurred, enclosed in upper sepal, nectary inside spur, the lower petals 2, pale to dark blue, mostly covering stamens, clawed, 4-6 mm long, 2-lobed, cleft 1-3 mm, the hairs white, centred near base of cleft; sepals 5, usually bluish purple to lavender, minutely-hairy, the lateral two pointing forward to spreading, 8-14 mm long, 3-6 mm wide, the lower two similar to lateral, the upper one spurred, the spur straight, 10-15 mm long; stamens 20 to many; pistils 3.
Fruits: Follicles, 9-20 mm long, 3.5- to 4.5-times longer than wide, smooth to minutely-hairy; beaks straight, about 3 mm long; seeds pale to dark brown, winged, shining.
Moist to mesic open forests, thickets, meadows and tundra from the montane to alpine zones; common throughout BC east of the Coast-Cascade Mountains, except southernmost BC; N to AK, YT and NT, E to MB and S to UT, CO, NV and CA.
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)
