General: Tufted perennial herb from a taproot and a usually much branched stem-base; stems erect, 2-20 cm tall, starlike-hairy.
Leaves: All basal, narrowly oblanceolate, 0.7-1.5 cm long, 1-4 mm wide, hairy with stalked, 4-rayed, starlike hairs, the hairs again branched; margins hairy-fringed with branched or starlike hairs; midribs somewhat persistent as threadlike processes; stem leaves absent except on new shoots.
Flowers: Racemes 3- to 15-flowered; petals yellow, 4-5.5 mm long; sepals 2.5-3.5 mm long, sparsely soft-hairy.
Fruits: Silicles, 6-10 mm long, 2.5-3.5 mm wide, lanceolate to egg-shaped, plane, hairy to nearly glabrous or glabrous; lowest fruiting stalks 4-18 mm long, ususally twice the length of the silicles, ascending, starlike-hairy; styles 0.4-1 mm long; seeds 8-14, 1.2-1.5 mm long.
Dry meadows, cliffs, fellfields and scree slopes in the upper montane, subalpine, and alpine zones; common throughout BC E of the Coast-Cascade Mountains; N to AK and YT, E to AB and S to WA, ID, MT and WY, disjunct in PQ.
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)
