General: Stout perennial herb from an elongated, thickened taproot or necklace-like or tuberous base, capped by a simple, often subterranean root-crown; stem branched near the base, 12-50 cm tall, spreading or ascending.
Leaves: All basal, clustered near the ground, finely dissected, greyish, hairy to woolly-hairy; ultimate segments not resembling leaflets, small, narrow, pinnately dissected.
Flowers: Inflorescence of compound umbels; flowers white or purplish-white, rarely yellow; spokes of the umbel elongating unequally, 2-6 cm long; involucel bractlets narrow, mostly linear or irregularly fused, well-developed and conspicuous.
Fruits: Oblong to elliptic, 7-28 mm long, glabrous; wings of the fruit narrow to fairly broad.
Dry rocky or gravelly slopes and grasslands in the lowland, steppe and montane zones; common in SC BC, rare in SW and SE BC; E to MB and S to SD, CO, UT 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)
BC Ministry of Environment:BC Species and Ecosystems Explorer,
the authoritative source for conservation information in British Columbia.
Synonyms and Alternate Names
Cogswellia macrocarpa (Nutt. ex Torr. & A. Gray) M.E. Jones Ferula macrocarpa Hook. & Arn. Lomatium macrocarpum var. artemisiarum Piper Lomatium macrocarpum var. ellipticum (Torr. & A. Gray) Jeps. Peucedanum macrocarpum Nutt. ex Torr. & A. Gray