General: Perennial herb from tuberlike, easily detached root; glabrous or straight appressed-hairy; stems usually 1-2, 5-25 cm tall.
Leaves: Basal leaves rare on flowering plants, if present then stalked, with broadly elliptic, rounded blades; stem leaves few, lowermost strongly reduced, the others well-developed, mostly unstalked, 2-6 cm long and 0.5-3 cm wide, rounded at tip, entire, alternate; lateral veins obscure.
Flowers: Inflorescence compact, somewhat headlike; corollas tubular funnel-shaped, blue, 15-25 mm long; petals fused at base into a tube that flares slightly at top to the funnel-shaped limb and 5 lobes, the tube 2-3 times as long as the limb, and glabrous within but with 5 bulges at the throat.
Dry to mesic grasslands, shrublands and open forests in the steppe and montane zones; frequent in S BC east of the Coast-Cascade Mountains; S to W MT, ID and N 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)