General: Annual herb; stems erect, 10-40 cm tall, slender, simple or rarely few-branched above, spreading-hairy, often also glandular-hairy above, yellow-green sometimes becoming purple-tinged.
Leaves: Alternate, unstalked, linear to narrowly lanceolate, 1.5-4 cm long, dark green, short-spreading-hairy, usually entire, sometimes the upper 3-cleft, the upper leaves passing gradually into the wider, 3-lobed bracts of the inflorescence.
Flowers: Inflorescence a dense, ultimately elongate, prominently bracted, densely glandular-hairy, terminal spike 5-20 cm long, the bracts dark green, glandular-hairy, 10-15 mm long, differing gradually from the leaves, 3-lobed, the 2 lateral lobes small, divergent, about half as long as the narrowly egg-shaped middle lobe; corollas golden-yellow, minutely hairy, 9-15 mm long, exserted from the bracts, tubular, about equally 2-lipped, the upper lip beaked and minutely hooked, the lower lip swollen, pouched, minutely 3-toothed; calyces tubular, 5-8 mm long, green, glandular-hairy, subequally 4-lobed; stamens 4.
Fruits: Capsules, ellipsoid, 5-7 mm long; seeds 20 to 35, about 1 mm long, with tight-fitting, netted, wrinkled coats.
Dry to mesic meadows, grasslands and shrublands in the steppe and montane zones; infrequent in BC east of the Coast-Cascade Mountains and S of 56degreeN; E to ON and S to MN, NE, NM, AZ 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)
