General: Insect-eating perennial herb from a fibrous root; stems erect, simple, solitary to few, 3-16 cm tall, glabrous to minutely hairy, the hairs club-shaped.
Leaves: Basal leaves 5-7, simple, entire, fleshy, lance-elliptic, 1.5-5 cm long, 7-24 mm wide, glabrous below, glabrous or slimy-glandular above (where small insects are digested), margins inrolled; stem leaves lacking.
Flowers: Inflorescence of single flowers; corollas funnel-like, dark violet-blue, rarely white, 15-25 mm long, with a spur, white hairs in the throat, the lobes of the lower lip oblong to egg-shaped; calyces lobed, 3-5 mm long.
Fruits: Capsules, 4-6 mm long, erect.
Notes: Two closely related and intergrading subspecies occur in BC:
1. Corolla lobes of the lower lip oblong to nearly egg-shaped, more or less covering each other, or at least touching; lower lip of the calyces split up to half their length.....................ssp. macroceras (Link) Calder & Tayl.
1. Corolla lobes of the lower lip oblong, not covering or touching each other; lower lip of the calyces split up to 2/3 of their length...................ssp. vulgaris
1. Leaves solitary or 2; scapes glandular long-hairy; corollas pale bluish-violet, less than 10 mm long..............................Pinguicula villosa
1. Leaves 5-7; scapes glabrous or obscurely glandular; corolla dark bluish-violet, more than 1.5 mm long................................Pinguicula vulgaris
2. Corola lobes of the lower lip oblong to nearly egg-shaped, more or less covering each other, or at least touching; lower lip of the calyces split up to half their length................ssp. macrocerus
2. Corolla lobes of the lower lip oblong, not covering or touching each other; lower lip of the calyces split up to 2/3 of their length.......................ssp. vulgaris
Habitat / Range
Bogs, fens, swamps, and mossy seeps in all but the alpine zone; ssp. Macroseras infrequent on the coast and rare inland; ssp. vulgaris frequent in N BC, infrequent in S BC; ssp macroceras – amphiberingian, to AK and SW YT and S to CA; E Asia; ssp vulgaris – circumboreal, N to AK, YT and NT, E to NF and S to NY and VT; Eurasia.
