General: Annual herb; stems erect, 10-80 cm tall, simple or few-branched, somewhat 4-angled, nearly smooth to thinly soft-hairy at the nodes and in lines down opposite 2 of the 4 sides.
Leaves: Opposite, unstalked, lanceolate to oblong, 1-5 cm long, prominently toothed, rough appressedhairy.
Flowers: Inflorescence a leafy-bracted, terminal, spike-like cluster of several to many, nearly unstalked flowers; corollas yellow, tubular, 10-15 mm long, 2-lipped, the upper lip hood-like and usually with a pair of short, broad, often purplish teeth near the tip, the lower lip 3-lobed; calyces membranous, 7-10 mm
long in flower, to 12-17 mm and much inflated in fruit, like a flattened net-veined balloon, 4-toothed, the teeth fine-hairy; stamens 4, the anthers hairy.
Fruits: Capsules, nearly globe-shaped, flattened, 8-15 mm long, enveloped by the calyx-balloon; seeds several, large, 3-6 mm in diameter, flat, narrow-winged.
Notes: A murky species complex but it appears that in BC only 1 entity is present.
Mesic to moist meadows, fields, pastures, roadsides and clearings in the lowland, steppe and montane zones; frequent in BC south of 56ºN, rare northward and on the Queen Charlotte Islands; circumboreal, N to AK, YT and NT, E to Labr. and NF and S to NH, VT, ND, NM, AZ and OR; Greenland, Eurasia.
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)
