General: Perennial herb from a rhizome; stems mostly single, trailing or climbing, nearly glabrous to densely hairy, 15-100 cm long/tall.
Leaves: Alternate, pinnately compound; leaflets 8 to 12 (18), linear to oval, blunt, notched, pointed, or few-toothed at the tip, 1-3.5 cm long, glabrous to hairy, thin to leathery with prominent parallel veins on lower surface; tendrils simple to branched, grasping; stipules deeply toothed, 3-10 mm long, crescent-shaped.
Flowers: Inflorescence a loose, axillary, stalked raceme of 3 to 9 pea-like flowers, the racemes shorter than the subtending leaves; corollas bluish-purple to reddish-purple, 12-23 mm long; calyces 1/3 as long as the corollas, the 5 teeth to nearly 1/2 the length of the tube.
Moist to mesic meadows, thickets and open forests in the lowland, steppe and montane zones; common in S two-thirds of BC, less frequent northward, absent from the Queen Charlotte Islands; N to SE AK and NT, E to PQ and NB and S to OH, KS, WV, NM 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)
A shade-tolerant/intolerant, submontane to subalpine, transcontinental North American forb. Occurs on moderately dry to fresh, nitrogen-medium soils within boreal, temperate, and mesothermal climates; its occurrence decreases with elevation. Scattered in youngÂseral forests on water-shedding and waterÂreceiving sites. Symbiotic with nitrogen-fixing organisms.
