General: Annual herb from a taproot; stems mostly erect or ascending, 10-50 cm tall, few-branched, finely short-hairy.
Leaves: Alternate, pinnately compound; leaflets 3 or 4, two at the tip of the flattened axis and 1 or 2 on one side, elliptic to egg-shaped, 1-2 cm long, short-hairy, the margins fine-toothed; stipules tiny, gland-like.
Flowers: Inflorescence of single, nearly stalkless, axillary pea-like flowers; corollas 4-8 mm long, creamy-white with a purplish-tipped banner; calyces short-soft-hairy to glabrous, 3-5 mm long, the linear teeth twice as long as the brown-mottled tube.
Fruits: Pods, broadly oblong, 8-15 mm long, appressed soft-hairy, not constricted between the seeds; seeds 2 to 4, grey, flattened, 2.5-4 mm long.
Mesic open, often sandy meadows, grassy slopes, river bars and lakeshores in the lowland, steppe and lower montane zones; common in BC S of 55degreeN, except absent from the Queen Charlotte Islands, N Vancouver Island and adjacent coast; S to 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)
