General: Perennial herb from a tuberous taproot; stems erect, slender, 10-120 cm tall, smooth to nearly so below, spreading recurved-hairy above (in inflorescence).
Leaves: Mostly stem leaves, alternate, stalked, 3-15 cm wide, palmately divided to base (or sometimes nearly so) into 5 segments, the margins cleft into narrow, linear-oblong lobes.
Flowers: Inflorescence a terminal, 3- to 15-flowered, open raceme, the flowers bilaterally symmetric, usually blue or purple, sometimes greenish-purple, yellowish, or white, 20-40 mm long from tips of lower sepals to top of hood; flower stalks slender, ascending; petals 2, distinct, concealed in hood, long-clawed, spurred at apex; sepals 5, the lower 2 flat, 9-20 mm long, the lateral 2 round kidney-shaped, the upper sepal (the hood) somewhat sac-like, crescent-shaped to hemispheric, beaked, 10-24 mm long from receptacle to top of hood, 13-30 mm wide from receptacle to beak tip; pistils 3 (-5).
Fruits: Follicles, 3 (-5), 15-25 mm long, smooth to sparsely hairy; seeds about 3 mm long, longitudinally winged, with many transverse, membranous baffles.
Notes: Highly toxic, especially roots and seeds, causing death in livestock and humans.
Moist to mesic meadows, thickets, streambanks, tundra and open forests from the montane to the alpine zones; frequent in BC north of 53degreeN; amphiberingian, N to AK, YT and NT, E to AB; E Asia.
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)
