General: Perennial herb from a yellow to orange rhizome; stems erect, 3-12 cm tall, not elongating in fruit, minutely-hairy above.
Leaves: Evergreen, all basal, stalked, 2-11 cm long, 3-parted, the leaflets unstalked or short-stalked, egg-shaped, 1-2 cm long, slightly lobed, toothed, bases wedge-shaped.
Flowers: Inflorescence 1-flowered, erect; bracts minute; flower stalks 1-4 cm long; petals 5-7, half the length of sepals, club-shaped, fleshy, hollowed and with nectary near tip; sepals usually 5, whitish, spreading, oblanceolate to egg-shaped or elliptic, 4-11 mm long, 1-4 mm wide; stamens 30-60.
Fruits: Follicles, 4 to 7, spreading, elliptic, 4-8 mm long, on stalks equal to or longer than fruit; beaks straight but hooked at tip, 2-4 mm long; seeds dark, ellipsoid, 1-1.5 mm long, appearing wrinkled.
Wet forests and bogs in the lowland and montane zones; frequent W of the Coast-Cascade Mountains in BC, rare eastward; amphiberingian, N to AK, E to NF, and S to ME, WV, and MN; Siberia, Japan.
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 shadeintolerant, submontane to montane, Asian and transcontinental North American forb. Occurs on very moist to wet, nitrogen-poor soils within boreal cool temperate and cool mesothermal climates. Scattered in open-canopy coniferous forests on gleysolic or organic soils on waterreceiving sites; common in nutrientpoor wetlands. Oxylophytic species characteristic of Mor humus forms.
