General: Perennial herb from a creeping rhizome; stems erect or ascending, many, simple or few-branched, short-bearded below the nodes, angled, smooth, 20-80 cm tall.
Leaves: Basal leaves soon deciduous; stem leaves in whorls of 4, lanceolate to linear with rounded tips, 1.5-4.5 cm long, smooth or roughened below on the veins, 3-veined, often bearing axillary branches with smaller leaves, unstalked.
Flowers: Inflorescence of numerous, stalked, terminal flowers on branchlets in the upper axils, the flowers both male and female on separate plants; corollas creamy-white, saucer-shaped, 3.5-7 mm wide, 4-lobed; calyces obsolete.
Fruits: Nutlets, 2, 1.8-2.0 mm long, with numerous, short, straight or curled hairs or rarely smooth.
Moist to dry meadows, grasslands, shrublands, rocky slopes, open forests and shorelines from the lowland to upper subalpine zones; common throughout BC except absent on the Queen Charlotte Islands and the north coast; circumpolar, N to AK, YT and NT, E to PQ, NS and NB and S to DE, OH, MO, TX and CA; 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)
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