General: Perennial herb from a slender rhizome; stems erect, solitary, simple, yellow-green, glabrous, 4-15 cm tall.
Leaves: Basal leaves elliptic to oval, 1-2 cm long, forming a rosette; stem leaves opposite, 2-4 pairs, egg-shaped to more elongate, 5-10 mm long.
Flowers: Inflorescence an erect, terminal, flat-topped cluster of short-stalked flowers; corollas deep blue, greenish-blue or rarely yellowish-white, tubular, 1-2 cm long, lobes 5, widely triangular, 2-2.5 mm long, sinuses with small plicate lobes; calyces 5-7 mm long; stamens shorter than the corolla tubes; anthers up to 1.5 mm long.
Fruits: Capsules, 1-chambered, broadly lanceolate; seeds flattened, pale tan, honeycomb-pitted, irregularly wrinkled, wing-margined, 0.7-1.0 mm long.
Moist to mesic meadows in the alpine zone; frequent in and E of the Coast-Cascade Mountains in BC, rare on the coast; amphiberingian, N to AK, YT and NT, E to AB and S to MT and N WA; 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)