General: Annual herb from a taproot; stems ascending to erect, several, simple or branched, 5-55 cm tall.
Leaves: Basal leaves oblanceolate but soon deciduous; stem leaves opposite, lanceolate to egg-shaped, 1-6 cm long, 3-15 mm wide, not joined at the base, somewhat purplish.
Flowers: Inflorescence of open to dense axillary or terminal clusters of few to several stalked flowers, the stalks shorter than the adjacent internode; corollas bluish-purple or pink to yellow-green, 10-15 mm long, tubular, 5-lobed, the lobes fringed in the throat; calyces 5-7 mm long, 5-lobed, the lobes longer than the tubes and the margins entire; stamens shorter than the corolla tubes; anthers 1 mm long.
Fruits: Capsules, cylindric; seeds egg-shaped to spheric, wingless, nearly glabrous, yellow to light brown, 0.5-0.8 mm long.
Moist meadows, streambanks, open forests and roadsides in the lowland, steppe and montane zones; common in BC east of the Coast-Cascade Mountains, less frequent westward; amphiberingian, N to AK, YT and NT, E to NF and S to VT, NM, CA and MX; 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)
