General: Perennial herb from a brown, scaly stem-base and large, fleshy or woody, sometimes rhizome-like taproot; stems usually several, erect or decumbent-ascending, 10-90 cm tall, often branched above, short-stiff-hairy.
Leaves: Alternate, odd-pinnate, fresh green, hairless but minutely gland-dotted on upper surface, 4-16 cm long on short stalks; leaflets 9 to 23, lanceolate to lance-elliptic, abruptly sharp-pointed at the tip, 10-50 mm long, 3-15 mm wide, with prominent lateral veins; stipules conspicuous, brown, joined below, 5-25 mm long.
Flowers: Inflorescence an axillary raceme of several to many pea-like, nodding flowers, the racemes often one-sided, often long and narrow but sometimes compact, 2-18 cm long, on straight stalks; corollas pink to pinkish-purple, 10-20 mm long, the wing-lobes linear, nearly equal to the claw; calyces bell-shaped, hairy, the tube 1.5-2.5 mm long, the teeth triangular, the upper pair of teeth shorter and wider than the lower three.
Fruits: Pods, constricted between the seeds into (1) 2 to 5 segments, the segments oval, 5-9 mm long, 3-7 mm wide, mostly glabrous, net-veined, narrowly wing-margined.
Notes: Some taxonomists have recognized populations with smaller stature and larger flowers as H. hedysaroides (L.) Schinz & Thell., an Eurasian species. These plants, however, appear to be merely a phase of the variable H. alpinum complex. They may be recognized as H. alpinum var. grandiflorum Rollins, if a name is required.
Moist to mesic gravel bars, streambanks, lakeshores, meadows, alpine heath and tundra, rocky slopes, and open forests in the montane to alpine zones; common in N BC, rare southward in BC east of the Coast-Cascade Mountains; amphiberingian, N to AK, YT and NT, E to NF and S to ME, UT, SD and WY; NE 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)
