This rare perennial blue-flowered variety of lupine is found in North America in Oregon, Washington and British Columbia (USDA 2010), where it occurs in damp to dryish upland prairies and open oak woodlands. In BC, this species is known from only one site in the Oak Bay area of Victoria, where it is now extirpated (Kaye 2000). It was last collected in BC in 1929. It is reported as a long-lived species that usually flowers in its third year; flowering in BC, based on specimens, is from May to July in BC, with plants becoming dormant after that (COSEWIC 2008). It is a host plant for Fender's blue butterfly (Icaricia icarioides fenderi), an endangered species in the US (a Willamette Valley, Oregon, endemic) (Kaye 2000).

The BC Conservation Data Centre (2010) provides the following technical description for this species: "Slender and erect, 4-8 dm. high, the stems and petioles short appressed-pubescent, with some longer spreading hairs; stem leaves few, the leaflets 9-11, 4-7 cm. long, narrowly oblanceolate, mucronate or short-acuminate, glabrous above, pubescent beneath with long appressed hairs, the lowest petioles 3-4 times as long as the leaflets; racemes long and loose 2-4 cm. long, the rachis canescent, the flowers scattered, the pedicels 5-8 mm. long; corolla 9-11 mm. long, dull blue, soon turning brown, the standard bent upward, short-clawed, the sides broadly reflexed, the wings broad, the keel not ciliate (Peck 1961)."

Read the COSEWIC status report.