General: Annual herb; stems slender, ascending to erect, 10-40 cm tall, simple or commonly with a few branches, nearly smooth to minutely hairy or glandular, especially above.
Leaves: Opposite, short-stalked, lanceolate to linear, mostly entire, the uppermost leaves often toothed near the base, 2-5 cm long, smooth or glandular.
Flowers: Inflorescence a leafy-bracted terminal spike, or of solitary, short-stalked flowers in the upper leaf axils; corollas white to straw-coloured or pinkish, tubular with a yellow patch in the throat, 5-12 mm long, 2-lipped, the upper lip hood-like, the lower lip 3-lobed; calyces cup-shaped, deeply 4-lobed, the lobes awl-shaped; stamens 4.
Fruits: Capsules, curved, asymmetrically egg-shaped, flattened, 8-10 mm long; seeds 1 to 4, 2-4 mm long, blackish with light-coloured tips when mature.
Dry to mesic grassy openings, sandy or gravelly terraces, rocky slopes and open forests in the lowland and montane zones; locally frequent in BC south of 57degreeN, except absent on the Queen Charlotte Islands; E to NF and S to ME, PA, SC, TN, WI, MN, MT, ID and WA.
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)
