General: Short-lived perennial, sometimes annual herb from fibrous roots; inconspicuously straight appressed-hairy; stems slender, weak, often decumbent but base not creeping or stoloniferous, 10-40 cm tall.
Leaves: Lower leaves oblanceolate; middle and upper leaves more oblong or narrowly elliptic to lanceolate; 1.5-8 cm long, 3-15 mm wide, entire, alternate.
Flowers: Inflorescence of lax, coiled, elongating, terminal clusters, not much longer than leafy part of stem, bracts 0 to few at base; fruiting stalks spreading, mostly longer than the calyces; petals blue, fused at base into a tube that spreads flat (2-5 mm wide) at the top to 5 lobes, with 5 hairy bulges at the throat; fruiting calyces 3-7 mm long, closely appressed-hairy.
Fruits: Nutlets 4, clustered together, egg-shaped, brown to black, smooth, shining.
Moist to wet meadows, ditches, pond margins and swamps in the lowland, steppe and montane zones; common along the coast, less common in S BC; circumboreal, E to AB and S to N CA; S. America, 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)
