General: Perennial herb from a taproot and branching stem-base covered with remains of old leaf-stalks and stipules; branches erect to prostrate-crawling, cushion-tufted to loosely matted, to 5 cm tall.
Leaves: Basal, odd-pinnately compound, 1-7 cm long; leaflets 5 to 15, crowded, narrowly elliptic to egg-shaped, 2-10 mm long, densely to sparsely silky-hairy, sometimes snowy white-hairy; stipules 5-14 mm long, whitish-papery or with pale tips, often fringed with long hairs.
Flowers: Inflorescence of 1 to 4 (usually 2 to 3) pea-like flowers atop a 1- to 5-cm long stalk, the flowers barely overtopping the leaves; corollas 12-20 mm long, pink-purple, rarely white; calyces bell-shaped, black-hairy, the tube 3-6 mm long, the teeth about 1/2 as long as the tube.
Fruits: Pods, cylindric to narrowly ellipsoid, not flattened, almost unstalked, spreading, 2-3.5 cm long, short- to long-hairy with dark or mixed dark and pale hairs, 2-chambered, lying on the ground when mature. vol3_4
Mesic to dry tundra, heath, meadows, and sandy or gravelly ridgecrests and slopes in the alpine zone; locally frequent in N BC; amphiberingian, N to AK, YT and NT; E 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)
