General: Perennial herb from fibrous-rooted stem-base; stems 1 to several, often clustered, erect, 5-30 cm tall, unbranched, smooth except long-hairy in the inflorescence.
Leaves: Basal leaves long-stalked, lanceolate to oblong-elliptic, 3-12 cm long, pinnately compound to lobed, the divisions deeply cleft and often also toothed; stem leaves alternate, few and reduced, or lacking.
Flowers: Inflorescence a fairly dense, head-like to somewhat elongate, bracted, terminal spike of few to several flowers, the bracts somewhat cleft or dissected, much smaller than the leaves; corollas purple, 10-17 mm long including the beak, 2-lipped, the upper lip 6-8 mm long, strongly hooded, prolonged into a straight, conical beak 2-4 mm long, the lower lip 3-lobed, the lobes deflexed-spreading; calyces long-hairy, 7-10 mm long, 5-toothed, the teeth lanceolate, more or less equal, 1.5-3 mm long; stamens 4, the filaments long-soft-hairy.
Fruits: Capsules, asymmetrical, 10-15 mm long; seeds several.
Mesic to moist meadows, heath, tundra, streambanks and open rocky slopes in the subalpine and alpine zones; frequent in and W of the Coast-Cascade Mountains, infrequent in C and rare in SC BC; N to S AK and S to W WA.
Ecological Framework for Pedicularis ornithorhyncha
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)
