General: Perennial herb from a stout branched rhizome; stems 1 to several, clustered, erect, 5-50 cm tall, unbranched, often purplish, nearly smooth to somewhat long-hairy, long-woolly in the inflorescence.
Leaves: Leaves all or mostly basal, stalked, lanceolate, 4-7 cm long, pinnately lobed to deeply cleft, the lobes toothed or cleft and the ultimate divisions again toothed, the leaf axis broad; stem leaves 0 to 2 or 3, alternate, reduced.
Flowers: Inflorescence a terminal spike of several to many flowers, the spike compact at first then elongating, subtended by 1 or 2 bracts similar to the leaves but much smaller, the flowers spirally arranged; corollas pink to purple or two-toned, 15-25 mm long, 2-lipped, the upper lip often darker, somewhat arched, hood-like, 6-13 mm long, beakless but with a pair of slender teeth near the tip, the lower lip often spotted, 3-lobed, shorter than the upper lip; calyces 8-12 mm long, white-woolly to smooth, 5-toothed, the teeth lanceolate, 3-5 mm long; stamens 4, the filaments smooth.
Fruits: Capsules, oblong, abruptly short-beaked, 9-14 mm long; seeds several.
Moist to wet meadows, thickets, open forest, peaty seepage sites, streambanks, rocky slopes, heath and tundra in the subalpine and alpine zones; frequent in BC east of the Coast Mountains north of 52degreeN; circumpolar, N to AK and YT; 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)
