General: Perennial herb from a short rhizome and branched stem-base; stems few to several, loosely tufted, ascending to erect, 5-30 cm tall, woolly-hairy and often also cobwebby, rarely long-soft-hairy as well (var. pentaphylla).
Leaves: Basal leaves few to numerous, palmately to somewhat pinnately compound, the stalks cobwebby-woolly; leaflets 3 to 5, egg-shaped to oblong, 0.5-3 cm long, coarsely blunt-toothed or cleft halfway to the midrib, greenish and silky-hairy above, white-woolly and rarely also long-hairy beneath; stem leaves alternate, 1 or 2, short-stalked or unstalked, reduced upwards.
Flowers: Inflorescence a compact to open cluster of 1 to 9 stalked flowers; corollas yellow, bowl-shaped, the petals 5, heart-shaped, 4-7 mm long, shallowly notched at the tip; calyces silky-hairy to somewhat woolly, 5-lobed, the lobes lanceolate, 3-5 mm long, alternating with 5 linear-lanceolate bractlets shorter than the calyx-lobes; ovaries superior, the styles warty-thickened at the base; stamens usually 20.
Fruits: Achenes, several to many, clustered, lopsided-egg-shaped, smooth, 1-2 mm long.
Notes: Two varieties occur in BC:
1. Leaflets 3, coarsely toothed; the more common variety.............. var. nivea
1. Leaflets 3 to 5, cleft halfway to midrib; rare in BC east of the Coast-Cascade Mountains............... var. pentaphylla Lehm.
Dry to mesic open grassy slopes, meadows, tundra, rock outcrops and sandy or gravelly benches in the montane to alpine zones; common (var. nivea) or rare (var. pentaphylla) throughout BC, in and east of the Coast-Cascade Mountains; circumboreal, N to AK, E to PQ and S to NV and CO; Greenland, 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)
