General: Perennial or biennial herb from a taproot; stems several, ascending to erect, soft-hairy, 20-70 cm tall.
Leaves: Alternate, palmately compound; leaflets 3 (rarely 4), lance-elliptic to egg-shaped, 2-6 cm long, obscurely toothed, often with a white, crescent-shaped spot towards the base, soft-hairy; stipules narrowly egg-shaped, 1-3 cm long, green-veined, narrowed to a bristle-tip.
Flowers: Inflorescence a dense, globe-shaped, terminal head of 50 to 200, ascending to spreading, pea-like flowers, the heads 2.5-3.5 cm wide, more or less unstalked, lacking involucres; corollas pink-purple to deep red, 11-20 mm long; calyces 1/2-2/3 as long as the corollas, the tube narrowly bell-shaped, short-hairy on the outside and stiff-hairy in the throat, 10-veined, the teeth needle-like, bristly, the lower 3 about twice as long as the upper 2.
Fruits: Pods, egg-shaped, about 2 mm long; seeds 2.
Mesic to dry roadsides, fields, meadows and waste places in the lowland, steppe and montane zones; common in BC S of 55o N, rare northward; introduced from 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)
