General: Perennial herb from a stout branched rhizome or woody stem-base with fibrous roots; stems erect, solitary, simple below the inflorescence, smooth or nearly so, 10-40 cm tall.
Leaves: Basal leaves spoon-shaped to egg-shaped, up to 8 cm long and 3 cm wide, mostly simple, smooth, long-stalked; stem leaves opposite, 2-4 pairs, up to 5 cm long and 2.5 cm wide, pinnately cleft with 1-7 pairs of lateral lobes, the terminal lobe narrowly oblong, short-stalked or unstalked.
Flowers: Inflorescence a compact, round-topped cluster of either male and female or only female flowers; corollas white, 2-4 mm long, lobed, the lobes about equal to the tubes; calyces with 9-15 feathery segments; stamens well exserted.
Fruits: Achenes, lanceolate, 3-5 mm long, up to 2 mm wide, smooth.
Notes: The North American plants, recognized as ssp. sylvatica, are closely related to and not always easily distinguished from the Eurasian ssp. dioica.
Wet to moist meadows and streambanks in the montane and subalpine zones; frequent in BC east of the Coast-Cascade Mountains; N to YT and NT, E to NF and S to SD, WY, ID and WA.
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)
