General: tufted, hairless succulent perennial with rootstocks and usually numerous sterile shoots and basal rosettes, the flowering stems mostly 5-20 cm tall.
Leaves: alternate, linear or linear-lanceolate and cylindrical to ovate and more or less flattened, not keeled, 5-20 mm long, with minute bumps or smooth, often withering by flowering time.
Flowers: several in mostly rather compact, flat-topped, often almost head-like clusters. The 5 sepals triangular-lanceolate, 2-3.5 mm long. The 5 petals yellow, sometimes reddish-tinged, lanceolate, pointed, distinct, about 6-7 mm long, 1.5-2.5 mm longer than the stamens, spreading.
June-August.
Fruits: clusters of 5 erect follicles, joined at the base, splitting open along their upper side, the styles spreading to erect.
Distribution
Open exposed places, usually on rocks or on gravelly or rocky soil, from the foothills to subalpine areas, in w. and c. parts of MT. Also from s. AK and Yukon s. to Alberta and CA, and from SD, and NE to CO and NM.
Edible Uses
The leaves of lance-leaved stonecrop are said to be edible raw or cooked.
Medicinal Uses
An infusion of the stems, leaves and flowers has been taken to clean out the womb after childbirth by the Okanagan-Colville Indians. They also made an infusion of stems, leaves and flowers taken or raw leaves chewed as a laxative.
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Edible plant
Medicinal plant
