General: perennial with well-developed horizontal root-stocks and usually a single leafless flowering stem 20-60 cm tall, mostly hairless below except for the somewhat ciliate leaves but glandular-short-hairy above and among the flowers, the hairs tipped with reddish glands.
Leaves: basal only, the leaf stalks usually several times as long as the blades, widened at the bases. The blades reniform, 2-8 cm broad, usually about 3/4 as long, coarsely blunt- to sharp-toothed, the teeth mostly 15-29, up to 7 mm long.
Flowers: several in an open, spreading cluster as much as 30 cm long. Petals 5, soon dropped, white with 2 yellow dots near the base, 3-4 mm long, the blade narrowed abruptly at base, often bent back. Calyx lobes oblong to ovate, 1.5-2 mm long, sparsely glandular-hairy on edges or hairless, often pinkish or purplish. Stamens about equal to the petals, the filaments flattened and broadened, petal-like. Ovary red, with 2 cells narrowed to slender styles up to 1 mm long, stigmas round.
Early July-September.
Fruits: capsule 6-10 mm long, usually purplish. Seeds brown, nearly 1 mm long, slenderly ellipsoid, longitudinally ridged with several rows of rufflelike protuberances.
Distribution
Lower montane to alpine, along streams, lakes, and wet meadows, in w. and c. parts of MT. Also from s. AK and B.C. and Alberta to CA, NM and AZ.
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No edibility data
No medicinal data
