Synonyms: Other names: maiden blue eyed Mary Nomenclature: parviflora = small flowered Nativity / Invasiveness: Montana native plant
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No medicinal data
Description
General: annual herb, 5-40 cm tall, simple or branched, lax and weak when elongate. Stem and flower stalks minutely covered with short, thick, often spreading or backward hairs (those among the flowers often glandular), rarely hairless.
Leaves: opposite, hairless, or short-hairy like the stem, entire or nearly so, the lower ones small, stalked, spatulate to round, commonly soon withered, the others narrow and becoming stalkless, narrowly elliptic or oblong, up to 4 cm long and 12 mm wide. Upper leaves often in whorls of 3-5.
Flowers: the lower ones mostly solitary in the axils, the upper more often clustered, long-stalked. Calyx 3-6 mm long, the 5 narrow, slenderly pointed lobes as long as the tube. Corolla blue, the upper lip white or whitish, 4-7 mm long, with 2 broadly rounded lobes, the lower lip with 2 narrower lobes, the tube abruptly bent near the base, forming an oblique angle with the calyx and strongly humped on the upper side at the bend.
March-July.
Fruits: capsules, ellipsoid, shorter than the calyx, 3-5 mm long, 2-3.5 mm wide. The 2-4 seeds ellipsoid, about 2 mm long, flattened, with thickened, inrolled edges.
Distribution
Plains, hills, slopes and open woods, in w. and c. parts of MT. Also from AK to s. CA, CO and MI.
Sub taxa:
Our specimen belong to var. parviflora Lindl.
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No edibility data
No medicinal data
