Montana Field Guide

Shrubs 20–100 cm. Twigs brown, first puberulent then glabrous. Leaf blades 1–5 cm long, elliptic to ovate or obovate with entire, inrolled margins, rounded at the tip, green with impressed veins above, long, white-hairy and glaucous beneath. Female catkins 1–4 cm long, emerging with the leaves on branch tips; scales brown, hairy. Capsules 2–5 mm long, long-hairy; stipes ca. 1 mm long; style <0.2 mm long (Lesica et al. 2012. Manual of Montana Vascular Plants. BRIT Press. Fort Worth, TX).

Stony soil of wet meadows, open slopes, talus, rock ledges, more common on limestone; subalpine, alpine (Lesica et al. 2012. Manual of Montana Vascular Plants. BRIT Press. Fort Worth, TX).

POLLINATORS
The following animal species have been reported as pollinators of this plant species or its genus where their geographic ranges overlap: Bombus vagans, Bombus bifarius, Bombus fervidus, Bombus frigidus, Bombus huntii, Bombus melanopygus, Bombus ternarius, Bombus terricola, Bombus sitkensis, Bombus occidentalis, Bombus pensylvanicus, Bombus bimaculatus, Bombus griseocollis, Bombus impatiens, and Bombus suckleyi (Plath 1934, Macior 1968, Heinrich 1976, Thorp et al. 1983, Colla and Dumesh 2010, Colla et al. 2011, Koch et al. 2012, Williams et al. 2014).