Montana Field Guide

Perennial with a branched caudex. Herbage strigose. Stems 5–30 cm, erect to ascending. Leaves with 13 to 23 lanceolate leaflets 5–12 mm long; stipules deltoid, 1–3 mm long, basally connate. Inflorescence longer than the leaves, open with 5 to 10 ascending flowers. Flowers purple; calyx black-strigose; sepals 1–3 mm long; banner 8–11 mm long, reflexed; keel 7–9 mm long. Legume ascending to pendent, black-strigillose, flattened, keeled on the sides, 10–18 mm long, narrowly elliptic (Lesica et al. 2012. Manual of Montana Vascular Plants. BRIT Press. Fort Worth, TX).

Stony soil of meadows, moraine, grasslands, fellfields, open forest; 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 appositus, Bombus auricomus, Bombus bifarius, Bombus borealis, Bombus centralis, Bombus fervidus, Bombus flavifrons, Bombus huntii, Bombus mixtus, Bombus nevadensis, Bombus rufocinctus, Bombus ternarius, Bombus terricola, Bombus occidentalis, Bombus pensylvanicus, Bombus griseocollis, and Bombus insularis (Macior 1974, Thorp et al. 1983, Mayer et al. 2000, Colla and Dumesh 2010, Wilson et al. 2010, Koch et al. 2012, Miller-Struttmann and Galen 2014, Williams et al. 2014).