Montana Field Guide

Deciduous, acutely branching shrub. Stems erect-ascending, to 150 cm, sparingly branched with coarse, reddish hairs; buds dimorphic; terminal bud foliaceous; floral buds lateral on last year’s stem. Leaves alternate, short-petiolate, thin; blades obovate, to ca. 8 cm long, bright glossy green when fresh, paler beneath, entire, minutely glandular-ciliate, usually with scattered, coarse, reddish hairs. Inflorescence of 1 to 2 flowers from lateral floral buds below the current season’s growth; pedicels ca. as long as the flowers. Flowers hypogynous, 5-merous; calyx foliaceous; corolla broadly bell-shaped, to 2 cm long, the rounded lobes as long as the tube, white; stamens 10; ovary superior. Fruit a 5-chambered capsule (Stickney in Lesica et al. 2012. Manual of Montana Vascular Plants. BRIT Press. Fort Worth, TX).

Open, moist, coniferous forests; upper montane, lower subalpine (Stickney in 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 flavifrons, Bombus melanopygus, Bombus mixtus, Bombus sitkensis, Bombus occidentalis, Bombus impatiens, Bombus insularis, Bombus bohemicus, and Bombus flavidus (Plath 1934, Thorp et al. 1983, Colla and Dumesh 2010, Koch et al. 2012, Williams et al. 2014).