Montana Field Guide

Shrubs to 60 cm. Stems terete; foliage buds small with paired scales; floral buds larger, with 4 to 6 imbricate scales. Leaves to 20 mm long; blades elliptic, margins entire, not reticulate-veined beneath. Inflorescence of 1 (to 3) flower borne from the upper-most floral buds on last year’s stem. Flowers: calyx lobes deltoid; corolla elliptic urn-shaped, to ca. 5 mm long, white to pale pink. Berry blue, to ca. 5 mm broad, calyx lobes persistent on the summit (Stickney in Lesica et al. 2012. Manual of Montana Vascular Plants. BRIT Press. Fort Worth, TX).

Wet meadows to exposed, perennially moist turf; subalpine, alpine (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 appositus, Bombus centralis, Bombus fervidus, Bombus flavifrons, Bombus frigidus, Bombus melanopygus, Bombus mixtus, Bombus nevadensis, Bombus rufocinctus, Bombus ternarius, Bombus sitkensis, Bombus occidentalis, Bombus pensylvanicus, Bombus bimaculatus, Bombus griseocollis, Bombus impatiens, Bombus insularis, Bombus bohemicus, and Bombus flavidus (Heinrich 1976, Thorp et al. 1983, MacKenzie and Averill 1995, Stubbs and Drummond 2001, Ratti et al. 2008, Colla and Dumesh 2010, Colla and Ratti 2010, Colla et al. 2011, Williams et al. 2014).