Montana Field Guide

Shrubs to 3 m. Twigs glabrous, sometimes becoming glaucous. Leaf blades 2–6 cm long, lanceolate, mostly with entire or sparsely denticulate margins, glabrous or sparsely hairy, glaucous beneath. Female catkins 10–25 mm long, emerging with the leaves on leafy branchlets to 1 cm long; scales dark brown to black, long-hairy. Capsules hairy, 4–6 mm long; stipes 0.5–2 mm long; style 0.2–1 mm long (Lesica et al. 2012. Manual of Montana Vascular Plants. BRIT Press. Fort Worth, TX).

Streambanks, wetlands, usually in landscapes dominated by mountain big sagebrush; subalpine (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).