General: Perennial semi-aquatic herb from a thick rhizome, this covered with old leaf bases; stems prostrate or ascending, glabrous, 15-40 cm long/tall.
Leaves: Basal leaves alternate, divided into 3 elliptic leaflets, these short-stalked, coarsely toothed, 1-5 cm wide, glabrous, the leaf stalks 10-30 cm long, crowded near the base of the flowering stem; stem leaves lacking.
Flowers: Inflorescence of many flowers in simple or compound, terminal clusters on naked stalks 5-30 cm long; corollas white, purple-tinged, scaly-haired on the inner surface, 5-6 lobed, the lobes 5-7 mm long; calyces 3-5 mm long, cleft nearly to the base into 5 lobes.
Bogs, fens, marshes, shallow ponds and lakesides in the lowland, steppe and montane zones; common throughout BC; circumpolar, N to AK, YT and NT, E to NF and S to MO, CO and CA; Iceland, Eurasia.
The table below shows the species-specific information calculated from original data (BEC database) provided by the BC Ministry of Forests and Range. (Updated August, 2013)
A very shade-intolerant, submontane to subalpine, circumpolar forb; (transcontinental in North America). Occurs on wet to very wet, nitrogen-medium soils within boreal. wet temperate, and cool mesothermal climates. Often dominant in aquatic communities along freshwater lakes; occasional on water-collecting sites. Characteristic of wetlands.
