Family: Saxifragaceae,
Saxifrage
Genus: Lithophragma
Description
General: perennial from slender rootstocks with numerous
rice-grain bulblets. Flowering stems 10-30 cm tall, rather
densely glandular-short-hairy throughout and commonly
distinctly purplish above, often grey-short-hairy.
 Leaves: the basal ones with stalks 2-6 cm long, the
blades 1-3 cm broad, divided nearly or quite to the base
into (3) 5 main divisions that are divided or lobed in 3's once
or twice. Stem leaves usually 2 (1-3), alternate, often cleft
into narrower segments, the upper ones nearly stalkless.
 Flowers: about 5-11 in a cluster, at first congested, later
becoming open and up to 15 cm long, the flower stalks
ascending to erect, up to slightly longer than the fruiting
calyx. Calyx at flowering distinctly conic, pointed at base
and gradually narrowed to the stalk, 4-6 mm long, in fruit up
to 10 mm long, the 5 lobes triangular-ovate, 1-2 mm long,
slightly flared. Petals 5, white to pinkish, usually slightly
unequal, 5-10 mm long, the blade obovate to wedge-
shaped, usually palmately 3 (to 5)-cleft.
Flowering time: April-June.
 Fruits: capsules, splitting open along 3 lines. Seeds
ellipsoid, brown, about 0.5 mm long, irregularly net-veined
and longitudinally ridged.
Distribution
Prairies and grassland to sagebrush desert and lower
montane forest, in w. and c. parts of MT. Also from B.C.
and Alberta to n. CA, CO and e. to SD. |
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