Woodland star

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. Fruits:

Habitat:

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.