Alpine flora of the Canadian Rocky Mountains

Chapter 34: Linaceæ Flax Family

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About This Book

A concise field manual that surveys the alpine and subalpine plants encountered along the Canadian Rockies and the Selkirks accessible by the trans-mountain railway, emphasizing distinct regional assemblages and plant adaptations to differences in moisture and exposure. Species are arranged by botanical families with general keys to families and genera; treatments include ferns, conifers, shrubs and the majority of herbaceous flowering plants while excluding grasses, sedges, and willows. Descriptions are accompanied by plates, watercolour illustrations and photographs, and the text relates local taxa to comparable mountain floras while noting characteristic species, habitats and elevational ranges.

Linaceæ
Flax Family

Herbs with perfect regular nearly symmetrical flowers; sepals 5, persistent; petals 5 and alternate with the sepals; stamens 5 opposite the sepals.

Linum Lewisii Pursh. Lewis’s Wild Flax.

Perennial from a woody root, 1—2 feet high, densely tufted, smooth, glaucous. Leaves crowded, oblong or linear, ¼—1½ inches long, acute or acutish, 3—5 nerved. Flowers bright blue, 1—1½ inches broad; petals 5, soon falling; sepals 5, oval, mainly obtuse, ⅓ or ¼ the length of the petals; stigmas shorter than the styles; stamens 5, longer than the styles.

In open, dry, stony ground and slopes throughout the Rockies; flowering in June and July.

Empetrum nigrum L. (Nat.)
Black Crowberry.

Linum Lewisii Pursh. (¼ Nat.)
Wild Blue-Flax.