Alpine flora of the Canadian Rocky Mountains

Chapter 50: Menyanthaceæ Buckbean 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.

Menyanthaceæ
Buckbean Family

In our species a smooth marsh herb, with creeping rootstock, long-petioled, 3-foliate leaves and white or purplish flowers, in racemes on long lateral scapes.

Menyanthes trifoliata L. Buckbean.

Creeping rootstocks sometimes a foot long marked by the scars of bases of former petioles. Leaves 3-foliate, petioles sheathing at the base, 2—10 inches long; leaflets oblong or obovate, entire, obtuse at the apex, narrowed to the sessile base, 1½—3 inches long. Flowers half an inch long, pure white or purplish in 10—20-flowered racemes on scape-like naked peduncles; calyx shorter than the corolla which is bearded with white hairs within, giving the flower a feathery appearance.

In open marshes throughout the region, local in distribution; flowering in May and early June.