Herbs with alternate simple leaves, usually milky juice, and perfect flowers; calyx mostly 5-lobed; corolla regular or irregular, the tube entire or deeply cleft on one side, its limb 5-lobed, regular or more or less 2-lipped; stamens 5, alternate with the corolla lobes.
Smooth or nearly so, simple, 1—6 inches high. Leaves linear or linear-oblong, acute, sessile, thickish entire or sparingly dentate, ¾—1½ inches long or the lower and basal ones spatulate, obtuse and narrowed into petioles. Flowers erect, calyx tube top-shaped, smooth or hairy, shorter than or equalling the lobes; corolla narrowly campanulate, ⅓—½ an inch long, bright blue, with 5 slightly spreading lanceolate lobes.
Alpine summits in the Rockies not common; flowering in July.
Smooth or nearly so, stems erect or spreading, often several from the same root, simple or branched, 6 inches to 2 feet high. Basal leaves nearly orbicular or broadly ovate, usually heart-shaped and slender petioled, ¼—1 inch wide, dentate or entire, often wanting at flowering time; stem leaves linear or linear-oblong acute, mostly entire and sessile or the lower narrowed into short petioles and somewhat spatulate. Flowers several or numerous in racemes, drooping or spreading, slender pedicelled; calyx lobes hair-like, spreading, longer than the tube, corolla bright blue, campanulate, ½—1 inch long.
On moist rocks or stony places, on slides or gravelly stream banks, frequent throughout the region; flowering during most of the summer.
Smooth throughout or slightly hairy below; stem simple or slightly branched, erect, leafy, 4—8 inches high. Leaves basal, small, ¼—½ an inch long, obovate, hairy; stem leaves linear. Flowers light blue or white, ⅓ or nearly ½ an inch long on erect pedicels slightly more than their own length; petals 5, the two upper erect, ⅛ of an inch long, very slender, the 3 lower broader, ¼ of an inch long and spreading, in loose racemes, lower bracts linear-lanceolate, the upper hair-like.
On wet banks or wet gravelly or sandy ground at the lower altitudes throughout the Rockies, abundant locally; flowering in July.