Pedicularis lanceolata (Swamp Lousewort) - photos and description

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Above photo taken July 13th, two weeks before flowers open

General: Perennial plants with stout stems, stems glabrous or pubescent at the bottom. Foliage is light green. Stems simple or few branched towards the top.

Flowers: Flowers two-lipped, grow in dense terminal spikes. The flowers pale yellow to white in colour. We measured a flower including calyx at 23 mm long, and measured spikes 2 to 5 cm long.

Leaves: Leaves mostly opposite some alternate, elliptical to oblong, sessile, cauline, reduced upwards. The leaves have stiff hairs making them rough to touch. The margins shallowly lobed. We measured a leaf mid-stem at 6 cm long by 12 mm wide.

Height: Height listed in Budd's Flora to 90 cm. We measured plants to 41 cm tall.

Habitat: Moist meadows in southeast Saskatchewan. Across central and eastern North America also grows in swamps and bogs.

Abundance: Very rare, ranked as an S1 (as of 2021) by the Saskatchewan Conservation Data Centre.

Origin: Native.

When and where photographed: Took one photo July 13th in a moist meadow in a pasture, parklands about 200 km east of Regina, SK, and the rest of the photos on July 29th moist grassland in highway ditch, parklands, about 200 km east of our home in Regina, SK.