Duration: Perennial

Nativity: Native

Lifeform: Forb/Herb

General: Herbaceous perennials or biennials, to 1.2 m tall, the stems few or solitary, strict and very straight and upright, not at all spreading, herbage with coarse, spreading hairs at mid-stem, plants arising from a slender, simple caudex.

Leaves: Alternate, oblanceolate to narrowly elliptic, 5-24 cm long, 0.5-3.5 cm wide, basal blades generally smaller than cauline and often withering at flowering, middle stem leaves tending to be sessile.

Flowers: Blue, with yellow centers (appendages), rotate-salverform, with 5 petal-like lobes, corollas 3-8 mm in diameter, the tubes 1.5-2.5 mm long with closed throats, the appendages wider than long, calyxes 1.5-2.5 mm long with 5 deep lobes, sepals 4-10, fused at base or free, stamens alternate, epipetalous, ovaries superior, entire to 4-lobed, styles 1-2, entire or 2-lobed or -branched, inflorescences with subtending bracts, borne terminally and axillary in groups of 3 or more coiled cymes on narrow pedicels 4-10 mm long, recurved to reflexed and elongated in fruit, the branchlets bearing mature cymes short and numerous, together forming a leafy-bracted, elongate terminal panicle.

Fruits: Nutlets 1-4, 2-4 mm long, erect, larger than the style, with a lateral-medial attachment scar, generally with barb-tipped prickles abaxially and on margins.

Ecology: Found in meadows, on streambanks, and in other vernally wet areas, occasionally on open slopes or in forests, from 4,500-10,000 ft (1372-3048 m); flowering July-August.

Distribution: Widespread across much of the western United States; from British Cloumbia to Ontairo, south to Texas, and west to Arizona and California.

Notes: This plant can be large or small, with deep green leaves, the flowers can also vary in size according to the plant, the light-purple to white flowers in scorpioid cymes produce sticky seeds. Jepson reports this plant as uncommon. The keys to this species according to Kearney and Peebles are the few, upright stems, these not spreading, the blue corollas (not at all white), the middle stem leaves tending to be sessile and the numerous short branchlets bearing mature cymes, these taken together forming leafy-bracted, elongated terminal panicles.

Ethnobotany: This plant is considered poisonous, the prickles from fruit caused skin irritation and swelling, however the root of this or any poisonous plant used for serious injury such as fracture, and leaves and pollen used in various ways for good luck in gambling and trading.

Synonyms: None

Editor: LCrumbacher2012

Etymology: Hackelia is named after Josef Hackel (1783-1869), Czech botanist, while floribunda comes from floris, "flower," or florere, "to flower," with the Latin adjectival suffix -bundus used in the sense of doing or action accomplished, and thus meaning "profusely flowering, producing or having produced abundant flowers."