Plants (often red), usually fragile, (flowers sometimes replaced with bulbils). Flowering stems simple, 8-35 cm. Leaves in basal rosette and cauline, basal 3-lobed, (segments 3-4-lobed, round), cauline (2-4), 3-lobed or -foliolate, much reduced, similar to basal, (segments or leaflets simple or 1-3-lobed, often with axillary bulbils); stipules large, not decurrent on petiole, (margins fimbriate); petiole 1-4(-8) cm; blade green, orbiculate, base cordate, surfaces nearly glabrous or sparingly hairy. Inflorescences solitary flowers or erect, 2-5(-7)-flowered racemes, often appearing corymbose, rarely branched unless plant with bulbils, (8-20 cm, flowers sometimes replaced with bulbils). Pedicels to 3-4 times length of hypanthium, (flowers long-pedicellate). Flowers persistent, not fragrant, horizontal; hypanthium narrowly campanulate with acute or hemispheric base, elongating slightly in fruit, throat open, (length 2 times diam.); sepals erect in bud, widely spreading after anthesis, triangular; petals (completely exserted), widely spreading, usually pink, rarely white, ovate, narrowly clawed, deeply and palmately 5-lobed, (without serrations at base, sinuses extending 4/5+ to base of lamina), 3.5-7 mm, ultimate margins entire; ovary to 1/2 inferior; styles slightly exserted in fruit; stigma papillae apical. Seeds 0.5-0.6 mm, tuberculate (tubercles in 3-19 rows, blunt or spinelike). 2n = 14, 28.

Flowering Feb-Sep. Seacoast bluffs and rocky meadows, open forests, grasslands and sagebrush shrublands to dry, open, gravelly subalpine sites; 30-3600 m; Alta., B.C., Sask.; Calif., Colo., Idaho, Mont., Nev., Oreg., S.Dak., Utah, Wash., Wyo.

The presence or absence of bulbils is the only feature distinguishing Lithophragma glabrum and L. bulbiferum; for this reason L. bulbiferum is not recog-nized in this treatment. Bulbil production is extremely variable within the same clone in L. heterophyllum (R. L. Taylor 1965).