Stems usually several from a perennial, woody rootstock, ascending or erect, 5 to 18 inches high, usually simple, occasionally branched above, glabrous or nearly so. Leaves alternate, the lowest ones very small, closer together and scalelike, the upper ones oblong-lanceolate or ovate, sometimes lanceolate, sessile, 1 to 2 inches long, about one-fourth to one-third of an inch wide, minutely toothed. Flowers white, sometimes tinged with green, in dense, terminal, pointed spikes, 1 to 2 inches long. Each flower about one-eighth of an inch long; wings of the flower orbicular-obovate, concave; crest of the corolla short and few-lobed.

In dry or rocky woodlands, New Brunswick to Hudson bay and Alberta, south along the mountains to North Carolina and west to Missouri and Arkansas. Flowering in May and June.

Memoir 15 N. Y. State Museum

Plate 125

A. Seneca Snakeroot; Mountain Flax - Polygala senega