WILDFLOWERS OF NEW MEXICO

One to several erect stems 4–16-inches tall have arching tips with clusters of pendant, blue, tubular flowers. Buds are pink, blooms pale to dark blue. Note the hairy leaves do not have a prominent network of veins, and the pointed sepal lobes are separate half-way to the base and lined with ciliate hairs along the margins. This highly variable genre with intergrading flower, leaf, and hair characteristics confounds efforts to clearly separate taxa into definitive species.

FLOWERS: April–June. Loose clusters of drooping flowers; floral tube of united petals 1/8–1/4-inch (3–7 mm) long; 5 spreading, slightly inflated rounded lobes are about the same length as the tube; sepals (calyx) hairy or not but with hairs on the margins, lobes pointed, separate 1/2 to 2/3 to the base; anthers project beyond the throat of the inner flower tube.

LEAVES: Basal and alternate on stem. Leaf surface without a prominent network of veins. Basal leaves with stems (petioles), lance-shaped to narrowly elliptic, 3/4–5 1/2-inch (2–14) cm long, 3/16–1 3/8-inch (5–35 mm) wide, with flat-lying hairs parallel to the midvein on the upper surface. Stem blades similar but smaller upward, sessile (without stems).

HABITAT: Gravelly, sandy soils, streambanks, roadsides; ponderosa, spruce-fir-aspen forests, subalpine meadows.

ELEVATION: 7,000–13,000 feet.

RANGE: CO, MT, NE, NM, ND, SD, UT, WY; Canada.

SIMILAR SPECIES: Franciscan Bluebells, M. franciscana, throughout NM mountains, is 16–60-inches tall with larger flowers 3/8–5/8-inch long (10–15 mm), hairy leaves with a prominent network of veins, and ciliate hairs on the calyx lobe margins. Fringed Bluebell, M. ciliata, in northern and sw mountains, is 4–47-inches tall with hairless leaves but ciliate hairs on the calyx lobe margins. 

NM COUNTIES: Mountains in the northern half of NM including Manzanos and Sandias in mid- to high-elevation, moist habitats: Bernalillo, Cibola, Colfax, Los Alamos, McKinley, Mora, Rio Arriba, San Juan, San Miguel, Sandoval, Santa Fe, Taos, Torrance, Union.