The
photo at right shows a close-up of the flowers and inferior ovaries (purple) of
mountain snowberry as seen along the road to Blue Sky, Hart Mt National Antelope
Refuge, lake County, OR.........June 29, 1997.
Mountain snowberry is a low to medium height shrub with opposite leaves, and creamy or pinkish, tubular flowers at the ends of the erect, branching stems. :Plants commonly arise from 0.5-1 meter in height. The herbage of young stems and leaves varies from glabrous to densely puberulent. The leaves are elliptic-ovate to mostly elliptic in shape and the blades range from 1-3.5 cm long and 5-25 mm wide. The leaf petioles are roughly 1-4 mm long.
The inflorescence consists of few-flowered terminal racemes at the ends of the branches. The corolla is an elongated bell or slightly flaring tube (See photos.). The corolla varies from 7-10 mm long with the corolla lobes 1/4-1/2 as long as the tube. The tube is most commonly hairy below the filaments, but may sometimes be glabrous. The anthers are about 1-2 mm long and are about the length of the filaments. The style is glabrous and varies from 2-4 mm long. The fruit is broad, white, ellipsoid berry from 7-10 mm long.
Mountain snowberry may be found on open slopes and dry meadows, as well as thickets from the foothills to high elevations in the mountains.
Mountain snowberry may be found from southern British Columbia south to California (to the east of the Cascade crest) and east to Montana, and hence south through the Rocky Mts. to New Mexico and northern Mexico. It is fairly common across the intermountain basins of the west, but at higher altitudes in the southern portion of its range.
