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Northern Jacob's-ladder

Polemonium boreale

Also called Boreal Jacob's Ladder, Boreal Jacobs Ladder

Northern Jacob's-ladder
Photo: Walter Siegmund (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0
Family
Polemoniaceae (Polemoni family)
Grows as
Perennial
Native range
Subarctic
Climate
subalpine or subarctic

About

Polemonium boreale, the northern Jacob's-ladder or boreal Jacobs-ladder, is a plant native to most of the high arctic. In Greenland it is found only in a small area on the east coast. It is not very common.

The whole plant is pubescent, with long woolly hairs, glandular, and grows to 5–10 cm tall. The basal leaves are more or less alternate, and pinnate, with numerous leaflets. The flowers are produced in a more or less capitate inflorescence, each flower bell-shaped, blue, 15 mm long, 2.5 times longer than the calyx. The plant has a very unpleasant smell, and grows on gravelly slopes and in crevices.

Other Polemonium plants

Tall Jacob's-ladder · Brandegee's Jacob's-ladder · Jacob's Ladder · Moving polemonium · Royal Jacob's-ladder · Mason's Jacob's-ladder · Rocky Mountain Jacob's-ladder · Mount Eddy Jacob's-ladder · Elegant Jacob's-ladder · Skypilot · Towering Jacob's-ladder · Annual polemonium

Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Polemonium boreale by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts are shared under the same licence.

Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.

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