Luetkea pectinata (Pursh) Kuntze

An evergreen sub-shrub a few inches high, of tufted habit, spreading by underground suckers; young growths and leaves glabrous. Leaves glossy green, three-lobed, the lobes usually again divided into two or three secondary lobes, so that one leaf may have from three to nine (occasionally more) segments. The entire leaf is 1⁄3 to 1 in. long and all its divisions are linear, pointed, 1⁄24 to 1⁄16 in. wide; the winged leaf-stalk is somewhat wider. Flowers white, 1⁄4 to 1⁄3 in. wide; produced in May and June in ten- to twenty-flowered racemes 1 to 2 in. long borne at the end of erect leafy branchlets which give the plant when in flower a height of 3 to 6 in.; flower-stalks downy. Calyx of five glabrous, pointed sepals; stamens twenty, united at the base to form a ring round the five carpels, each of which develops into a few-seeded follicle.

Native of western N. America, from Alaska to California. The oldest specimen in the Kew Herbarium, received from St Petersburg in 1835, was collected during the Russian voyage round the world (1826–9) under Admiral Luetke, after whom the plant was named. It was, apparently, long after that before it got into cultivation. In its lower latitudes it occurs at high elevations; on Vancouver Island, for instance, it ascends to altitudes of 5,000 to 6,000 ft. It requires, therefore, cool, moist conditions such as suit the mossy saxifrages. Given these, it makes a charming plant for the rock garden.