Polemonium pulcherrimum

Jacob's ladder

Family: Polemoniaceae · Type: perennial · Native

Jacob's ladder is a California native perennial found in alpine and subalpine meadows and rocky slopes at high elevations. Flowering from June to August, this plant produces blue to lavender flowers with a rotate corolla 5 to 11 millimeters in diameter, forming dense clusters of 4 to 5 blooms. Growing with erect, hairy stems 5 to 20 centimeters tall, it forms a dense clump from a short rhizome. Its distinctive leaves are compound with 9 to 22 small ovate leaflets, each 3 to 4 millimeters long, arranged in a ladder-like pattern along the stem. The compact plant produces a small fruit 3 to 4 millimeters long, containing up to 3 dark brown to black seeds.

California counties: Mono, Alpine, Shasta, Modoc, Siskiyou, El Dorado, Placer, Nevada, Tuolumne, Amador, Trinity, Fresno, Mariposa, Plumas, Sierra, Butte, Alameda, Los Angeles, Riverside

Data from The California Species Project — 14,000+ California species with verified data from CNPS, CDFW, USFWS, Jepson eFlora, Cal-IPC, and more.