Viola beckwithii

Beckwith's violet, great basin violet, Great Basin Violet

Family: Violaceae · Type: perennial · Native

Beckwith's violet is a California native perennial found in the Klamath Ranges, northern High Cascades, northern Sierra Nevada, and Modoc Plateau in vernally moist places among shrubs or beneath pines at elevations of 900 to 2,700 meters. Flowering from March to May, this plant produces dark red-violet and lilac flowers with distinctive yellow to orange bases, the upper petals often overlapping and the side petals adorned with cylindric beard hairs. Growing 2 to 22 centimeters tall with decumbent to erect stems that are partially subterranean and clustered on a deep caudex, it forms delicate clumps. Its ternate-compound leaves feature intricate, finely dissected leaflets with narrow oblong to lanceolate segments, creating a delicate, lacy appearance. The fruit is an oblong-ovoid capsule 7 to 12 millimeters long, bearing brown seeds.

Habitat: Vernally moist places among shrubs or beneath pines

Bloom period: Mar-May

Elevation: 900-2700 m

Bioregions: KR, CaRH, n SNH, MP

California counties: Trinity, Siskiyou, Plumas, Lake, Modoc, Humboldt, Shasta, Nevada, Kern, Lassen, Sierra, Tehama, Placer, Alpine

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