Oxytropis borealisDC.

boreal locoweedsticky crazyweed

WFO wfo-0000171153 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Oxytropis borealis, photographed by F Quiec
fig. a F Quiec, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2022-05-29 / obs. 205956845
Oxytropis borealis, photographed by Matt Muir
fig. b Matt Muir, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 146971666
Oxytropis borealis, photographed by John Powers
fig. c John Powers, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 109815838
Oxytropis borealis, photographed by Sarah Vermaak
fig. d Sarah Vermaak, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 81722464
Oxytropis borealis, photographed by Syd Cannings
fig. e Syd Cannings, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 73974427
Oxytropis borealis, photographed by Syd Cannings
fig. f Syd Cannings, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 47281001
Oxytropis borealis, photographed by Syd Cannings
fig. g Syd Cannings, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 44642049
Oxytropis borealis, photographed by Bev McBride
fig. h Bev McBride, CC0 1.0 / obs. 45442907

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Native range 20 botanical countries

Regions where Oxytropis borealis is native: Kamchatka, Magadan, Alaska, Alberta, British Columbia, California, Colorado, Idaho, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Ontario, Oregon, Québec, Utah, Washington, Wyoming, Yukon KamchatkaMagadanAlaskaAlbertaBritish ColumbiaCaliforniaColoradoIdahoMinnesotaMontanaNevadaNorthwest TerritoriesNunavutOntarioOregonQuébecUtahWashingtonWyomingYukon
Native distribution of Oxytropis borealis, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Alaska ASK NORTHERN AMERICA
Alberta ABT
British Columbia BRC
California CAL
Colorado COL
Idaho IDA
Minnesota MIN
Montana MNT
Nevada NEV
Northwest Territories NWT
Nunavut NUN
Ontario ONT
Oregon ORE
Québec QUE
Utah UTA
Washington WAS
Wyoming WYO
Yukon YUK
Kamchatka KAM ASIA-TEMPERATE
Magadan MAG

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Flowering 175 in flower of 201 examined

Peak flowering in May. Each bar is the share of Oxytropis borealis observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 175 of 201 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 9 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Where it actually grows measured, from 786 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -28.0 °C -13.3 °C -10.8 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 13.9 °C 22.0 °C 24.6 °C
Annual rainfall 357 mm 456 mm 1,179 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 33 mm 45 mm 221 mm

It is found where winters are arctic. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 786 research-grade observations of Oxytropis borealis that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 31 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Aragallus hudsonicus Greene
  • Aragallus viscidulus Rydb.
  • Aragallus viscidulus var. depressus Rydb.
  • Aragallus viscidus (Nutt.) Greene
  • Astragalus gaspensis (Fernald & B.L.Kelsey) Tidestr.
  • Astragalus viscidus (Nutt.) Tidestr.
  • Oxytropis campestris var. verrucosa Ledeb.
  • Oxytropis campestris var. viscida (Nutt.) S.Watson
  • Oxytropis gaspensis Fernald & B.L.Kelsey
  • Oxytropis glutinosa A.E.Porsild
  • Oxytropis hudsonica (Greene) Fernald
  • Oxytropis ixodes Butters & Abbe
  • Oxytropis ixodes f. ecaudata Butters & Abbe
  • Oxytropis leucantha f. galactantha B.Boivin
  • Oxytropis leucantha var. depressa (Rydb.) B.Boivin
  • Oxytropis leucantha var. gaspensis (Fernald & B.L.Kelsey) B.Boivin
  • Oxytropis leucantha var. hudsonica (Greene) B.Boivin
  • Oxytropis leucantha var. ixodes (Butters & Abbe) B.Boivin
  • Oxytropis leucantha var. leuchippiana B.Boivin
  • Oxytropis leucantha var. magnifica B.Boivin
  • Oxytropis leucantha var. viscida (Nutt.) B.Boivin
  • Oxytropis sheldonensis A.E.Porsild
  • Oxytropis uralensis var. subsucculenta Hook.
  • Oxytropis verruculosa A.E.Porsild

and 7 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.