General description: Plants 3-10 dm tall, or more. Flowers in panicles or less commonly in racemes; tepals 6-7 mm long, white. Leaves 20-70 cm long, 6-18 mm wide (Spackman et al. 1997).

Look Alikes: Anticlea elegans is smaller (less than 50 cm tall), has larger flowers (15- 20 mm long), and occurs mainly at higher elevations (Spackman et al. 1997). 

Phenology: Flowers late July to the end of October (Spackman et al. 1997).

Hanging gardens with seeps and loose rich soil under overhanging canyon walls (Spackman et al. 1997) surrounded by pinyon-juniper woodlands. Associated taxa include Dodecatheon pulchellum, Calamagrostis scopoulorum, Carex aurea, Epipactis gigantea, Aquilegia micrantha, and Clematis ligusticifolia. 

Elevation Range: 5,216 - 5,886 feet (1,590 - 1,794 meters)

Colorado endemic: No
Global range: Regional endemic with a global range in an area between 16,500-250,000 square km (John Spence 2012). Occurs in NE Arizona (Navajo Nation), SE Utah and SW Colorado, on canyon walls in Badlands.
State range: Known from Moffat County in Colorado; the only records are from Dinosaur National Monument. The estimated range in Colorado is 6 square kilometers (2 square miles), calculated in 2008 by the Colorado Natural Heritage Program in GIS by drawing a minimum convex polygon around the known occurrences. Also known from Utah and Arizona.

The primary threat at this time is considered to be hydrologic alteration (Rondeau et al. 2011). It is not known if all of the occurrences are or are not threatened by these activities. The plants occur in hanging garden communities which are dependent on seeps and springs on the cliff faces; diversion of the mesa top springs and streams to other uses would disrupt this hydrologic system. Populations in Colorado do not appear threatened by human impacts.