Alpine.  Meadows, tundra.  Summer. 
Cinnamon Pass, August 1, 2007.

Draba breweri variety cana grows from four to ten inches tall from a loose mat of leaves and few to many stems.  The specimen shown is about seven inches tall and unusually dense and luxurious.  Petals are just two or three millimeters long and seed pods (siliques) are vertical, hairy, and up to nine millimeters long.

In the Four Corners area, the plant is found just in Colorado and New Mexico, but not in any counties immediately adjacent to the Four Corners.  It is also found in several counties in most western states, even in California where the original D. breweri specimen was collected by William Brewer, botanist to the Whitney Expedition, on Mount Dana in 1863.  That plant was named D. breweri by Sereno Watson in 1888.  The variety found in the Four Corners area, D. breweri variety cana was named by Rollins who was renaming D. cana, a name given by Rydberg in 1902.

There has been, and continues to be, disagreement about the name and characteristics of this plant: the name D. lanceolata, given by Royle in 1839 to a Eurasian species, was misapplied to this plant throughout the 19th and much of the 20th century (see Harrington's Manual of the Plants of Colorado).  D. cana,  given by Rydberg in 1902, is accepted today by Welsh of A Utah Flora, but is rejected by other botanists (Weber and Kartesz). 
D. breweri, accepted by Intermountain Flora, is considered by Weber and Kartesz to be a plant found only in California, where it was first found by Brewer.

Disagreements arise over the plant's characteristics: it is variously described as up to 9, 25, and 35 centimeters tall; growing in clumps, growing in open clumps, and not growing in clumps.  The same wide variety of detail is found in the number of stem leaves, length of the seed pod, etc.

The species is apparently also found in the upper mid-west and east, where, in Maine, it is considered rare and endangered.

Alpine.  Meadows, tundra.  Summer. 
Cinnamon Pass, August 1, 2007.