General: Erect to spreading, straggly shrub; stems 0.5-2 m tall, somewhat skunky odour when crushed, finely hairy, hairs somewhat glandular and rusty-coloured; older branches with loosely shredding bark, often glabrous.
Leaves: Deciduous, alternate, clustered at stem tips, thin, elliptic to broadly egg-shaped, 1-6 cm long, 0.3-2 cm wide, glandular-hairy on both surfaces, pale beneath, margins fine-toothed and fringed; stalks
Flowers: In (1) 2- to 10-flowered clusters, terminal on shoots of previous year; flower stalks 0.7-3.5 cm long, short-hairy to conspicuously glandular-hairy, curved downward in flower, erect in fruit; corollas salmon to greenish-orange, urn-shaped, 4-lobed, 6-9 mm long; calyces saucer-shaped, indistinctly 4-lobed, 1 mm long or less, glandular-hairy along margins; stamens glabrous to sparsely hairy near the base.
Fruits: Capsules, egg-shaped to lance egg-shaped, 5-7 mm long.
Notes: Two infraspecific entities are generally recognized.
1. Leaves pointed, with glandular hairs; calyces glandular-hairy on margins; ovaries glandular-hairy..................ssp. ferruginea
1. Leaves more than pointed, minutely-hairy on both sides, less conspicuously long-hairy above and less glandular below; calyces usually finely hairy as well as glandular hairy on margins; ovaries finely- and glandular-hairy..................ssp. glabella (A. Gray) Calder & Taylor.
Dry to wet forests in the lowland, montane and subalpine zones; common on the coast and in WC to NW BC (ssp. ferruginea) and SE BC (ssp. glabella); N to AK and S YT, and S to N CA (ssp. ferruginea), E to W AB, and S to WY, E WA, and OR (ssp. glabella).
The table below shows the species-specific information calculated from original data (BEC database) provided by the BC Ministry of Forests and Range. (Updated August, 2013)
A shade-tolerant/intolerant, submontane to subalpine, Western North American deciduous shrub distributed equally in the Pacific and Cordilleran regions, and marginally in the Central region. Occurs on moderately dry to fresh, nitrogen-poor soils within boreal, cool temperate, and cool mesothermal climates; its occurrence increases with increasing precipitation. Scattered to plentiful in coniferous forests on water-shedding sites; with acid forest floors. On nutrient-rich sites, restricted to decaying coniferous wood. Typically associated with Hylocomium splendens, Rhytidiadelphus loreus, Rhytidiopsis robusta, Vaccinium species. An oxylophytic species characteristic of Mor humus forms
