General: Perennial herb from an extensive slender rhizome; often forming loosely matted patches with many sterile as well as floriferous stems; stems decumbent to erect, several, usually branching, short rough-hairy, 3- or often 4-angled, 5-25 cm long.
Leaves: Basal leaves lacking; stem leaves opposite, numerous, linear-elliptic to lanceolate, abruptly sharp-pointed, 2-5 cm long, 2-12 mm wide, essentially glabrous; stipules lacking.
Flowers: Inflorescence of 2-5, rarely solitary, flowers in a slender, pedunculate, terminal and lateral, minutely bracted cluster; petals 5, oblong, blunt, white, 2-10 mm long; sepals 5, 2.5-6 mm long, narrowly egg-shaped, abruptly sharp-pointed or long-pointed, usually whiskery.
Fruits: Capsules globose-egg-shaped, 3-5 mm long, 6-valved; seeds few, smooth, with a prominent fleshy appendage.
Moist to dry forests and rocky slopes in the lowland, steppe and montane zones; common in extreme S BC, rare northward to 55degreeN; N to NT, E to PQ and S to NM and CA.
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 montane, Asian and transcontinental North American forb. Occurs in cool temperate and cool mesothermal climates on moderately dry to fresh, nitrogen-rich soils; its occurrence increases with increasing summer temperature and decreases with increasing latitude. Scattered in semiopen Douglas-fir forests on water-shedding sites. A nitrophytic species characteristic of Moder and Mull humus forms.
