General: Low, densely branched, often matted shrub; stems 15-40 cm tall, inconspicuously angled, greenish-brown, glabrous or minutely hairy.
Leaves: Alternate, deciduous, egg-shaped to oblanceolate, to 3 cm long (sometimes longer), 1/3-1/2 as wide, rounded to pointed at tip, narrowed to base, dull green on upper surface, pale greenish with whitish bloom beneath, margins obscurely to distinctly toothed for the upper 1/2-1/3 of their length, often minutely rolled under.
Flowers: Solitary in leaf axils, nodding; corollas pinkish, globular urn-shaped, 6-7 mm long, less than twice as long as wide; calyces very obscurely lobed, deciduous in fruit; filaments glabrous, shorter than anthers; anthers awned, with slender, terminal tubes.
Fruits: Berries, nearly globe-shaped, 6-8 mm wide, blue to blue-black with a pale grey bloom; very palatable.
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-intolerant, submontane to subalpine, Western North American deciduous shrub distributed more in the Pacific than the Cordilleran region. Occurs in maritime to submaritime subalpine boreal climates on fresh to very moist, nitrogen-poor soils; its occurrence increases with increasing elevation and decreases with increasing continentality. Inhabits late snow-melt sites.
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