General: Perennial amphibious herb from a shallow creeping rhizome, smooth throughout or sometimes fine-hairy; stems decumbent to ascending, 10-40 cm long/tall, rooting at the lower nodes, simple to much-branched at the base, somewhat fleshy, often purple-tinged.
Leaves: Opposite, unstalked, linear to narrowly lanceolate, 2-4 (8) cm long, 4-20 times as long as wide, entire or remotely few-toothed, often purple-tinged.
Flowers: Inflorescences several long, open, lax, stalked racemes arising from the axils of upper leaves, the racemes of 5 to 20 stalked flowers, the thread-like flower stalks spreading at maturity, 6-17 mm long, much longer than the reduced, linear bracts; corollas blue or white with purple lines, saucer-shaped, 6-10 mm across, irregularly 4-lobed, the lobes much longer than the short tube, the lowest lobe narrower than the others; calyces about 3 mm long, deeply 4-lobed, the lobes more or less equal, egg-shaped; styles 2-4 mm long, exserted; stamens 2.
Fruits: Capsules, 2.5-4 mm long, distinctly wider than long, flattened, broadly notched at the tip; seeds 5 to 9 per chamber, 1.2-1.8 mm long.
Swamps, fens, marshes, wet meadows and edges of streams and lakes in the lowland, steppe and montane zones; infrequent throughout BC; N to AK, YT and NT, E to NF and S to NH, PA, NC, TN, LA, CO, ID, NV and CA; Eurasia.
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)