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General:
Evergreen, creeping, semiwoody herb or subshrub; stems long, slender, weakly rooting, thinly hairy and often also glandular, producing numerous short (less than 10 cm tall), more or less erect, leafy stems or branchlets with 2-4 pairs of leaves.
Leaves:
Opposite, simple, short-stalked, egg-shaped to nearly circular, with a few shallow teeth along the upper half, 7-25 mm long, 5-15 mm wide, leathery, dark green above, paler below, glabrous or the stalks and margins of the leaf bases often fringed with long hairs.
Flowers:
Inflorescence of nodding pairs of flowers on slender, erect, Y-shaped stalks that terminate the leafy branchlets; base of flowers cradled by two tiny bracts; corollas slenderly funnel-shaped, 9-16 mm long, pink to whitish, flaring above to 5 lobes, hairy in the throat; styles about as long as corollas, with a tiny knoblike stigma; stamens 4.
Fruits:
Dry 1-seeded achenes (nutlets), flanked by a pair of tiny glandular bracts.
Notes:
Two subspecies occur in BC:
1. Corollas 9-11 mm long, narrowly bell-shaped, flaring from within the calyces, tubes very short or sometimes absent................... ssp. borealis
1. Corollas 10-16 mm long, funnel-shaped, tubes about equalling or surpassing the calyces...................ssp. longiflora (Torr.) Hult.
Source: The Illustrated Flora of British Columbia
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