General: Deciduous woody vine, twining, trailing or climbing, sometimes to 6 m high, widely branching; twigs hollow, glabrous, glaucous when young.
Leaves: Opposite, short-stalked to nearly stalked, elliptic to oval, 4-10 cm long, 2.5-5 cm wide, entire, rounded to pointed at tip, glabrous except for a fringe of long hairs along the edges, glaucous beneath; end pair on each flowering twig joined to form a disk around the stem below the inflorescence.
Flowers: Inflorescence a tight, headlike cluster of flowers on very short stalks in what looks like a whorl, above the disk leaves at branch ends; corollas orange-yellow to red, 2.5-4 cm long, the tubes densely hairy within, bulging on one side at the base, 3-4 times as long as the weakly 2-lipped limbs; upper lips 4-lobed, lower lips narrow, 1-lobed.
Fruits: Berries, clustered, to 1 cm thick, orange-red, translucent, several-seeded.
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)
Shade-tolerant/intolerant, submontane to montane. Western North American shrub (vine) distributed more in the Pacific than the Cordilleran regions. Species occurs in cool temperate and cool mesothermal climates on very dry to moderately dry, nitrogenÂmedium soils. Sporadic on water-shedding sites; climbs up shrubs and trees in openÂcanopy Douglas-fir forests. Characteristic of moisture-deficient sites.
