General:
Deciduous, erect to straggly shrub, 0.5-5 m tall; young twigs 4-angled, greenish, glabrous; older stems with yellowish-grey, shredding bark.

Leaves:
Opposite, short-stalked, elliptic to oblanceolate or broadly lanceolate, 3-16 cm long, 2-8 cm wide, entire, rounded or tapered at base, abruptly sharp-pointed at tip, pale and glabrous or somewhat hairy beneath.

Flowers:
Inflorescence of short-stalked pairs of flowers cupped by large (2 - 4 cm across) involucres of 2 pairs of fused bracts, on 1-4 cm long stalks in leaf axils; corollas tubular bell-shaped, yellow, 1-2 cm long, glandular hairy on outside, scarcely 2-lipped with 5 roughly equal lobes above; corolla tubes with short thick spurs at bases.

Fruits:
Berries, shiny black, 0.8-1.2 cm across, paired, loosely surrounded while young by paired bracts, which darken and redden (to purplish-maroon) as they recurve from the maturing fruits.

Source:  The Illustrated Flora of British Columbia