General: Deciduous shrub, loosely branched, 0.5-1 m tall; stems spreading, finely hairy and usually with 3, slender, 7-12 mm long, nodal spines; bark brownish at first, turning deep greyish-red.
Leaves: Alternate, egg-shaped, shallowly heart-shaped at the base, 1.5-2.5 cm wide, 3-5-lobed less than half their length, the lobes rounded, shallowly cleft and deeply toothed, sparsely hairy or glabrous on the upper surface, more or less hairy and glandular below; stalks equal to or slightly shorter than the blades, glabrous.
Flowers: Inflorescence of 1-2 flowers in a drooping raceme on stalks shorter than the leaves; flower stalks 1.5-2 mm long, not jointed below the flowers, densely bristly-glandular; petals white or pinkish, broadly fan-shaped, usually inrolled on the edges, 4-6 mm long; hypanthium narrowly bell-shaped, 3.5-5.5 mm long; calyces red, the lobes 10-13 mm long, narrowly oblong, pointed, hairy; styles glabrous, fused to just below or just above the middle, about equaling the stamens.
Fruits: Berries, round to elliptic, reddish-brown, 12-15 mm long, coarsely bristly-glandular.
Mesic to dry streambanks, rock outcrops, open woodlands and forests in the lowland and montane zones; locally frequent on S Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands; S to CA.
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-intolerant, submontane to subalpine, Western North American deciduous shrub distributed more in the Pacific than the Cordilleran region. Species occurs in maritime to submaritime cool mesothermal climates on very dry to moderately dry, nitrogen-medium soils; their occurrence decreases with increasing elevation, precipitation, and continentality. Sporadic to scattered in early-seral communities and open-canopy Douglas-fir forests on water-shedding sites. Characteristic of moisturedeficient sites.
