General: Dwarf shrubs, 3-25 (50) cm tall, layering; branches decumbent, trailing or ascending, flexible at base, sometimes strongly glaucous; twigs yellow-brown to violet, smooth.
Leaves: Alternate, simple, narrowly to broadly elliptic or narrowly to broadly egg-shaped, 1-8.5 cm long, 0.5-6 cm wide, lower surface glaucous, sparsely long soft-hairy or with a silky beard at tip, hairs white, upper surface shiny or dull, smooth or sparsely long soft-hairy near margin, margins entire, bases and tips pointed to rounded; leaf stalks without glandular dots at top; stipules absent, rudimentary, or, if leaflike, soon deciduous.
Fruits: Capsules which split open to release the seeds, each of which is surrounded by a tuft of hairs; stalks 0.2-1.6 mm long.
Notes: The southern Rocky Mountain species, S. petrophila Rydb. has been segregated out of S. arctica in this treatment.
Mesic to dry meadows, slopes, ridges, heath and thickets in the subalpine and alpine zones; common to infrequent in mountains of BC except the Queen Charlotte Islands; circumpolar, N to AK, YT and NT, E to NF, S to MT, ID and OR; N 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)
