General: Low, mat-forming shrub; stems decumbent or ascending, 5-25 cm long, rounded or slightly angled, minutely hairy.
Leaves: Alternate, evergreen, leathery, narrowly elliptic to egg-shaped, 6-15 mm long, 2-9 mm wide, rounded to shallowly notched at tips, shiny green above, pale with brownish or black stalked glands beneath, margins entire to slightly toothed, somewhat rolled under; nearly unstalked.
Flowers: One to several in short, terminal clusters; flower stalks with 1-2 bracts below the flower, glandular; corollas pinkish, bell-shaped, 4-6 mm long, 4-lobed to the middle; calyces deeply lobed, the lobes persistent in fruit; filaments hairy; anthers awnless, prolonged into long tubes.
Fruits: Berries, globe-shaped, 6-10 mm wide, bright red; edible but rather acid.
Wet to dry forests, and bogs and tundra from lowland to alpine zones; common in N BC, infrequent along the coast, rare in SE BC; circumboreal, N to AK, YT, and NT, E to NF and S to N MN and NH; 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)
