Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Decumbent subshrubs.

Stems: Stems reddish brown, slender, often rooting at the nodes, growing embedded in moss mats or other bog plants, often rooting at the nodes, 5–10 dm long, branches covered with persistent stipules, leafy only at ends.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades oblong to oblong–cuneate, 1.1–2.9 cm long, 0.4–0.8 cm wide. Apex truncate to rounded. Upper surfaces glabrous; lower surfaces densely silky strigose. Margins entire except apex (3)4–5-toothed. (3)4–5-veined. Petioles 0.4–1.1 cm long. Stipules subulate, 3–5 mm long, strigillose.

Flowers: Flowers usually 3–4 in terminal cymes that project beyond the leaves; peduncles and pedicels slender. Flowers bisexual (perfect), actinomorphic; pedicels 10–32 mm long, pedicels subtended by narrow bracts. Calyx of 5 sepals, oblong to elliptic–oblong, 5–9 mm long, densely silky strigillose, inner ones with scarious margins, apex mucronate, distinct or sometimes connate at base, rarely forming a tube. Corolla of 5 petals, white, apparently always with purple veins, narrowly obovate, 9–16 mm long, distinct, nectary glands alternate with the petals. Stamens (5)10; staminal filaments 4.5–5.5 mm long, ± connate at base, those alternate with the petals longer than others and with basal glands; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary superior or nearly so, 5-celled, carpels connate around a central column to form a compound ovary with as many cells, fertile portion a lobed ring at base of stylar column, placentation axile; ovules 2 per cell, anatropous to campylotropous, usually pendulous; styles 3–5, 3–4 mm long at anthesis, elongating up to at least 16 mm long in fruit, slender and beak-like, sometimes narrowed below apex; stigmas slender and dry, rarely capitate.

Fruit: Septicidal and elastically dehiscent capsules separating into as many segments as carpels; a portion of the style splitting off from remainder of stylar column and forming an awn that recurves upward from the persistent central column; usually remaining attached to apex; sometimes the awn also becomes spirally coiled; awn usually hygroscopic; immature carpel bodies ca.2–7 mm long; densely pubescent. Seeds unknown.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Rare; in bogs.

Elevation Range: 1,220–1,250 m.