Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Decumbent subshrubs.

Stems: Stems dark reddish brown to nearly black, slender, 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 elliptic to elliptic–cuneate, 1.5–2.6 cm long, 0.9–1.5 cm wide. Apex truncate to rounded. Upper surfaces pubescent on veins; lower surfaces densely grayish silky strigose. Margins entire except apex 5–7-toothed. Usually 5–7-veined. Petioles 0.3–0.4 cm long. Stipules subulate, 6–7 mm long, strigillose.

Flowers: Flowers usually 3–4 in terminal cymes that project beyond the leaves; peduncles and pedicels slender, pedicels subtended by narrow bracts. Flowers bisexual (perfect), actinomorphic; pedicels 0.7–1 cm long. Calyx of 5 sepals, oblong to elliptic–oblong, 5–9 mm long, densely silky strigose, 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 or obovate, 10–15 mm long, distinct, nectary glands alternate with the petals. Stamens (5)10; filaments ± connate at base, usually 7–9 mm long, 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, 4–5 mm long at anthesis, elongating to 18–23 mm long in fruit, the apical beak thick and fleshy, ca. 1 mm long, branches reflexed, 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; carpel bodies ca. 3 mm long; densely pubescent. Seeds 1 per cell; dark reddish brown; oblong–obovoid; ca. 2.5 mm long; the surface conspicuously reticulate; endosperm usually scanty or absent; rarely copious and oily.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Rare in bogs.

Elevation Range: 1,490–1,770 m.