Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Compact, erect, many-branched shrubs 3–10 dm tall.

Stems: Stems and branches reddish to black, covered with persistent stipules, densely leafy only toward apex.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades oblong–cuneate, (1.5–)2.5–5 cm long, (0.5–)0.7–1.2(–1.4) cm wide. Apex truncate to sometimes rounded. Upper surfaces green and glabrous to moderately strigose, occasionally more densely so in lines along the veins; lower surfaces densely grayish or silky strigose. Margins entire except apex 3–8-toothed. Usually (3–)4–6-veined. Petioles 0.3–2 cm long. Stipules subulate, ca. 5–6 mm long, strigillose.

Flowers: Flowers 7–30 in compound cymes, forming large corymbose inflorescences that project beyond the leaves. Flowers bisexual (perfect), actinomorphic; pedicels 0.5–1.6(–2) cm long. Calyx of 5 sepals; sepals narrowly lanceolate, 5–9 mm long, densely silky strigose to sparsely villous or merely ciliate, apex mucronate. Petals white or cream, sometimes with purple veins and sometimes purple at base, narrowly obovate, 9–15 mm long. Stamens (5)10; filaments ± connate at base, those alternate with the petals longer than others and with basal glands, staminal filaments usually 9–12 mm long, glands pubescent; 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, 5–6 mm long at anthesis, elongating to 15–28 mm long in fruit, essentially beakless, sometimes narrowed below apex, branches filiform, reflexed; 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. 2–4 mm long; sparsely to densely pubescent. Seeds 1 per cell; dark reddish brown; oblong–obovoid; ca. 1.7–1.9 mm long; the surface inconspicuously reticulate.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Occasional to forming a dominant part of the vegetation in subalpine shrubland and forest; alpine shrubland; and as a pioneer in shrubland on lava in fog swept areas.

Elevation Range: 1,480–3,250 m.