Shrubs. Stems ascending or spreading, (sparingly branched); young twigs glaucous (bud scales glaucous). Leaves persistent; blade linear to narrowly elliptic or oblong, coriaceous, margins entire, revolute (often completely so), abaxial surface glabrous or densely hairy (hairs fine, erect); venation reticulodromous. Inflorescences terminal, umbelliform corymbs, 2-8-flowered, sometimes flowers solitary, (produced on previous year´s growth); (bracts glaucous). Flowers: sepals 5, connate for ca. 13 their lengths, dentate-triangular; petals 5, connate for nearly their entire lengths, pink, corolla globose-urceolate, lobes much shorter than tube; stamens 10, included; filaments straight, flattened, hairy, without spurs; anthers with 2 awns (awns solid, slender, ascending awns bent at an angle to anthers and curved-ascending), dehiscent by apical pores; pistil 5-carpellate; ovary 5-locular; stigma subcapitate. Fruits capsular, 5-valved, (with unthickened sutures), obovoid to subglobose, dry. Seeds 25-35, ovoid or ellipsoid; testa multilayered. x = 12.

Fls 5-merous; cal saucer-shaped, deeply lobed; cor urceolate, the broad, short lobes spreading or recurved; stamens half as long as the cor-tube; filaments narrowly triangular, pubescent; anthers ovate, opening by 2 terminal pores, each pollen-sac tipped with a slender, outwardly divergent spur; ovary 5-locular, depressed-globose; style columnar, about equaling the cor-tube; stigma subcapitate; capsule loculicidal, globose or nearly so; low shrubs with alternate, evergreen, narrow lvs conspicuously whitened beneath when young, the fls small, white or pink, in terminal, umbelliform corymbs. 2, circumboreal.

Gleason, Henry A. & Cronquist, Arthur J. 1991. Manual of vascular plants of northeastern United States and adjacent Canada. lxxv + 910 pp.

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