Plants 5-80 cm, (without multicellular hairs); rootstocks creeping, ± horizontal. Leaf blades white-glaucous or, sometimes, green abaxially, (1-)2-5 cm × 1-8 mm. Pedicels erect or recurved, reddish or pale-glaucous, 6-20 mm. Flowers: sepals valvate in bud, soon wide-spreading, whitish to reddish, especially marginally, 1-1.7 mm, apex blunt to acute, calyx saucer-shaped, without stomata; petals short-spreading or recurved, hairy adaxially, minutely papillate on margins, corolla 5-8 × 3.5-7 mm, without stomata; nectariferous tissue at ovary base; ovary depressed-globose; placentae attached next to summit of columella; style ± equaling corolla tube. Capsules 5-locular, 4-8 × 4-5 mm, deeply depressed apically obscuring style base, conspicuously glaucous when young, glabrous or hairy at base. Seeds brown, ca. 1 mm; testa smooth, lustrous. 2n = 48.
Bogs, rarely on wet heaths, at altitudes up to 500 metres. Rare and decreasing in the south of Britain. Sphagnum peat bogs, acid swamps, margins of pools throughout boreal forest and arctic; at elevations to 1,500 metres.
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