Perennial; stems numerous, often much branched, slender and weak, tending to scramble on other plants, retrorse-scabrous on the angles or sometimes essentially glabrous, not evidently bearded at the nodes, mostly in 4’s, rarely some in 5’s or 6’s, linear to narrowly elliptic, blunt, 1-nerved, 5–20 mm, often spreading-scabrous on the margins and sometimes also on the midrib beneath, otherwise glabrous; peduncles numerous, axillary or terminal, commonly 1–3 together on short axillary branches, ± elongate and flexuous, often over 1 cm, each 1(2)-fld; cor whitish, 1–1.5(–1.8) mm wide, 3-parted, the lobes about as wide as or wider than long; fr glabrous, the segments divergent and nearly distinct at maturity, each 1–1.75 mm thick; 2n=24. Moist places at various altitudes; circumpolar, in Amer. s. to N.Y., Pa., Ill., Nebr., and Calif. June–Aug. (G. brevipes; G. brandegei, misapplied) Ours is the circumboreal (but scarcely cordilleran) var. trifidum.
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