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Perennial with prostrate creeping and ascending stems to c. 30 cm long, hairy when aerial, glabrous when submerged. Lvs petiolate, sometimes shortly so; lamina of vegetative shoots usually 0.6-2 × 0.4-1 cm, ovate, elliptic to suborbicular, not rugose, entire or sparingly and shallowly toothed, usually glabrous when submerged, hairy and densely dotted with glands when aerial; base attenuate to rounded; apex rounded to acute. Lvs subtending the axillary verticels similar, but often smaller, hairy. Verticels axillary, spaced, with densely packed, shortly pedicellate fls. Calyx c. 3 mm long, campanulate, purple, hairy and dotted with glands outside, with prominent white hairy tuft in throat; teeth ± forming 2 lips, acuminate, ciliate, < tube at anthesis. Corolla 4-6 mm long, mauve, hairy outside, well exserted. Stamens usually exserted at anthesis. Nutlets 0.5-0.6 mm long, bluntly angled, oblong.
A herb. It grows 20-30 cm high and spreads 50 cm wide. It has stolons or runners with scale like leaves. The stems curve upwards and can be trailing. They are 15-30 cm long. They are tinged purple. There are lines along them and there are many branches. The flower spikes have 10-30 flowers and are round. Flowers are red, purple or white.
A usually densely velvety native of Europe, is rarely adventive with us. It has smaller lvs (commonly 1–2.5 cm) with only 2–3 pairs of lateral veins, those of the infl often somewhat reduced; it differs from all our other spp. in having the cal hairy in the throat and with distinctly unequal teeth.
