Japan Flora: Small evergreen herb with slender, long-creeping rhizomes; stems erect, slender, 5-15 cm. long, 4-angled, glabrous to sparsely appressed-pilose, usually nnbranched; flowering stems with a pair of terminal leaves and with few smaller axillary leaves, thus appearing 6-leaved at the top of stem; leaves subsessile, narrowly obovate to rhombic-elliptic, 3-6 cm. long, 1-2.5 cm. wide, acute at both ends or acuminate at the base, appressed- pilose on both sides or only on upper surface, sometimes nearly glabrous on both sides, the lateral nerves rising near the base, of 2 or 3 pairs; peduncles erect, 1.5-3 cm. long; involucral bracts 4, broadly ovate, 7-10 mm. long, acute, white, persistent, 5- to 7-nerved; flowers 10-25, short-pedicelled; petals reflexed, about 1.5 mm. long, lanceolate-deltoid; petals usually white; ovary densely appressed-hairy; frnit globose, red, 5-6 mm. across, appressed-pilose; stones oblong, shallowly grooved. Jnne-July. Coniferous woods;

Hokkaido, Honshu (centr. distr. and northw.), Shikoku (alpine); common.  Amur, Sakhalin, Kuriles, Kamchatka, Korea, and N. America.