Russia Flora: Plant: Low shrub with creeping, rooting branches. Leaves: Leaf blade broadly ovate to orbicular, sometimes elliptic, 4-20(25) mm long and 3-12(15) mm wide, apex acute or callose-mucronate, base cuneate, coriaceous, evergreen, upper surface dark green, lower surface lighter, both surfaces ± appressed-pilose and scattered-glandular especially along veins, sometimes almost glabrous on both sides. Petiole 1-4 mm long. Flowers: Pedicels filiform, 7-18(20) mm long. Calyx with narrow-lanceolate lobes, 2-2.5 mm long. Corolla 7-10 mm long, subactinomorphic or slightly zygomorphic, pale pink or white, rarely intensely pink. Fruit: 3 mm long, fragrant. Chromosome number: 2n=32 (Zhukova, Tikhonova, 1971). Flowering in June-August.

Distribution: Chukotka (western, eastern, southern), Anadyr-Penzhina, Koryak, Kolyma, Okhotsk, Aldan, Nyukzha, Dauria, Kamchatka, Commander Islands, Northern Sakhalin, Northern Kurils, Upper Zeya, Lower Zeya, Bureya, Amgun, Ussuri, Southern Sakhalin, Southern Kurils (Fig. 97). Found in upper belts of mixed coniferous-broadleaved forests, in belts of spruce-fir and stone birch forests, in Siberian dwarf pine belt, in subalpine and alpine belts, in mountain and plain tundras in the north.

Notes: Elegant plant, can be used for creating rock gardens as ground cover; honey plant.

General distribution: European part, Caucasus, Western and Eastern Siberia, Central Asia (mountains in north); Atlantic and Central Europe, Mediterranean (mountains in north), Mongolia, Japanese-Chinese (North and Northeast China, Korean Peninsula, Japan). Described from Europe and Siberia.

Note: Widely variable in many morphological characteristics, however, we consider it impractical to distinguish any infraspecific taxa in Far Eastern material.