General: Small annual or perennial herb, 2-10 cm tall, from fibrous roots, usually with stolons rooting at the nodes and forming secondary plantlets, often submerged.
Leaves: All basal in a tuft, long-stalked, the blades oblong to narrowly elliptic, 1-3 cm long, narrowing to slender stalks 1-8 cm long, entire, smooth.
Flowers: Inflorescence of several to many, solitary flowers atop 8- to 30-mm long, naked stalks arising from the axils of the tufted leaves; corollas white or pinkish, with a bell-shaped, 2-mm long tube spreading to 5 lance-oblong lobes about 1 mm long; calyces green with purplish spots, bell-shaped, 2-3 mm long, 5-lobed, the lobes broadly triangular, shorter than the tube; stamens 4.
Fruits: Capsules, broadly egg-shaped, 2-3.5 mm long, the fruiting stalks spreading; seeds numerous, finely cross-corrugated.
Wet muddy shores of lakes, ponds and streams, and shallow water in the lowland, steppe and montane zones; infrequent throughout BC south of 57degreeN, absent from the Queen Charlotte Islands; circumpolar, N to AK, YT and NT, E to Labr. and S to MN, NE, NM, AZ and CA; Iceland, Eurasia.
