Shrubs or trees with simple, opposite, verticillate or alternate leaves, usually entire; flowers in cymes, heads, or rarely solitary; sepals and petals 4 or 5, stamens as many as the petals or more numerous and inserted with them; fruit a drupe.
Smooth, herbaceous from a nearly horizontal rootstock, woody only at the base; flowering stems, erect, scaly, 5—7 inches high. Leaves verticillate at the summit of the stem or sometimes 1 or 2 pairs of opposite ones below, sessile, oval, ovate or obovate, smooth or minutely appressed, pubescent, acute at each end or sometimes rounded at the base, entire, 1—3 inches long. Flowers small, capitate, purple, surrounded by a white involucre of 4—6 petaloid-ovate bracts, ⅓—¾ of an inch long; stamens alternate with the petals; styles exserted, deep purple; fruit globose, ⅓ of an inch in diameter in a close head; bright red.
Common throughout the region in moist woods flowering in early summer.
Shrub 3—16 feet high, usually stoloniferous, the twigs smooth and bright reddish-purple or the youngest finely hairy. Leaves slender-petioled, ovate, ovate-lanceolate or oval, acute or short acuminate, rounded or narrowed at the base, finely close-hairy above, white or whitish and sparingly hairy beneath or sometimes smooth on both surfaces, 1—5 inches long. Flowers in flat-topped cymes, 1—2 inches broad, petals white, less than ¼ of an inch long; berries white or whitish.
In moist places and along streams and river banks throughout the region; an attractive shrub, sometimes forming thickets of considerable size, the red stems contrasting beautifully with the dark green leaves; flowering in June.