It grows in mossy swamps and shrubby grasslands.
Inflorescences are terminal umbel-like cymes with 3-7 flowers, and flower buds lack scales. Flower stalks are 1-2.5 mm long, densely covered with scales. Sepals are small, 0.8-1 mm long, reddish, with 5 ovate to rounded lobes, covered with light-colored scales and sparse cilia along the edges. Corollas are small, funnel-shaped, 4.5-6.8 mm long, pale purple, with a 2-2.8 mm long tube, outer surface scaleless and hairless inside except for sparse short hairs. Stamens (4)5(-7), unequal in length, about 4 mm long, slightly shorter than the corolla, with hairless filaments. Ovary is about 1 mm long, densely covered with light-colored scales, and the style is about 2 mm long, slightly shorter than the stamens, and hairless.
It fruits in June.
It is an evergreen dwarf shrub, approximately 30 cm tall, with slender branches densely covered with grayish scales. Leaf buds are scale-like and shed. Leaves are usually clustered at the tips of branches, narrowly elliptic, oblong, or lanceolate, 6-12 mm long and 2.5-5 mm wide, blunt or rounded at the tip, with short pointed tips, and blunt or wedge-shaped bases. Upper leaf surfaces are dark grayish-green, covered with adjacent light-colored scales, while lower surfaces are light yellow and densely covered with overlapping light yellow-brown scales. Leaf stalks are 1-1.5 mm long, covered with light-colored scales, and hairless.