Color, deep crimson, nearly scarlet. Flowers, borne on slender peduncles, a few in a loose cyme. Stent, 1 to 2 feet high. Petals, 2-cleft, oblong. Calyx, bell-shaped, somewhat swollen in fruit, with thin, dry, membranaceous teeth, viscid. Leaves, those above opposite, long, narrow; those at base spatulate, broad at apex, tapering into broad petioles, 3 to 5 feet long. Flowers, in loose, cymose panicles. May to September.

Dry, open woods, New Jersey and western New York to Minnesota and southward.