It is five or six feet high with slender branches, glossy foliage, and abundance of blue flowers in close, showy panicles.

Two species, C.
prostrates and C.procumbens, spread smooth, blue-flowered mats and rugs beneath the pines, and offer fine beds to tired mountaineers.

The commonest species, C.cordulatus, is most common in the silver-fir woods.

It is white-flowered and thorny, and makes dense thickets of tangled chaparral, difficult to wade through or to walk over.

But it is pressed flat every winter by ten or fifteen feet of snow.