About Harrimanella hypnoides (L.) Coville
Harrimanella is a genus of flowering plants in the heath family Ericaceae, which contains only one species: Harrimanella hypnoides (L.) Coville. This species is also commonly called moss bell heather or moss heather.
H. hypnoides is a cold-hardy dicot perennial. It forms moss-like cushions that grow about 5 centimetres (2 inches) high. These cushions often form from prostrate stems with ascending shoot tips. Its leaves are scale-like and closely resemble moss leaves. The bell-shaped flowers grow singly on short reddish pedicels; they are conspicuous white, with five fused petals and five sepals. Its fruit is an erect capsule.
Carl Linnaeus originally named this species Cassiope hypnoides in his 1737 work Flora Lapponica. Harrimanella hypnoides is the currently accepted name for this species in the Integrated Taxonomic Information System. The specific epithet hypnoides means "like Hypnum", which is a genus of mosses.
This plant grows in rock crevices across its known range: the Canadian arctic, Quebec, the Northeastern United States, Greenland, Iceland, the mountains of Norway, Sweden and Finland, Svalbard, and arctic Russia including the Ural Mountains.
