The waxy, exquisitely sweet-scented flowers are white to pale pink, the pink intensifying with age. The small, crowded clusters are borne in the axils of the leaves and at the tips of the stems and often are hidden from view by the leaves, especially early in the season. The tubular corolla is up to a half-inch or so long and nearly as wide at the mouth, where it expands into 5 spreading lobes. The inside of the tube is very hairy. The species is dioecious, having the sexes segregated on different plants.
Ants then disperse the seeds.
Many authorities, including VNPS founder Mary Painter, caution that trailing-arbutus is almost impossible to cultivate by any means, and native plant gardeners should not attempt to grow it. Attempts to transplant it will almost certainly fail and, in the process, result in the further destruction of the species in the wild. It is native throughout eastern North America, from Labrador to Manitoba and south to Florida and Mississippi. Despite its wide range, however, it seldom is common and usually is rare, localized by its specialized ecology. In the Washington, DC, area its average date of first blooming is April 5.