Flower:

Clusters of 2 to 6 stalkless, tubular flowers in the leaf axils. Flowers are brownish purple to dull red or lighter pink, ½ to ¾ inch long. Blossoms open up and angle outward mid-tube, ending in 5 round somewhat flaring lobes, with a light green style usually extending out of the tube to about even with the tips of the petal lobes, sometimes shorter, rarely longer. The yellow stamens remain recessed below the lobes. The 5 sepals are long and narrow, purplish in the center and may be longer than the flower. Both sepals and petals have soft velvety hairs, often glandular.

Leaves and stems:

Leaves  are opposite, long and broad, 5 to 10 inches long, 2 to 4 inches wide, broadly oval elliptic, the edges toothless, the surfaces softly hairy, especially on the underside, tapering to a sharp tip and abruptly narrowing at the stalkless base. Leaf pairs are at right angles to the pair below. The stem is unbranched, covered in soft, often glandular hairs usually at least .5millimeters long.

Fruit:

Fruits are round to egg shaped, 1/3 to ½ inch long with the 5 long sepals arrayed from the end. The fleshy coat, turning a bright orange red when ripe, covers 3 large hard seeds in the center (drupe).

Notes:

Early Horse Gentian grows in rich soils of Minnesota's eastern hardwood forest biome. Sharing its habitat is Late Horse Gentian (Triosteum perfoliatum), which is similar in most regards except its leaves are broader at the base, leaf pairs usually connected at the base completely encompassing the stem (perfoliate), and its fruit matures to a orange yellow. Many references note that its style extends conspicuously beyond the petal lobes while in T. aurantiacum the style is even or within the lobes. This is not always reliable however as our own flower images show examples of the style exerted well beyond the lobes. Both are finely hairy throughout but in Late Gentian the hairs are usually .5 mm or less in length and in Early Gentian they are usually 1 mm or more in length. While lore has it that seeds were roasted and used as a coffee substitute, there is little evidence it was widely utilized in this manner and more likely the reputation simply came from the observation that the dried seeds bear a resemblance to coffee beans. Some references list several varieties of T. aurantiacum but these are not recognized in Minnesota.