Flowering spring-early summer. Dry, open places, sandy and gravelly ground, roadsides, waste land; 0-2000 m; introduced; B.C., N.B., N.S., Ont., P.E.I.; Ala., Alaska, Ariz., Calif., Fla., Idaho, La., Maine, Mass., Miss., Mo., N.H., N.Y., N.C., Oreg., Pa., R.I., S.C., Tex., Wash.; Europe; introduced worldwide.

Annual 1-4 dm, conspicuously hirsute (or the lvs merely puberulent), and glandular above; basal lvs few, oblanceolate to spatulate, the cauline narrower, 1.5-4 cm נ2-8(-15) mm; fls ±erect, in a leafy-bracteate, raceme-like, secund monochasial cyme; cal 6-9 mm and tubular at anthesis, later inflated but scarcely accrescent, 10-nerved, glandular and hairy; pet white to pink, slightly longer than the cal, entire or sometimes slightly toothed, the appendages linear and entire; carpophore to 1 mm; fr 3-locular except at the tip; seeds 1 mm wide, finely corrugate-rugose; 2n=24. Native of Eurasia, occasionally intr. in our range. Apr-July. (S. quinquevulnera, with a crimson spot on the pet; S. anglica, misapplied)

Gleason, Henry A. & Cronquist, Arthur J. 1991. Manual of vascular plants of northeastern United States and adjacent Canada. lxxv + 910 pp.

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