Stellaria palustris

Plants perennial, with slender creeping rhizomes. Stems strag-gling, with erect branches, smoothly 4-angled, (20-)30-60 cm, glabrous. Leaves sessile; blade linear-lanceolate, 1.5-5 cm × 1-4 mm, base cuneate, margins smooth, apex acute, glabrous, usually glaucous. Inflorescences terminal, (1-)2-21-flowered cymes; bracts narrowly lanceolate, 2-7 mm, herbaceous or scarious with green midrib, not ciliate. Pedicels ascending, 30-100 mm, glabrous. Flowers 12-18 mm diam.; sepals 5, distinctly 3-veined, lanceolate, 6-8 mm, margins wide, scarious, apex acute, glabrous; petals 5, 7-10 mm, 1.5-2 times as long as sepals; stamens 10; styles 3, erect, 5-7 mm; stigmas club-shaped. Capsules green to straw colored, ovoid-oblong, 8-10 mm, ± equaling sepals, apex acute, opening by 6 valves; carpophore absent. Seeds dark reddish brown, round, 1.2-1.4 mm diam., tuberculate; tubercles shallow, round. 2n = 130-188 (Europe), ca. 198.

Flowering early summer. Hayfields and pastures subject to seasonal flooding; 0-20 m; introduced; Que.; Europe.

Stellaria palustris is found along the Saint Lawrence estuary.

Much like no. 4 [Stellaria holostea L.], but less robust and wholly glabrous, the lvs 1.5-4 cm נ1.5-4 mm; bracts scarious; sep narrowly lanceolate, 5-8 mm, distinctly 3-veined, shorter than the pet, these bifid almost to the base; seeds 1.4-1.6 mm, coarsely rugose-tuberculate; 2n=ca 130. Native of Europe, established in grassy places and along shores locally in Que. (S. glauca)

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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