Parnassia

PLANTS: glabrous. CAUDEX: without scales or bulblets. LEAVES: all basal; blades ovate, the margin entire. INFLORESCENCE: 1-flowered scapes with 1 leaf-like, sessile bract. FLOWERS: actinomorphic; hypanthium minute, free of ovary; sepals green, almost free, erect to spreading; petals entire in ours, white; stamens 5; staminodia in 5 clusters alternating with the stamens; ovary superior; locule 1; placentae 4, parietal; stigmas 4, more or less sessile. FRUITS: 4-valved. SEEDS: winged NOTES: 25 spp.; n temperate, arctic, alpine regions. (For Mount Parnassus, Greece). REFERENCES: Elvander, Patrick. 1992. Saxifragaceae. Ariz.-Nev. Acad. Sci. 26(1)2.

Fls perfect; hypanthium short; sep, pet, and stamens each 5; staminodia 5, opposite the pet, each consisting of 3 or more sterile stamens ±connate at base and separate above, their anthers reduced to glands; ovary superior or partly inferior, unilocular; ovules numerous on 4 parietal placentas; stigmas 4, nearly sessile, commissural; capsule 4-valved, loculicidal; seeds numerous, oblong, angular, cellular-reticulate; glabrous perennial herbs, the lvs entire, palmately veined, mostly long-petioled in a basal rosette, or a single sessile one on the erect, 1-fld scape; fls erect, the pet white, conspicuously veined. 50, N. Temp.

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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