Northeast Wetland Flora
Field Office Guide to Plant Species
Epilobium angustifolium L.
- Family: Evening-primrose (Onagraceae)
- Flowering: June-September
- Field Marks: This species is distinguished by its large, purple, 4-parted flowers and its 4 lobed stigmas.
- Habitat: Moist soils, often invading rapidly after a fire.
- Habit: Perennial herb from a thickened crown.
- Stems: Upright, sometimes branched, smooth, up to 7 feet tall.
- Leaves: Alternate, crowded, simple, lanceolate, pointed at the tip, tapering to the nearly sessile base, green on the upper surface, paler on the lower surface, smooth, without teeth, up to 8 inches long.
- Flowers: Several in racemes, purple, rarely white, nearly 1 inch long, subtended by scale-like to leaf-like bracts.
- Sepals: 4, green, united to form a tube, the lobes lanceolate, pointed at the tip.
- Petals: 4, purple, free from each other, 1/2-1 inch long, not notched at the tip, clawed at the base, somewhat unequal in size.
- Stamens: 8.
- Pistils: Ovary inferior, elongated; stigma 4-lobed.
- Fruits: Capsules cylindrical, up to 3 1/2 inches long, gray-hairy; seeds many, oblongoid, about 1/18 inch long.
- Notes: This is one of the first species to come in after a fire.
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