Northeast Wetland Flora
Field Office Guide to Plant Species
Epilobium leptophyllum Raf.
- Family: Evening-primrose (Onagraceae)
- Flowering: July-September
- Field Marks: This willow-herb is recognized by its linear to linear-lanceolate leaves and the minute, incurved hairs on the stem.
- Habitat: Bogs, fens, swamps, wet fields.
- Habit: Perennial herb with slender, branching rootstocks.
- Stems: Upright, unbranched or much branched, slender, with minute incurved hairs, up to 3 feet tall.
- Leaves: Alternate, simple, often with clusters of smaller leaves in the axils of the larger ones, linear to linear-lanceolate, pointed at the tip, tapering to the sessile base, without teeth and often inrolled along the edges, grayish hairy on the upper surface, up to 2 1/4 inches long, up to 1/6 inch wide.
- Flowers: Borne singly in the axils of the upper leaves, 1/6-1/3 inch across, pink or white, on short, slender stalks.
- Sepals: 4, green, united below to form a tube, up to 1/6 inch long, gray-hairy.
- Petals: 4, pink or white, free from each other, up to 1/4 inch long.
- Stamens: 8.
- Pistils: Ovary inferior; stigma unlobed.
- Fruits: Capsules elongated, cylindrical, up to 2 1/4 inches long, gray-hairy, on stalks up to 1 inch long; seeds warty, about 1/16 inch long, with a short neck at the upper end.
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