Northeast Wetland Flora
Field Office Guide to Plant Species
Ludwigia linearis Walter
- Family: Evening-primrose (Onagraceae)
- Flowering: July-September
- Field Marks: This Ludwigia differs by its very narrow, alternate leaves and its sessile fruits much longer than broad.
- Habitat: Swamps, wet ditches, wet pine barrens, sometimes in shallow water.
- Habit: Perennial herb with fibrous roots.
- Stems: Upright, usually unbranched, slender, angular, up to 2 1/2 feet tall, smooth.
- Leaves: Alternate, simple, linear to linear-lanceolate, pointed at the tip, tapering to the base, without teeth, sessile, up to 3 inches long, up to 1/4 inch wide, finely granular on the surface.
- Flowers: Solitary in the axils of the leaves, sessile.
- Sepals: 4, green, united below to form a tube, the lobes triangular, 1/6-1/4 inch long.
- Petals: 4, yellow, free from each other, about as long as the sepal lobes.
- Stamens: 8.
- Pistils: Ovary inferior, 4-sided.
- Fruits: Capsule bell-shaped, 4-sided, 1/4-1/2 inch long, containing several elongated seeds.
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