Northeast Wetland Flora
Field Office Guide to Plant Species
Samolus parviflorus Raf.
- Family: Primrose (Primulaceae)
- Flowering: May-September
- Field Marks: This species is distinguished by its small, white, 5-parted flowers and its alternate, toothless, smooth, usually spatulate leaves.
- Habitat: Wet soil, marshes, sometimes in shallow water, sometimes brackish.
- Habit: Perennial herb with fibrous roots.
- Stems: Sprawling to upright, branched, smooth, up to 1 1/2 feet tall.
- Leaves: Basal and alternate, simple, spatulate to obovate, rounded at the tip, long-tapering to the base, without teeth, smooth, up to 4 inches long; basal leaves stalked, upper stem leaves sessile.
- Flowers: Several in terminal and axillary racemes up to 6 inches long; flowers white, 1/8-1/6 inch across, on smooth stalks up to 1 inch long.
- Sepals: 5, green, united below, smooth, the tube about 1/16 inch long, persistent in fruit.
- Petals: 5, white, united below, up to 1/8 inch long.
- Stamens: 5, attached to the tube of the petals.
- Pistils: Ovary superior, smooth.
- Fruits: Capsules spherical, smooth, 1/10-1/8 inch in diameter.
- Notes: Gleason and Cronquist call this species S. floribundus.
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