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Western Wetland Flora

Field Office Guide to Plant Species

Long-leaf Starwort
Stellaria longifolia Muhl. ex Willd.

JPG -- Species Photo JPG -- Distribution Map

Family: Pink (Caryophyllaceae)
Flowering: May-July
Field Marks: This Stellaria differs from all others by a combination of 3 styles, flowers in widely spreading cymes, sepals smooth, and leaves rough to the touch along the edges.
Habitat: Wet meadows, wet woods, fens, boggy areas, along streams.
Habit: Sprawling perennial with slender roots.
Stems: Sprawling or becoming somewhat upright, square, smooth except for roughness on the angles, up to 18 inches long.
Leaves: Opposite, simple, linear to narrowly lanceolate to elliptic, up to 2 inches long, rarely up to 1/3 inch wide, rough along the edges and often ciliate at the base.
Flowers: Few in widely spreading cymes, subtended by ovate to lanceolate bracts up to 1/4 inch long; flower stalks slender, spreading or reflexed, up to 1 inch long.
Sepals: 5, free from each other, green, lanceolate, up to 1/6 inch long, smooth.
Petals: 5, but appearing to be 10 because each one is deeply 2-lobed, free from each other, 1/6-1/4 inch long.
Stamens: 10.
Pistils: Ovary superior; styles 3.
Fruits: Capsules yellow-brown to dark brown, ovoid, longer than the persistent sepals; seeds brown, oblongoid.

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Page Last Modified: Saturday, 02-Feb-2013 06:27:26 EST
Menlo Park, CA [caww55]