Family: Caryophyllaceae,
Pink
Genus: Silene
Description
General: stout, 3-11 dm tall, with male and female flowers
on separate plants.
Growth habit:
perennial, usually with a branched crown.
Stems:
several, simple, erect, stiff-hairy below and
becoming glandular higher up among the flowers.
 Leaves: basal lance-shaped, up to 10 cm long and 2
cm broad, hairy, slenderly to broadly stalked. Stem leaves
opposite, in 6-9 pairs, the lower ones often larger than the
basal, slightly reduced and stalkless above.
 Flowers: rather showy, several in open, spreading
clusters with leafy bracts. Calyx 15-20 mm long, that of
the male flowers 10-nerved, that of the female 20-nerved
and becoming much inflated in fruit, the narrow lobes not
twisted. Corolla white, the blade 7-10 mm long, narrowly
obovate, notched to about midlength. Appendages about 1
mm long, triangular, with irregular edges. Styles 5.
Flowering time: June-August.
 Fruits: capsules, 1-celled, ovoid-cylindric, opening by 5
2-cleft valves that are spreading but not reflexed. Seeds
about 1.5 mm long, dark bluish-brown, prominently with
warty bumps in concentric rows, the base of the bumps
finely bordered with small teeth.
Distribution
Various, mostly drier, wooded or disturbed, habitats, in s.
and w. parts of MT. A European plant now widely
distributed in N. America. |
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