Minuartia tenella

Plants annual. Taproots filiform. Stems erect, green, 5–25 cm, stipitate-glandular distally or throughout, internodes of stems 2–5 times as long as leaves. Leaves overlapping proximally, often connate basally, with loose, scarious sheath 0.2–0.5 mm; blade straight to outwardly curved, green, flat to concave, prominently 1-veined abaxially, narrowly lanceolate to subulate, 5–17 × 0.5–1.5 mm, flexuous, margins not thickened, often scarious, sometimes ciliate or stipitate-glandular, apex purple, apiculate, navicular, shiny to dull, glabrous or stipitate-glandular; axillary leaves often present. Inflorescences 7–25+-flowered, open cymes; bracts subulate to lanceolate, scarious. Pedicels 0.2–1.5 cm, stipitate-glandular. Flowers: hypanthium disc-shaped; sepals prominently 3-veined, ovate to narrowly so (herbaceous portion narrowly ovate to lanceolate), 2.5–3 mm, not enlarging in fruit, apex green to purple, acute to acuminate, not hooded, densely stipitate-glandular; petals obovate, 1.5–2 times as long as sepals, apex rounded, entire. Capsules on stipe ca. 0.1 mm, ovoid, 3–4 mm, longer than sepals. Seeds brown, suborbiculate with radicle prolonged to rounded beak, somewhat compressed, 0.4–0.6 mm, tuberculate; tubercles low, rounded, elongate. 2n = 24.

Phenology: Flowering spring–summer.
Habitat: Coastal bluffs and forest openings
Elevation: 0-700 m

Distribution

• Generated Map
• Legacy Map

B.C., Oreg., Wash.

Discussion

Although B. Maguire (1951, 1958) included Minuartia tenella within his concept of Arenaria stricta (M. michauxii), we see little more than a superficial resemblance between the taxa as we circumscribe them.

Selected References

None.

Lower Taxa

None.