Saponaria

Herbs, [annual, biennial, or] perennial. Rhizomes stout or slender. Stems erect to spreading, simple or branched, terete. Leaves connate proximally, petiolate or sessile; blade 3(–5)-veined, spatulate to elliptic or ovate, apex acute or rounded. Inflorescences terminal, dense to open, lax cymes; bracts paired, foliaceous; involucel bracteoles absent. Pedicels erect. Flowers: sepals connate proximally into tube, greenish, reddish, or purple, 7–25 mm, tube 15–25-veined, oblong-cylindric, terete, commissures between sepals absent; lobes green, reddish, or purple, 3–5-veined, triangular-attenuate, shorter than tube, margins white, scarious, apex acute or acuminate; petals 5 (doubled in some cultivars), pink to white, clawed, auricles absent, with 2 coronal scales, blade apex entire or emarginate; nectaries at filament bases; stamens 10, adnate with petals to carpophore; filaments briefly connate proximally; staminodes absent (present in some cultivars); ovary 1-locular; styles 2(–3), filiform, 12–15 mm, glabrous proximally; stigmas 2(–3), linear along adaxial surface of styles, papillate (30×). Capsules cylindric to ovoid, opening by 4(–6) ascending or recurving teeth; carpophore present. Seeds 15–75, dark brown, reniform, laterally compressed, papillose, marginal wing absent, appendage absent; embryo peripheral, curved. x = 7.

Distribution

Europe, c, w Asia, Africa (Mediterranean region), S. officinalis widely naturalized elsewhere.

Discussion

Species ca. 40 (2 in the flora).

Saponaria pumilio (Linnaeus) Fenzl ex A. Braun [= Silene pumilio (Linnaeus) Wulfen], a species of the Alps and the Carpathians, was collected once from a ledge on Mount Washington, New Hampshire, in 1964; the collector, S. K. Harris (1965), suggested that it may have been an intentional planting. A cespitose plant, it differs from the two species below also in its one-flowered, rather than several-flowered, stems.

Selected References

Shults, V. A. 1989. Rod Myl’nyanka (Saponaria L. s.l.) vo Flore SSSR. Riga.

Lower Taxa

Saponaria ocymoides, Saponaria officinalis

Key

1	Stems erect, 30-90 cm; calyx 15-25 mm, glabrous or rarely with scattered trichomes; capsules ca. 15-20 mm	Saponaria officinalis
1	Stems trailing, procumbent, or ascending, 5-25 cm; calyx 7-12 mm, glandular-pubescent; capsule 6-8 mm	Saponaria ocymoides