Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Erect to spreading subshrubs.

Stems: Stems 3–5 dm long, many-branched, puberulent and reddish strigose, the hairs sometimes spreading.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite. Blades linear, sometimes the larger ones linear–elliptic, 10–30 mm long, 1.5–4 mm wide. Surfaces finely scabrous. Margins entire. 1-veined. Subsessile. Stipules minute or absent.

Flowers: Flowers solitary in the leaf axils, pedicels 2–7 mm long. Calyx teeth 6, triangular, usually with small appendages alternating with the teeth, valvate, appearing as lobes on the floral tube. Corolla of 6 petals, alternate with the sepals, distinct, attached at summit of or within floral tube, crumbled in bud, sometimes absent, unequal, the dorsal pair usually larger; floral tube surrounding the ovary, sometimes subtended by an epicalyx of connate pairs of bracts; pale purple (or white?), drying pale purple or violet, ca. 3–3.5 mm long. Stamens 6–14, included and inserted in 2 unequal whorls on the floral tube; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary superior, 2–4(–6)-carpellate, with as many cells, at least at base, rarely 1-celled, placentation axile, rarely parietal when 1-celled; ovules 2 to numerous, anatropous, ascending; style 1, filiform; stigma slightly 2-lobed.

Fruit: Capsules membranous; oblong–ovoid; loculicidally dehiscent laterally; the adjacent wall of the floral tube also splitting along its length and the placenta projecting laterally out of the capsules; 1–celled; ca. 3.5 mm long. Seeds (1) to numerous; reddish brown; suborbicular; ca. 1–1.5 mm in diameter; pitted; endosperm absent or very scanty.

Ploidy: 2n = 16; 32; 64

Habitat: naturalized primarily in mesic; open; disturbed sites and streambeds.

Elevation Range: