Flora of North America species comparison

The green links below add additional plants to the comparison table. Blue links lead to other Web sites.
enable glossary links

Corispermum nitidum

shiny bugseed, slender bugseed
Habit Plants branched from base (rarely slightly above base), 10–55(–70) cm, glabrous or sparsely covered with dendroid or stellate hairs (then often becoming glabrous).
Leaf

blades narrowly linear or filiform (rarely linear), usually convolute or folded (especially in mature and/or dry plants), rarely plane (when young), 2–4(–5) × 0.1–0.2 cm.
Bracts

narrowly ovate-lanceolate, lanceolate, linear-lanceolate, or linear, 0.5–1.5(–2) × 0.1–0.3(–0.4) cm, (most bracts within inflorescence rather uniform, usually narrower than mature fruits).
Inflorescences

lax, usually interrupted from base to apex, rarely slightly condensed (only at apex when immature), narrowly linear or linear.
Perianth

segments 1–3.
Fruits

straw colored (yellowish brown), light brown, deep olive green, occasionally tinged with red, without spots and warts, convex abaxially, plane or slightly concave adaxially, obovate or broadly elliptic, often broadest near middle (rarely slightly above), 2.3–3.3(–3.5) × (1.8–)2–2.8 mm, shiny;

wing translucent, thin, usually 0.1–0.3 mm wide, margins entire, apex rounded.

Corispermum nitidum
Phenology Flowering late summer–early fall.
Habitat Sand dunes, sandy and gravely shores, waste places
Distribution
from USDA
se Europe (with small extension into w Asia) [Supposedly introduced]
Discussion

Specimens of Corispermum nitidum superficially similar to, or almost indistinguishable from, European C. nitidum in their habit (especially when immature) are fairly common in North American collections. Judging from their fruit morphology, they mostly belong to C. americanum (or probably to introgressive hybrids between the introduced C. nitidum and native C. americanum). I have not seen any unquestionably reliable specimens of C. nitidum sensu stricto from North America. More detailed comparative experimental and field studies are needed in order to clarify the complicated taxonomy of the group in North America.

(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)
Source FNA vol. 4, p. 320.
Parent taxa Chenopodiaceae > Corispermum
Sibling taxa
C. americanum, C. hookeri, C. hyssopifolium, C. navicula, C. ochotense, C. pacificum, C. pallasii, C. pallidum, C. villosum, C. welshii
Name authority Kitaibel ex Schultes: Oestr. Fl. ed. 2, 1: 7. (1814)
Web links 
Unless otherwise noted, all data comes from the online version of the Flora of North America, who have made most of their content available via a Creative Commons license (CC BY 4.0).



Type/paste one or more Latin names into the boxes above; matching taxa will show up below the box as you type. You can use the up/down arrow keys to move through the list.

(If the plant you're looking for doesn't show up in the auto-complete list, that means it either isn't described in Flora of North America yet, or it's listed under a synonym. And please note that Flora of North America is still missing several plant families, including Apiaceae, Boraginaceae, and Polemoniaceae.)

Choose a data source: Flora of North America

The species comparison tool is brought to you by:
Northwest Wildflowers