Flora of North America species comparison

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Lunaria

honesty, lunaria, money-plant, moonwort, satin-flower
Habit Plants not scapose; pubescent, glabrate, or glabrous.
Stems

erect, unbranched or branched distally.
Leaves

basal and cauline;

petiolate or sessile;

basal (soon withered, opposite), rosulate, long-petiolate, blade margins coarsely dentate;

cauline (opposite or alternate), petiolate or (distal) sessile, blade margins coarsely dentate.
Racemes

(corymbose, several-flowered, rarely proximalmost flowers bracteate), considerably elongated in fruit.
Flowers

sepals cucullate, (median pair) linear or (lateral pair) broadly oblong-elliptic;

petals obovate, (much longer than sepals), claw strongly differentiated from blade, (nearly as long as sepal, apex obtuse);

stamens tetradynamous;

filaments usually not dilated basally (or slender);

anthers oblong or linear, (apex obtuse);

nectar glands lateral, annular or semi-annular.
Fruiting pedicels

divaricate or ascending, slender.
Fruits

(often pendulous), long-stipitate [rarely subsessile], oblong to suborbicular [orbicular, lanceolate-elliptic], not torulose, strongly latiseptate;

valves each not veined, glabrous;

replum rounded;

septum (persistent), complete, (broad, shiny);

style slender;

stigma capitate, 2-lobed (lobes opposite replum, connivent or not).
Seeds

strongly flattened, broadly winged [not winged], reniform [orbicular];

seed coat not mucilaginous when wetted;

cotyledons accumbent.
x

= 15.

Lunaria
Distribution
from USDA
Europe [Introduced in North America; introduced also in s South America]
[BONAP county map]
Discussion

Species 3 (1 in the flora).

Two species of Lunaria are ornamentals cultivated worldwide; L. annua often escapes from cultivation.

Although R. C. Rollins (1993) listed Lunaria rediviva Linnaeus as “rarely found in long persisting populations outside of cultivation,” I have not seen any material that unequivocally proves that the species is naturalized in North America. It is easily distinguished from L. annua by being perennial with petiolate distalmost leaves and elliptic-lanceolate fruits acute at base and apex. By contrast, L. annua is biennial or, rarely, annual and has sessile distalmost leaves and suborbicular to broadly oblong fruits obtuse at base and apex.

(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)
Source FNA vol. 7, p. 596. Author: Ihsan A. Al-Shehbaz.
Parent taxa Brassicaceae > tribe Lunarieae
Subordinate taxa
L. annua
Name authority Linnaeus: Sp. Pl. 2: 653. (1753): Gen. Pl. ed. 5, 294. (1754)
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).



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(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.)

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