Montia parvifolia |
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little-leaf miner's lettuce, showy rock montia, small-leaf montia, small-leafed montia, streambank springbeauty |
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Habit | Plants perennial, often bul-biferous, with branched caudices, mat forming. |
Stems | simple erect or ascending, 10–30 cm. |
Leaves | basal and alternate, petiolate; blade oblanceolate, 10–70 × 4–12 mm. |
Inflorescences | leafy, from apices of fertile caudex branches (determinate) or from leaf axils of shortened fertile caudex (indeterminate), sometimes bulbiliferous in leaf axils. |
Flowers | 1–12, showy; sepals 2–3.5 mm; petals 5, pink or white, 6–15 mm; stamens 5, anther pink. |
Seeds | 0.8–1.5 mm; eliaosome rounded, minute, shorter than 0.5 mm, shiny, appearing smooth. |
2n | = 22, 44. |
Montia parvifolia |
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Phenology | Flowering late spring-mid summer. |
Habitat | Moist or wet soils and rocky cliffs of coastal and inland mountains |
Elevation | 0-2800 m [0-9200 ft] |
Distribution |
AK; CA; ID; MT; NV; OR; UT; WA; AB; BC
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Discussion | Montia parvifolia is a variable diploid and tetraploid species. Plants with larger flowers, leaves, and seeds have been treated as var. flagellaris (Bongard) C. L. Hitchcock or as the separate species M. sweetseri Henderson. Because the complex has not been studied using modern methods, and the variation observed in herbarium specimens has no correlated geographical base, I adopt the position of K. L. Chambers (1993) and do not recognize the two above-mentioned taxa at this time. I equate the species situation here to that of M. fontana and choose not to recognize infraspecific taxa. (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
Source | FNA vol. 4. |
Parent taxa | |
Sibling taxa | |
Synonyms | Claytonia parvifolia, Naiocrene parvifolia |
Name authority | (Mociño ex de Candolle) Greene: Fl. Francisc., 181. (1891) |
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