Flora of North America species comparison

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Montia parvifolia

Montia bostockii

little-leaf miner's lettuce, showy rock montia, small-leaf montia, small-leafed montia, streambank springbeauty

Bostock's minerslettuce, Bostock's montia
Habit Plants perennial, often bul-biferous, with branched caudices, mat forming. Plants perennial, rhizomatous or stoloniferous, not bulbiferous, rooting at nodes.
Stems

simple erect or ascending, 10–30 cm.

erect, 5–15 cm.
Leaves

basal and alternate, petiolate;

blade oblanceolate, 10–70 × 4–12 mm.

alternate, secund, petiolate;

blade linear, 2–40 × 0.5–2 mm.
Inflorescences

leafy, from apices of fertile caudex branches (determinate) or from leaf axils of shortened fertile caudex (indeterminate), sometimes bulbiliferous in leaf axils.

1-bracteate;

bract linear to oblanceolate, 10 × 2 mm.
Flowers

1–12, showy;

sepals 2–3.5 mm;

petals 5, pink or white, 6–15 mm;

stamens 5, anther pink.

1–12(–20);

sepals 3.5–4.5 mm;

petals 5, white with yellow blotches at base, or pinkish, 10–15 mm;

stamens 5, anther yellow.
Seeds

0.8–1.5 mm;

eliaosome rounded, minute, shorter than 0.5 mm, shiny, appearing smooth.

0.8–1.5 mm, tuberculate;

elaiosome present.
2n

= 22, 44.

Montia parvifolia

Montia bostockii
Phenology Flowering late spring-mid summer. Flowering early summer.
Habitat Moist or wet soils and rocky cliffs of coastal and inland mountains Moist, often north-facing slopes of scree or alpine tundra
Elevation 0-2800 m (0-9200 ft) 0-1000 m (0-3300 ft)
Distribution
from FNA
AK; CA; ID; MT; NV; OR; UT; WA; AB; BC
[WildflowerSearch map]
[BONAP county map]
from FNA
AK; BC; YT
[BONAP county map]
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.)

Considered an ancestral species of Montia and Claytonia by some workers, M. bostockii appears related to M. vassilievii (Kuzeneva) McNeill of Asia and M. linearis of North America. The pollen is distinctly tholate with spiniferous saccae. The flowers of both M. bostockii and M. vassilievii closely resemble claytonias but have only three ovules, as opposed to arctic claytonias, which have six.

(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)
Source FNA vol. 4. FNA vol. 4.
Parent taxa Portulacaceae > Montia Portulacaceae > Montia
Sibling taxa
M. bostockii, M. chamissoi, M. dichotoma, M. diffusa, M. fontana, M. howellii, M. linearis
M. chamissoi, M. dichotoma, M. diffusa, M. fontana, M. howellii, M. linearis, M. parvifolia
Synonyms Claytonia parvifolia, Naiocrene parvifolia Claytonia bostockii, Montiastrum bostockii
Name authority (Mociño ex de Candolle) Greene: Fl. Francisc., 181. (1891) (A. E. Porsild) S. L. Welsh: Great Basin Naturalist 28: 154. (1968)
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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