Limnanthes alba |
Limnanthes alba subsp. gracilis |
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white meadowfoam |
slender meadowfoam |
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Habit | Plants 8–40 cm; herbage glabrous or sparsely to densely hairy. | |||||||||||||
Herbage | glabrous. |
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Stems | erect. |
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Leaves | 2–10 cm; leaflets 5–9, blade oblong, ovate, lanceolate, or linear-lanceolate, margins entire or shallowly 2-lobed to deeply 3-lobed. |
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Leaflets | blade ovate to linear-lanceolate. |
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Flowers | bowl- to bell-shaped; sepals accrescent or not, lanceolate, ovate, or lanceolate-ovate, 4–8 mm; petals white or cream (sometimes cream basally, aging or drying pink or lilac), obovate, obovate-cuneate, or obcordate, 8–16 mm, 1–1.5 times as long as wide, 1.25–2.1 times longer than sepals, apex usually emarginate, sometimes truncate; filaments 3–6 mm; anthers 1–2 mm; style 2–6 mm. |
sepals accrescent, lanceolate-ovate, 4–8 mm, glabrous; petals usually white, sometimes cream basally, aging or drying pink, obovate, 8–10 mm, as long as wide, glabrous; filaments 3–4 mm; anthers cream, 1 mm; style 3–4 mm. |
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Nutlets | gray or dark brown, 3–4 mm, tuberculate or not, sometimes ridged, tubercles gray or dark brown, relatively low and wide. |
ca. 3 mm, tuberculate (tubercles relatively low and wide). |
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2n | = 10. |
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Limnanthes alba |
Limnanthes alba subsp. gracilis |
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Phenology | Flowering Mar–May. | |||||||||||||
Habitat | Seasonally wet meadows, rocky slopes and basins, often on serpentine soils | |||||||||||||
Elevation | 150-1700 m (500-5600 ft) | |||||||||||||
Distribution |
CA; OR
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OR |
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Discussion | Subspecies 4 (4 in the flora). Subspecies gracilis and parishii, previously in Limnanthes gracilis, are more closely related to subsp. alba than they are to each other. The genetic distance between them and other subspecies of L. alba is sufficient that an argument could be made for recognizing both parishii and gracilis as species (R. V. Kesseli, pers. comm.). (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
Of conservation concern. Subspecies gracilis occurs in the Rogue River Valley in Josephine and Jackson counties and in Douglas County. (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
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Key |
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Source | FNA vol. 7, p. 180. | FNA vol. 7, p. 181. | ||||||||||||
Parent taxa | ||||||||||||||
Sibling taxa | ||||||||||||||
Subordinate taxa | ||||||||||||||
Synonyms | L. gracilis | |||||||||||||
Name authority | Hartweg ex Bentham: Pl. Hartw., 301. (1849) | (Howell) Morin: J. Bot. Res. Inst. Texas 1: 1017. (2007) | ||||||||||||
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