This section is from the book "Harper's Guide To Wild Flowers", by Caroline A. Creevey. Also available from Amazon: Harper's Guide To Wild Flowers.
Family, Milkwort. Color, purple. This is a low-growing species, 4 to 7 inches high, with slender, upright stem branching above. Leaves, small, linear, numerous, all on stem. Flowers, on very short pedicels, making a long; spike, from which the earlier flowers drop as the floral spike grows, leaving 1 he bra which form a cluster of cone-like scales. August and September.
Dry, sandy soil, along the coast from Massachusetts to Delaware, southward and westward.
 
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