This section is from the book "An Illustrated Flora Of The Northern United States, Canada And The British Possessions Vol2", by Nathaniel Lord Britton, Addison Brown. Also available from Amazon: An Illustrated Flora of the Northern United States, Canada and the British Possessions. 3 Volume Set..
Glabrous low perennial herbs, with simple slender erect stems, and lanceolate ovate or oblong leaves mostly clustered in a verticil at the summit. Flowers few or solitary, terminal, slender-peduncled, small, white or pink, deeply 5-9- (mostly 7-) parted. Sepals narrow, persistent, spreading. Corolla rotate, its tube almost none, its segments convolute in the bud, acute or acuminate, entire; filaments united into a narrow ring at the base; anthers linear-oblong, recurved after anthesis. Staminodia none. Ovary globose; ovules numerous; style filiform. Capsule globose, 5-valved, many-seeded. Seeds trigonous or spherical. [Latin, one-third of a foot, referring to the height of the plant.]
Four species, of the northern hemisphere. Two others occur in northwestern America, the typical T. europeaea L. in Europe and Asia.
Fig. 3298
Trientalis americana Pursh, Fl. Am. Sept. 256. 1814.
Rootstock horizontal or creeping, sending up simple stem-like branches 3'-9' high, which are naked or scaly below, the leaves all in a verticil of 5-10 at the summit, long stolons sometimes developed in their axils. Leaves membranous, lanceolate or oblong-lanceolate, acuminate at both ends, sessile or short-petioled, minutely crenulate, 1 1/2'-4' long, 4"-15" wide; pedicels filiform, erect, 1'-2' long; sepals narrowly lanceolate or subulate, cuspidate, about one-half as long as the oblong or somewhat obovate corolla-segments; flowers 4"-6" broad; capsule shorter than the sepals.
In damp woods and thickets, Labrador to Manitoba, southern New Jersey, Virginia, Illinois and Michigan. May-June.
 
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