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..
Annual or perennial herbs, often swollen at the nodes, with opposite entire exstipulate leaves, and perfect, polygamous, or rarely dioecious regular flowers, the sap watery. Sepals 4 or 5, persistent, united into a tube or cup. Petals equal in number to the sepals, or rarely none, often with a scale at the base of the blade. Stamens twice as many as the sepals, clawed, perigynous; anthers longitudinally dehiscent. Ovary 1, stipitate, mainly i-celled (rarely 3-5-celled); styles 2-5; ovules and seeds several or many (in all our species), attached to a central column. Fruit generally membranous, a capsule, dehiscent by valves or teeth. Seeds mainly amphitropous; embryo nearly straight, and peripheral to the endosperm; cotyledons mainly incumbent.
About 20 genera and perhaps 600 species, widely distributed, most abundant in the northern hemisphere.
Calyx-ribs at least twice as many as the teeth, running both into the teeth and into the sinuses. | ||
Styles 5, alternate with the foliaceous calyx-teeth. | 1. | Agrostemma |
Styles 3-5, when 5, opposite the short calyx-teeth. | ||
Styles 5, capsule several-celled at the base. | 2. | Viscaria. |
Styles 3, rarely 4. | 3. | SiIene. |
Styles 5, capsule I-celled to the base. | 4. | Lychnis. |
Calyx s-ribbed, 5-nerved, or nerveless, or striate-nerved. | ||
Calyx conspicuously scarious between its green nerves. | ||
Calyx not bracteolate at the base. | 5. | Gypsophila. |
Calyx bracteolate at the base. | 6. | Petrorhagia. |
Calyx not at all scarious. | ||
Petals appendaged at the base of the blade. | 7. | Saponaria. |
Petals not appendaged at the base of the blade. | ||
Calyx strongly 5-angled, not bracteolate. | 8. | Vaccaria. |
Calyx terete or nearly so, subtended by bractlets. | 9. | Dianthus. |
 
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