Introduced. Perennial. Propagates by seeds and by rootstocks. Time of bloom: May to July. Seed-time: June to August. Range: Nova Scotia, Quebec, and Ontario, southward to New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Habitat: Fields, meadows, and roadsides.

Graceful plants, which are usually found growing in small patches, as the rootstocks send up flowering stalks at intervals of a few inches. Stems two inches to two feet high, slender, weak, four-angled, and roughened on the angles, simple below the flower-cluster. Leaves opposite, narrowly lance-shaped, broadest just above the base, the lower ones smaller than those near the top. Flowers in loose, terminal, many-branching cymes, on very slender, spreading pedicels; sepals narrow and pointed, slightly shorter than the five white petals, which are so deeply cleft as to look like ten, the blossoms being nearly a half-inch broad; stamens usually ten, sometimes fewer; styles usually three, occasionally four or five. Capsules oblong-ovoid, exceeding the

Fig. 90. - Grass-leaved Stitchwort (Stellaria graminea). X1/3 sepals, opening by twice as many valves as there are styles. Seeds many, minutely roughened. (Fig. 90.)

Means Of Control

Close and frequent cutting for the purpose of starving the root-stocks and preventing seed production.