''Montia parvifolia'' is a species of flowering plant in the family

Montiaceae Montiaceae are a family of flowering plants, comprising about 14 genera with about 230 known species, ranging from small herbaceous plants to shrubs. The family has a cosmopolitan distribution. The family Montiaceae was newly adopted in the APG ...

known by the common names little-leaf miner's lettuce, small-leaved blinks and small-leaved montia. It is native to western North America from

Alaska Alaska ( ; russian: Аляска, Alyaska; ale, Alax̂sxax̂; ; ems, Alas'kaaq; Yup'ik: ''Alaskaq''; tli, Anáaski) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U.S., ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

Montana Montana () is a state in the Mountain West division of the Western United States. It is bordered by Idaho to the west, North Dakota and South Dakota to the east, Wyoming to the south, and the Canadian provinces of Alberta, British Columbi ...

, where it grows in moist to wet areas in several types of mountain habitat.

Description

''Montia parvifolia'' is a perennial herb growing erect to about 40 centimeters tall from a matted, branching

caudex A caudex (plural: caudices) of a plant is a stem, but the term is also used to mean a rootstock and particularly a basal stem structure from which new growth arises.pages 456 and 695 In the strict sense of the term, meaning a stem, "caudex" is m ...

base. It spreads via leafy

stolon In biology, stolons (from Latin '' stolō'', genitive ''stolōnis'' – "branch"), also known as runners, are horizontal connections between organisms. They may be part of the organism, or of its skeleton; typically, animal stolons are external s ...

s with sprouting bulblets. The fleshy oval leaves are alternately arranged in a rosette and measure up to 6 centimeters in length. The flower stems ( peduncles) arise basally from the leaf rosette, and the

inflorescence An inflorescence is a group or cluster of flowers arranged on a stem that is composed of a main branch or a complicated arrangement of branches. Morphologically, it is the modified part of the shoot of seed plants where flowers are formed o ...

at the tip of the stem bears 1 to 12 flowers each with five pink or white petals up to 1.5 centimeters long.

References

External links

Jepson Manual Treatment - ''Montia parvifolia''Montia parvifolia'' - Photo gallery Flora North America Treatment
parvifolia Flora of the Sierra Nevada (United States) Flora of California Flora of the Western United States Flora without expected TNC conservation status {{Caryophyllales-stub