Childing pink

 

Scientific Name: Petrorhagia prolifera (L.) P.W.Ball & Heywood 

Family: Caryophyllaceae

 

MORPHOLOGY

 

Habit and dimensions: annual herbaceous plant, reaching heights of 10-20(50) cm.

 

Stem: erect stems, simple or branched at the base, generally glabrous at the median internodes.

 

Leaves: opposite leaves, without stipules, linear, 1(2) x 30(45) mm, ciliate-scabrous at the margin; the sheaths with the basal part with a short fusion, less than 3 mm, amplexicaul, approximately as long as wide.

 

Flowers: inflorescence in compact terminal clusters with 2-12 hermaphrodite flowers, subsessile, sometimes with a single flower, opening one at a time. Calyx (8-10 mm) tubular gamosepalous, glabrous, with 5 angles, surrounded by a swollen involucre of appressed, scarious, and brown bracts, without a keel nerve; they are broadly ovate-blunt, often the outer ones mucronate, completely enveloping the calyx or the calyces in a cluster. Corolla dialypetalous with 5 petals (10-14 mm) pale pink or purplish, rarely white, obcordate or emarginate, narrowed into a long claw, without scales at the throat, generally homochromous, lacking a dark spot on the central nerve of the lobe. Blooms from April to October.

 

Fruits and seeds: the fruit is an ovoid capsule of 7 mm, without a carpophore, dehiscent by 4 teeth, containing numerous seeds of 1.2-1.9(2.3) mm, compressed and shield-shaped, with a reticulated surface, black when mature.

 

DISTRIBUTION AND HABITAT

 

Present throughout Italy in fallow lands, meadows, and ruins between 0 and 1,400 m.

 

Photo: licensed freely by Saxifraga and Rutger Barendse, Jan van der Straaten