Epilobium palustre (Marsh Willowherb) - photos and description
Inflorescence nodding in bud.
Flowers white with four notched petals.
General: Slender, erect perennial usually simple from the base and branching above. Inflorescence is nodding in bud. Stems pubescent.
Flowers: Flowers few, single, terminal, white in colour with four cleft petals. We measured flowers from 6 to 9 mm in diameter, and petals from 2 to 4 mm long. Sepals measured 1 to 2 mm long. July-August.
Fruit: A long, narrow capsule, we measured a capsule at 40 mm long by 1 mm wide.
Leaves: Opposite below, alternate or opposite above. Narrowly linear-lanceolate, the leaf highlighted in the photo above was 36 mm long by 4 mm wide. Top of leaves strigillose or glabrous, bottom of leaves with very short hairs on central nerve and margin or glabrous. Most leaf margins I observed were entire, a few leaves with a few very small teeth. Leaf edges not rolled under (one difference from similar species E. leptophyllum).
Height: Height listed in Budd's Flora to 60 cm, we measured plants to 50 cm tall.
Habitat: Swamps and bogs.
Abundance: listed as common in Checklist of the Vascular Plants of Saskatchewan.
Origin: Native.
How to identify this species: Leaves linear to lanceolate or oblong, glabrous to sparsely strigillose above, inflorescence often nodding in bud, without glandular hairs (eglandular), Flora of Alberta.
When and where photographed: Photos taken July 25th, wet mossy black spruce woods, Pasquia Provincial forest, 425 km northeast of our home in Regina, SK.