Froelichia floridana var. campestris

Native

Dry. Prairies, streambanks, river banks, railroads, roadsides, disturbed sites. Full sun. Sandy soil.

July to September

White

20″ to 40″

This is a 20″ to 40″ tall, erect, annual forb that rises on a single stem from a semi-woody taproot.

The stem is stout, usually erect or ascending, sometimes trailing on the ground but not rooting at the nodes. It may be unbranched or have a few branches at the base, and may also be branched above the middle. It is covered with short, sticky, whitish or brownish hairs. The hairs are sometimes woolly and matted or tangled.

The leaves are opposite, stalkless or nearly stalkless, and mostly on the lower ⅓ of the stem. The larger leaves are elliptic inversely lance-shaped, widest above the middle, 1½″ to 5½″ long, and ⅜″ to 1¼″ wide. They are wedge-shaped or taper gradually to a narrow point at the base, and are rounded at the tip or angled with the angle more than 90°. When young, the upper leaf surface is white due to a dense covering of silky or woolly hairs. At maturity the upper surface is frequently nearly hairless. The lower surface is densely covered with short, soft, matted or tangled, woolly hairs, both when young and at maturity. The margins are untoothed.

At the end of each stem and branch is an elongated, branched inflorescence (panicle) with pairs of short-stalked spikes ascending from the nodes of the central axis (rachis). The space between the lowest two nodes of the stalk is seldom over 4″. The spikes are dense, pyramid-shaped, ⅜″ to 3⅛″ long, ⅜″ to 9 ⁄16″ in diameter. The overall appearance is of an interrupted spike. The flowers are arranged in a dense, 5-ranked spiral.

Each flower is ⅛″ to ¼″ wide. There are 5 white to yellowish-white sepals fused for most of their length into a flask-shaped, 2-lipped, 5-lobed tube. The sepals are densely covered with woolly hairs. There are no petals.

The fruit is a flask-shaped, inflated, 3 ⁄16″ long, 3 ⁄16″ wide, bladder-like pouch (utricle) containing 1 seed.