About Stellaria longipes Goldie
Stellaria longipes Goldie is a species of flowering plant in the family Caryophyllaceae, commonly known as longstalk starwort and Goldie's starwort. It has a circumpolar distribution, found across the northernmost latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. This is a perennial herb that grows in a very wide range of habitat types, including tundra, taiga, and many more southerly areas with subalpine and alpine climates. Its morphology is extremely variable, and its form depends on both genetic makeup and environmental conditions. It also has a widely varying number of chromosomes. In general terms, it is a rhizomatous perennial herb that forms mats or clumps, or grows upright. Its stems can be short and simple, or sprawling and highly branched. Its leaves range from linear to lance-shaped, are usually 1 to 4 centimeters long, and are arranged oppositely in pairs. The inflorescence holds one or more flowers, each borne on a short pedicel. Each flower has five pointed green sepals, each a few millimeters long. It has five white petals, each divided into two lobes; the division is sometimes shallow, but often so deep that the flower appears to have ten petals. This plant is gynodioecious: some flowers have functional male and female reproductive parts, while other flowers are female only. There are two accepted subtaxa. The rarer of the two, subspecies arenicola, is restricted to the sand dunes adjacent to Lake Athabasca in central Canada.
