FIELD ID CHARACTERISTICS:
Arching flowering stems distinctive and often lingering from one season into the next. Stems and petioles can be brilliant red in sunny spots.
Description: Leafy, robust, branching, perennial herb, growing to about 0.75 m high.
Leaves: Alternate, narrow, lance-shaped with finely toothed edges; not succulent. Leaves 5 to 10 cm long, to 4 cm wide.
Flowers/Fruit: Yellowish or whitish-green flowers, and later lobed capsules, on the upper side of two or more arching stems, at the ends of branches. Fruits are lobed capsules. Flowers June to October, fruiting soon after.
Habit and Range: Abundant in ditches, marshes, swamp openings, floodplain pools, and stream and pond margins throughout the state, but less common in the Mountains and far eastern counties.
Taxonomic Note: This is the only Penthorum species in the Western hemisphere.
