Paronychia canadensis
Paronychia fastigiata
Arenaria serpyllifolia
Stellaria media
Star Chickweed (Stellaria pubera).
A chickweed with ambitions to be known as a wild
flower rather than a mere weed. To that end it grows
in the woods (rather than in your lawn) and produces
flowers many times the size of the ones on the tiny
chickweeds that grow in yards and gardens. Although
spring is its primary blooming season, it can bloom
again from later growth, often with smaller flowers
than in the spring.
Giant Chickweed (Stellaria aquatica).
Not quite as large as Star Chickweed (Stellaria
pubera), but also worthy of attention as more
than a mere weed. The neat habit, with tidily arranged
opposite sessile leaves and flowers proportioned just
right for the plant, would make this a good garden
flower.
Stellaria graminea
Long-Leaved Starwort (Stellaria
longifolia). Also called Long-Leaved
Stitchwort, this is a remarkably delicate little plant
whose ethereally insubstantial stems and leaves make
it seem as though the starry little flowers are
floating in the air. It likes an overgrown meadow
Mouse-Ear Chickweed (Cerastium fontanum).
Chickweed is one of those low lawn-dwellers that
suburban homeowners abhor. If your lawn simply must be
made up of uniform blades of grass snipped to a
precisely even height, then chickweed is your enemy.
Otherwise, it does little harm, and cheers us up with
starry little flowers that reward a close look, giving
us an incentive to get better acquainted with the
natural world of our own front yards.
Cerastium nutans
Agrostemma githago
White Campion (Silene latifolia). A European immigrant that
has established itself all over eastern North America.
It likes cultivated or recently disturbed ground. It
also goes by the name of Evening Lychnis, because its
flowers are nocturnal, closing during the day unless
the weather is dreary, as it was on the rainy day when
this picture was taken.
Silene nivea
Silene stellata
Silene caroliniana
Silene virginica
Soapwort (Saponaria officinalis).
Also called Bouncing Bet, this cheerful pink came over
as a garden flower, but is now thoroughly established
along roadsides and at the edge of the woods; this
plant was growing against a tombstone in an overgrown
cemetery in Beechview, where it was blooming in the
middle of July. The flowers are very pale pink verging
on white; the double forms Gray mentions seldom or
never occur in the wild plants seen around Pittsburgh.
The name “Soapwort” reminds us that a lathery soap can
be made from the plant; it is, however, poisonous.
Saponaria vaccaria
Deptford Pink (Dianthus armeria).
These little flowers were brought over as
cottage-garden staples, but they liked it here well
enough to adopt it as their new home. They’re not
unusual, but still just uncommon enough that running
across one in a vacant lot is an unexpected delight.
They seem to prefer poor soil. A very rare white form
is unknown in the earlier literature, but found here
once in a while.