Epilobium chionanthum

Detailed description

Loosely clumped perennial herb up to 0.75 m tall, producing numermous leafy stolons above and below ground; stems often reddish, mostly glabrous, strigulose along lines decurrent from the margins of the petioles below and all round above and in the inflorescence, more rarely pubescent all round to the base. Leaves much shorter than the internodes they subtend, mostly opposite, a few alternate in the inflorescence, dull green, paler beneath, the lateral veins quite prominent, 3-4 on each side of the midrib, subsessile; lamina 12-40 × 7-15 mm, elliptic to ovate, acute at the apex, narrowly cuneate to rounded at the base, margins serrulate, usually with 7-14 often obscure teeth on each side. Inflorescence erect. Flowers erect. Ovary 10-20 mm long, investiture mixed glandular and strigulose, on a pedicel 2-7 mm long. Floral tube 1.0-1.7 × 1.4-1.8 mm. Sepals 4.0-5.2 × 1.5-1.7 mm, slightly keeled, indumentum of mixed glandular and strigulose hairs. Petals 6.0-11.0 × 4.5-6.0 mm, notch 0.8-1.3 mm deep, white, often flushed pink at fertilisation. Stamens filaments white, of two types: long (2.0-3.5 mm long) and short (0.8-1.3 mm long), Anthers 1.3-1.5 × 0.6-0.7 mm, bright yellow. Style 5.2-9.0 mm long, white, stigma 1.0-2.0 x 0.9-2.0 mm, globose, obscurely 4-lobed, held above anthers in early anthesis. Capsule 40-60 mm long on a pedicel 12-28 mm long, moderately to densely strigulose and glandular. Seeds 1.4-1.8 mm long, dark brown, narrowly obovate to obovate, finely reticulate to reticulate-mamillate; coma 7.5-11.0 mm long, orange to orange-brown, persistent.