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Gentiana alba
Plain gentian is a North American perennial wildflower with pale yellowish-white flowers grown from thick white taproots. It is rare and protected in parts of its range, so wild plants should be left alone and only nursery-propagated stock grown.
Gentiana alba (called plain, pale, white, cream, or yellow gentian) is a herbaceous species of flowering plant in the Gentian family Gentianaceae, producing yellowish-white colored flowers from thick white taproots. It is native to North America from Manitoba through Ontario in the north, south to Oklahoma, Arkansas and North Carolina, and it is listed as rare, endangered, threatened or extirpated in parts of this range.
This species resembles bottle gentian (Gentiana andrewsii), which has blue flowers and a less upright habit, and shares much of the same range. Gentiana alba starts to bloom a few weeks earlier than bottle gentian and the flowers are more open at the tops. Gentiana alba can also hybridize with Gentiana andrewsii, producing upright growing plants having white flowers with blue edges.
Gentian · Southern Gentian · Closed bottle gentian · Willow Gentian · Appalachian gentian · Pine barren gentian · Baeuerlen's Gentian · Gentiana bavarica · Gentiana bredboensis · Rainier pleated gentian · Elliott's gentian · Bottle gentian
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Gentiana alba by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
