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Stellaria nitens
Also called Shining Starwort, Shining Chickweed, Shiny Starwort, Shiny Stitchwort
Shiny chickweed (Stellaria nitens) is a small native annual herb of western North America, typically found in dry or moist open ground and disturbed places rather than grown in gardens. It is a wild weed, so it is not commonly cultivated, and it reseeds itself from season to season.
Stellaria nitens is a species of flowering plant in the family Caryophyllaceae known by the common names shiny chickweed and shining starwort. It is native to western North America, including British Columbia, Alberta, and the western United States, its distribution extending into Mexico at least as far as Baja California. It grows in many types of habitat, in dry and moist areas, and sometimes in disturbed places. It is an annual herb producing a slender, upright, four-angled stem from a thin taproot, reaching up to about 25 centimeters (9.8 in) in height. Most of the leaves are located low on the stem, each measuring up to 1.5 centimeters (0.59 in) long, with smaller, narrower leaves occurring above. The leaves are hairless except for some rough hairs along the margins, and the blades have shiny surfaces. The inflorescence bears a few flowers on short pedicels.
Bog chickweed · Stellaria apetala · Giant Chickweed · Boreal starwort · Northern starwort · Tennessee starwort · Fleshy starwort · Curled starwort · Stellaria cupaniana · Stellaria flaccida · Grass-like starwort · Saltmarsh starwort
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Stellaria nitens 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.
