Western marsh-pink, prairie or Texas rose-gentian, meadow-pink, Texas-star

Herbs annual. Stems generally single, 4-angled, sometimes with wings to 0.2 mm wide, 0.6–5 dm, branching all or mostly alternate. Leaves all cauline at flowering time; blade lanceolate-elliptic to ovate, that is, widest proximal to or near middle, 0.8–4 cm × 5–20 mm. Inflorescences open cymes; pedicels (10–)20–100 mm. Flowers 5-merous; calyx tube shallowly campanulate, 3–8 mm, commissural veins more prominent than mid­veins, strongly ridged, distally keeled, lobes linear, (6–)10–22(–32) mm; corolla pink or occasionally white, eye often absent or not sharply defined, when present greenish yellow, projections of eye into corolla lobes oblong to narrowly triangular with a reddish border alternating with shorter white or paler yellow zones, tube 4–9 mm, lobes obovate, that is, widest distal to middle, 10–25 × (5–)9–15 mm, apex abruptly ± acute; anthers coiling circinately. 2n = 26.

Flowering mid spring–early fall. Dry or wet open woods, prairies, fields, roadsides, sandy soils; 0–600 m; Ark., Ill., Kans., La., Miss., Mo., Okla., Tex.

Sabatia campestris occurred as an introduction in Connecticut and Maine in the past. Reports from North Carolina have been derived from the misreading of the label of a specimen actually from Missouri. Reports from Iowa were probably derived from a combination of an ambiguous description and misinterpreted geo­graphic data.

Sabatia campestris often resembles S. angularis in aspect, and its stems may be distinctly although narrowly winged. The species can readily be distinguished from S. angularis by the prominent keeled ridges below the sinuses of its calyx. Also, in the corollas of S. campestris, the yellow projections of the eye are oblong to narrowly triangular, alternating with shorter, pale yellow to white zones; those of S. angularis the yellow or yellowish green projections of the eye are widely triangular, contiguous, not alternating with pale yellow zones.