Yukon stitchwort

Lidia yukonensis (Hultén) Á. Löve & D. Löve

Plants perennial, mat-forming. Taproots stout, woody. Stems erect to ascending, green, 10-30 cm, minutely retrorsely pubescent proximally, flowering stems sti-pitate-glandular, usually densely so, internodes of flowering stems 3-5 times as long as leaves. Leaves tightly overlapping (vegetative), variably spaced (cauline), usually connate proximally, with tight, scarious to herbaceous sheath 0.5-1.8 mm; blade straight to outwardly curved, green, flat, 3-veined abaxially, midvein more prominent than 2 lateral veins, filiform-linear, 10-18 × 0.8-1.3 mm, flexuous, margins not thickened, scarious, ciliate, often sparsely so, apex green, often with white callosity, acuminate-pungent, flat to slightly navicular, shiny, glabrous; axillary leaves present among vegetative leaves. Inflorescences 3-13-flowered, open cymes; bracts lanceolate, herbaceous. Pedicels 2-5 cm, densely stipitate-glandular. Flowers: hypanthium cup-shaped; sepals prominently 3-veined, lanceolate to oblong-lanceolate (herbaceous lanceolate to oblong-lanceolate), 6-8 mm, not enlarging in fruit, apex green to purplish, rounded, hooded, stipitate-glandular, especially proximally; petals oblanceolate, 1.3-1.5 times as long as sepals, apex rounded, entire. Capsules narrowly ellipsoid, 7-10 mm, longer than sepals. Seeds reniform, ca. 1 mm, tuberculate.

Flowering spring-summer. Dry, rocky slopes and meadows, scree slopes into alpine zone; 0-1000 m; B.C., N.W.T., Yukon; Alaska; Asia (Russian Far East).

Minuartia yukonensis is an amphi-Beringian species, reported from two sites in the Russian Far East. Some collections of it may be labeled as Arenaria laricifolia Linnaeus, a European species to which Alaskan material has been misattributed.