Elliott’s or narrow-leaved or short-leaved sabatia

Sabatia elliottii Steudel

Herbs annual. Stems single, terete, 1.5–7 dm, branching all or mostly alternate. Leaves all cauline or basal occasionally persistent at flowering time; blade linear to oblong-lanceolate, 0.5–3 cm × 1–5(–7) mm. Inflorescences open cymes or solitary flowers at ends of branches; pedicels (10–)20–40(–50) mm. Flowers 5-merous; calyx tube obconic, 1–3 mm, mid- and commissural veins about equally prominent, not or low-ridged, lobes filiform, 3–8 mm; corolla white, eye greenish yellow, projections of eye into corolla lobes without a contrasting border, tube 1–3 mm, lobes oblanceolate, 6–18 × 2–7 mm, apex obtuse to acute; anthers coiling circinately. 2n = 32.

Flowering late summer–fall. Open pine woods, savannas, bogs; 0–70 m; Ala., Fla., Ga., S.C.

Reports of Sabatia brevifolia from Louisiana were based on a specimen of questionable provenance and are considered probably erroneous by students of that state’s flora.

In some older literature, the name Sabatia difformis was misapplied to S. brevifolia.