Pinewoods or spider rose-gentian

Lapithea gentianoides (Elliott) Grisebach

Herbs annual. Stems single, terete or slightly 4-ridged but not angled or winged, 1.5–5(–6.5) dm, branching opposite or alternate. Leaves cauline and often also basal present at flow­ering time; basal blades widely oblong-spatulate; cauline blades abruptly differentiated, linear, 1–10 cm × 1–3 mm. Inflorescences: flowers soli­tary or in dense, few-flowered clusters, sessile. Flowers 7–12-merous; calyx tube widely campanulate, 3–8 mm, not ridged, lobes setaceous, 3–17 mm; corolla pink, eye greenish yellow, projections of eye into corolla tube oblong, without a border, tube 6–10 mm, lobes oblan­ceolate to narrowly spatulate-obovate, 12–30 × 4–11 mm, apex rounded to obtuse; anthers slightly twisting helically, not coiling circinately. 2n = 28.

Flowering late spring–fall. Open wet pine woods, pine savannas, wet meadows, roadsides; 0–200 m; Ala., Ark., Fla., Ga., La., Miss., N.C., S.C., Tex.

The name spider rose-gentian is derived from the appearance of the involucre subtending each solitary flower or cluster of a few flowers, which comprises two to four or more closely spaced pairs of narrowly linear leaves.