Silene disticha Willd.
Taprooted annual. Stems usually single, stout, with dense short and sparse long eglandular hairs, 30-60 cm tall. Lvs hispid with shorter hairs on the margins, green, 2-8 × 0.5-2.5 cm; basal lvs oblanceolate to spathulate, acute; stem lvs becoming lanceolate or linear-lanceolate, very shortly connate, acute. Infl. of paired raceme-like monochasial cymes with a fl. in the axil between them, compact at flowering, elongating only slightly at fruiting; pedicels 2-5-(10) mm long; bracts linear, green. Fls ⚥. Calyx with dense short glandular and short and long eglandular hairs, ovoid-cylindric at flowering, ovoid at fruiting, contracted at mouth, 9-11 mm long, 10-veined; teeth triangular, acute, erecto-patent. Petals white or pink; limb very short, deeply divided; claw not lobed; coronal scales oblong, obtuse, c. 0.5 mm long. Styles 3, erect, 2-4 mm long. Capsule ovoid, slightly exserted, 7-9 mm long; teeth 6, curved; carpophore 1-2 mm long. Seeds dark grey, reniform with hollowed striate faces and wide shallowly-grooved tuberculate backs, c. 1 mm long.
N.: Wellington City and suburbs, Hutt Valley.
N.W. Africa, Portugal, Balearic Is 1940
Roadsides and waste land, railway ballast.
S. disticha is very similar to S. gallica in its slender monochasia and small fls, but may be distinguished by the axillary fl. in the fork of the paired monochasia, the carpophore 1-2 mm long, and the shallowly grooved backs to the seeds. The sp. has sometimes been referred to in N.Z. as S. dichotoma.
