[Reprinted from Journal OF the New York Botanical Garden, July, 1912.] 



WILD PLANTS NEEDING PROTECTION.^ 

 3. "Wild Pink" (Silene car oliniana Walt.). 



(With Plate XCVII.) 



Before the trees cast much shade, while their greens are still 

 so exquisitely fresh and varied, a bright flash of color will attract 

 the eye to the Wild Pink, growing in hilly places on rocks or often 

 in their cracks and crevices with the Saxifrage. The beautiful 

 rose pink and size of its flowers renders it very conspicuous, for 

 it often makes a large patch or cushion with a number of stems 

 about six to ten inches high, each bearing from three to five 

 showy flowers more than an inch across. Each petal is wedge- 

 shaped, with a long, pale white, basal claw enclosed in the tubular, 

 5-notched calyx and crowned at the summit of each claw by 

 two erect, white appendages. The stamens are immersed in the 

 tube, ten in number, five long and five short with purple anthers 

 and slender white filaments attached at the base of the ovary 

 which terminates in three short styles. The pod is stipitate, 

 developing in the upper half of the withered calyx, splitting at 

 apex into six recurved segments. The seeds are borne on a 

 central column and are small and numerous, kidney-shaped and 

 brown, with a rough surface. 



The whole plant is viscid with glandular hairs forming a ciliate 

 margin to the leaves, which are opposite, clasping at base a 

 swollen joint of the stem; usually each stem has three pairs of 



1 Illustrated by the aid of the Stokes' Fund for the Preservation of Native 

 Plants. 



109 



