JOURNAL 
OF 
The New York Botanical Garden 
Vor. XIII July, 1912, No. 1€1. 
WILD PLANTS NEEDING PROTECTION.! 
3. “Witp PINK” (Silene caroliniana Walt.). 
(WitH PLaTeE 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 
lants. 
109 
