| Author | Leggett ex Britton, Sterns, & Poggenburg | |
| Distribution | Found only along the northern coast, south to the Bodie Island area of Dare County. Surprisingly, it was not discovered in the state until 1991.
This is a Northeastern species, found only from NB and QC south through New England and then coastally to northern NC. | |
| Abundance | Rare to uncommon, and easily overlooked; numerous recent records (13) in the NCNHP database. The website editors believe that the species can now be moved down to a State Rank of S2, from the S1 as assigned by NCNHP. It is a State Threatened species. | |
| Habitat | This species grows in sandy coastal soils in NC, such as behind dunes, sand flats, and margins of maritime thickets and forests. |
| Phenology | Blooms from June to August, and fruits from August to September. | |
| Identification | The Lechea species are rather "insignificant" plants containing barely visible flowers, with technical characters (of the capsules or seeds) that separate many or most species. This species grows to about 10-12 inches tall, with a few branches. The basal leaves are on shoots, whorled, elliptic, and mostly only 1/3-inch long. The stem leaves are alternate, narrowly elliptic to linear, about 3/4-inch long. The panicle occupies the upper 1/2 to 2/3rds of the plant. The flower stalks are very pubescent. In this species, the outer (slender) sepals are shorter than the inner (broad) sepals, the capsules are normally less than 1.5 times as long as wide, the capsules are almost completely enveloped by the sepals, and the leaves are over 1.5 mm wide, as opposed to filiform/linear in L. torreyi -- based on Weakley's (2018) key. Generally, a pinweed of the northern coast, in dune habitat, should be this species. | |
| Taxonomic Comments | The taxon in NC is the southern variety -- var. virginica.
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| Other Common Name(s) | None | |
| State Rank | S1 [S2] | |
| Global Rank | G5 | |
| State Status | [T] | |
| US Status | | |
| USACE-agcp | | |
| USACE-emp | | |
