| Author | (Walter) E.E. Schilling | |
| Distribution | Widely scattered in the southern Piedmont and southern Mountains. Specimens from Wake County are all M. glabra, as are specimens from Franklin and Wilkes counties. Ranges north to Rowan and Burke counties.
This is a Southern species, ranging north only to southwestern NC and then south to central GA and central AL. It does not reach VA or TN.
| |
| Abundance | Rare to locally uncommon, and restricted to rock outcrops, and thus quite limited on the landscape. It is a State Endangered species. There may be enough records to push the State Rank more toward S2, but the website editors will leave the NCNHP's rank of S1 as is, for now. | |
| Habitat | This species is limited to granitic outcrops, almost always on flat (flatrocks) or rounded ones (domes). It grows in the thin soil along margins of the outcrops. |
| Phenology | Blooms in April and May, and fruits soon after flowering. | |
| Identification | This is a slender herb that grows erectly or leaning, but only to about 6 inches tall at best. It is quite similar to G. glabrum, but this species has much shorter stem leaves, each pair being only 2-5 mm (about 1/8-inch) long, as compared with 10-30 mm (about 3/4-inch) long in G. glabrum. Also, the upper stem leaves are often oblong or lanceolate and generally are not linear, as opposed to narrowly linear leaves in G. glabrum. The several flowers at the tips of branches have 5 white petals, as in others in the genus, but these are rather small and normally less than 1/3-inch across. Thus, the visual aspect of this species is of short plants in clusters that are not overly slender owing to the broader but shorter leaves; G. glabrum is more slender looking owing to the very narrow leaves. Thankfully, the ranges of these two do not, or barely do, overlap in the state. | |
| Taxonomic Comments | The Mononeuria species were formerly named as Arenaria species, and then as Minuartia. NatureServe still names this as Minuartia uniflora, but Weakley (2018) uses Mononeuria. And, in 2022, Schilling moved most of the genus now to Geocarpon. Weakley (2022) has followed this latest move -- certainly not the last!
| |
| Other Common Name(s) | One-flower Stitchwort, Single-flower Sandwort, Piedmont Sandwort | |
| State Rank | S1 | |
| Global Rank | G4 | |
| State Status | E | |
| US Status | | |
| USACE-agcp | | |
| USACE-emp | | |
