roughleaf loosestrife

This plant is a rhizomatous perennial herb growing erect to a maximum height around 60 to 70 centimeters. The lower stem is pinkish in color and ribbed, and the upper stem is yellowish and lacks ribs. The stem in the inflorescence is covered in reddish glands. The leaves are green, lance-shaped, and up to 5 centimeters long by 2 wide. They are borne in whorls of three or four around the stem, or sometimes in opposite pairs. The leaves are not rough in texture as the common name would suggest. Smaller, tougher, brown-colored leaves are opposite or borne in whorls of up to 7 near the stem base. The top of the stem is occupied by the inflorescence, which is a raceme of star-shaped yellow flowers interspersed with leaflike green bracts. Each flower has 4 to 7, but usually five, yellow petals with wide bases and pointed, ragged tips. The petals and green sepals are dotted with red glands and streaked with reddish resin canals. The fruit is a red-mottled straw-colored capsule a few millimeters in length.

This herb grows in a number of plant communities on the coastal plains of southern North Carolina and northern South Carolina, including pocosins, sandhills, pine flatwoods and pine savannas. It is most commonly found in open areas in the ecotone between longleaf pine uplands and pond pine pocosins. The soil is seasonally wet to waterlogged or submerged, low in nutrients, rich in peat over sandy substrates. The plant is found in sections of these habitat types which, in their pristine state, are openings in a dense layer of shrubs which are kept open by severe periodic wildfires. Fire prevents ecological succession, maintaining a type of ecosystem in which the taller vegetation is kept small and sparse, allowing the herb layer to flourish in the sun. Trees, shrubs, and ferns in the area include Aronia arbutifolia (chokeberry), Clethra alnifolia (summersweet), Cyrilla racemiflora (titi), Fothergilla gardenii (dwarf fothergilla), Ilex glabra (Appalachian tea), Magnolia virginiana (sweetbay), Osmunda cinnamomea (cinnamon fern), Persea palustris (swampbay), Symplocos tinctoria (yellowwood), and Vaccinium species (wild blueberries). …