Persicaria lapathifolia

Willow weed, Willow Weed

Family: Polygonaceae · Type: annual · Native

Willow weed is a California native annual found in moist places, disturbed areas, roadsides, and fields at elevations below 1,500 meters. Flowering from June to October, this plant produces green-white to pink flowers in small nodding clusters 30 to 80 millimeters long. Growing with ascending to erect stems 10 to 100 centimeters tall that are glabrous or appressed-hairy, it has distinctive lance-shaped leaves 4 to 12 centimeters long with dark blotches on the upper surface. Its leaves have truncate brown ocreas (leaf sheaths) 4 to 25 millimeters long, with narrow to wide lanceolate blades that are strigose along the main veins. The fruit is a shiny brown to black lens-shaped achene 1.5 to 3.2 millimeters long.

Habitat: Moist places, disturbed areas, roadsides, fields

Bloom period: Jun-Oct

Elevation: < 1500 m

Bioregions: CA

California counties: Glenn, Butte, Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Bernardino, Los Angeles, Orange, Shasta, Colusa, Plumas, San Diego, San Luis Obispo, Marin, Monterey, San Mateo, Santa Cruz, Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, Calaveras, El Dorado, Fresno, Imperial, Mariposa, Mono, Nevada, Placer, Sacramento, Siskiyou, Solano, Tehama, Sutter, Tulare, Inyo, Kern, Kings, Lake, Mendocino, Merced, Riverside, San Joaquin, Santa Clara, Sonoma, Yuba, Lassen, Modoc, Trinity, Humboldt, Stanislaus, Del Norte, Tuolumne, Yolo, Napa

Data from The California Species Project — 14,000+ California species with verified data from CNPS, CDFW, USFWS, Jepson eFlora, Cal-IPC, and more.