Silene gallica

Small-flower catchfly, windmill pink, Windmill Pink

Family: Caryophyllaceae · Type: annual · Not Native

Small-flower catchfly is a naturalized annual found in California Floristic Province in fields and disturbed areas at elevations below 1,000 meters. Flowering from spring to early summer, this plant produces white, pink, or lavender flowers with petals less than 6 millimeters long. Growing 10 to 40 centimeters tall with decumbent to erect stems that are short-rough-hairy, it has a distinctive growth habit. Its lower leaves are oblanceolate, 1 to 3.5 centimeters long and 3 to 5 millimeters wide, gradually reducing in size toward the stem tips. The fruit is a small ovoid capsule with puberulent stalks less than 1 millimeter long.

Habitat: Fields, disturbed areas

Bloom period: Spring-early summer

Elevation: < 1000 m

Bioregions: CA-FP

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

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