White campion (Silene latifolia)

Synonyms: Melandrium album, Lychnis alba, Silene alba, Silene pratense, Silene pratensis

Common Names: Evening campion, bladder campion, white cockle

Description: Tends to interbreed with red catchfly (Silene dioica).

Habit: Erect, biennial or perennial, 12-40 inch tall forb usually hairy with glands towards the top. Male and female flowers are separate.

Leaves: Opposite, 4-10 cm long, hairy, thin and lanceolate to ovate in shape. 10 pairs along the stem; lower stalked, upper stalkless.

Stems: Hairy, erect.

Flowers: White, 5 petals, 1 to 1 1/3 inches wide, fragrant, stalked; calyx is white or light green and about 3/4 - 1 inch long, sepals tubular with purple ridges and inflating with age, petals deeply 2 lobed, opening in the evening; blooms June to October.

Fruit and seeds: Fruit is about a 1/2 in urn shaped capsule with 10 upturned or spreading teeth. Tan in color turning dark brown. Seeds are numerous and just over 1 mm long, somewhat kidney shaped and covered with tiny pimples. Produces up to 24,000 seeds.

Habitat: Native to Europe. Found in fields, waste ground, disturbed sites, roadsides and along railroads.

Reproduction: Primarily by seed.

Similar species: Nightflowering silene (Silene noctiflora).

Monitoring and rapid response: Hand-pulling for small infestations, making sure all fragments are removed; effectively controlled using any of the several readily available general use herbicides.

Credits: The information provided in this factsheet was gathered from Minnesota Wildflowers, Missouri Plants and Brandeis University.

Individual species images that appear with a number in a black box are courtesy of the Bugwood.org network (http://www.invasive.org). Individual photo author credits may not be included due to the small display size of the images and subsequent difficulty of reading the provided text. All other images appear courtesy of Google (http://images.google.com).

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