Sagina namadgi
L.G.Adams Native PearlwortPerennial with fibrous roots, often adventitious from nodes; glabrous. Stems lax, diffusely branching and often stoloniferous, 2–15 cm long; basal leaf-rosette absent at anthesis. Leaves sessile, linear, acute or mucronulate, glabrous, 4–10 mm long, 0.3–0.5 mm wide. Flowers 4-merous; pedicels erect, 4–15 mm long, in fruit at first sharply deflexed below capsule, later erect; calyx glabrous, sepals broad-ovate to suborbicular, with narrow-scarious margins, c. 1.5 mm long at anthesis, appressed to ripe fruit and then c. 2 mm long; petals broad-obovate, entire, white, half to three-quarters sepal length; stamens 4 or 8; styles 3–4. Capsule broad-ovoid to subglobose, 1.5–2 times sepal length; seeds dark brown, grey or black, tumid-reniform to subglobose, not grooved dorsally, bluntly colliculate, 0.4–0.5 mm long. Flowers Jan.
VAlp. Also NSW, Tas. Indigenous to subalpine flushes and creek margins in cool-temperate eastern Australia. In Victoria known only from Dinner and Dargo Plains near Mt Hotham, but likely to be more widespread in alps.
An inconspicuous plant, no doubt overlooked in many situations (or passed over in mistake for the adventive S. procumbens).
Adams, L.G. (1996). Caryophyllaceae. In: Walsh, N.G.; Entwisle, T.J., Flora of Victoria Vol. 3, Dicotyledons Winteraceae to Myrtaceae, pp. 228–271. Inkata Press, Melbourne.