Montia

Plant Characteristics

Cultivation

Scientific Names

Montia >

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Read about Montia in the Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture

Montia (Guiseppe Monti, professor of botany at Bologna in the first half of the eighteenth century). Portulacaceae. Small glabrous herbs, grown for ornament and one as a salad or pot-herb; annual and perennial. Leaves opposite, fleshy: fls. minute, nodding solitary or loosely racemed, white, or pale rose-color; sepals 2 (rarely 3), broadly ovate, persistent; petals 3, more or less united; stamens 3 (rarely 5), inserted on the corolla; ovary 3-ovuled; style short, 3-parted: caps. 3-valved, 3-seeded; seeds nearly orbicular, compressed, minutely tuberculate.—About 18 species of American herbs, including the winter purslane, a salad or potherb known to the European trade as Claytonia perfoliata. This odd plant is perhaps cult.in Amer. by a few fanciers of rarer kinds of vegetables. In hot countries it may be more desirable. The most remarkable feature is a sort of cup an inch or more in diam., from which arise the racemes of small, white or rose-colored fls. One of these cups crowns each of the sts., which are numerous, slender, leafless, and about twice as long as the lvs. The name "perfoliata" is suggested by the resemblance of the cup to a perfoliate lf. In M. perfoliata the cup is usually 2-lobed; and the species runs into M. parviflora, which rarely has the cup transformed into 2 almost disjoined lvs. M. fontana is the aquatic or semi-aquatic species found in most of the temperate regions of the world. The winter purslane is now a weed in most parts of the world. The seed may be sown all through spring and summer where the plants are to stand. Montia cannot be distinguished from Claytonia by any one character, but the cult.plants of both genera have been sufficiently discriminated here and under Claytonia. The above text is from the Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture. It may be out of date, but still contains valuable and interesting information which can be incorporated into the remainder of the article. Click on "Collapse" in the header to hide this text.

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References

• Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture, by L. H. Bailey, MacMillan Co., 1963

External links

• w:Montia. Some of the material on this page may be from Wikipedia, under the Creative Commons license.
• Montia QR Code (Size 50, 100, 200, 500)