Made a walk around the alpine tundra today - lots of miniature stuff: arctic willow, tiny asters, elegant epilobium. Hit the ground and took my glasses off to see what else I can find. And sure - here it is: the whole plant is just 12 mm toll, the flower - 2 mm on the hair-like stem, few short green needles for basal leaves. The flowers are quite colorless - there is no insects small enough to attract for pollination. Any guess what it could be? Useless to look for any photos on the web. Nobody can see it unless sticks the nose right into the ground. And without a microscope, I do not dare to use any identification key...
Genius! Never would consider cariophyls because of merged "petals". The trick was these are not petals but sections of open fruit. Not Sagina procumbens: procumbens and apetala have four sepals as a key feature. Five here. The only other species listed in Utah - Sagina saginoides, arctic pearlwort. Now I have to wail until next summer to see the flowers. Thanks you, Michael!
I looked at photos of such plants yesterday but it looked like the erect parts of your find were petals - unlike the spreading white petals of Sagina procumbens etc. Clicking on various species appearing in drop down list offered got a Utah site that may have shown same one you have. Searching utah wildflowers or whatever would be appropriate might bring up useful hits.
TAMU site provides images of Sagina procumbens very close to mine: http://www.forestryimages.org/browse/detail.cfm?imgnum=1363365
Oh! I have another unidentified thing with similar leaves. Unlike Sagina, which was found at a wet place, it grows above 10,000 feet on a dry granite slab. In the pictire, it is seen behind the mat rockspirea. At first, I thought they belong together, but they are not. Could you guess this, too? Thanks.
Re: tiny alpine micro-flower: follow up It was three months ago when you helped me to figure out this plant. And of course I could not wait until next summer to see this plant flowering, so I brought it home. This small patch of moss was very easy to maintain. Just add water every day. It produced a bunch of flowering Epilobiums and my Sagina also decided it's time. All cycle took just a couple of weeks. But as you can see the flower is quite dull. No petals! So, it is rather Sagina apetala. Unlike the pictures of apetala on the web, however, the sepals are not divergent and stay appressed to the ovary all the time. Since then the plant produced three more flowers and the scenario is almost the same. Of course, I cannot reproduce the alpine conditions inhouse and this may be the reason why it different from other photos. Anyway, it was interesting experiment. Now I can try to grow it from seeds.
Surprised you find it hard to grow . . . I've found that if pearlwort gets into a plant pot, it is almost impossible to get rid of. The tiniest fragment of root left after pulling it out is enough for it to regrow. The only way I succeeded was to cover it with black plastic for 3-4 months to starve it of light.
Not too hard. But it is not rampant at all. Maybe there is insufficient food - it grows just in a patch of moss. Or this is a different species, not one that plagues over-watered gardens.
