Appalachian stitchwort, mountain sandwort, smooth mountain sandwort, and smooth sandwort is a rare perennialRare plant fact sheet PDCAROGOEO (2004) Maine Dept. of Conservation Natural Areas Program which grows low to the ground in clumps linked together at the bottom. It has three to five pairs of leaves in a linear opposite pattern along the length of the slender stem.Riley, J.L. (1979). Some New and Interesting Vascular Plant Records from Northern Ontario Canada. Canadian Field-Naturalist, 93(4), 355-362. The main stem breaks into one to thirty cymes which each flower separately. The flowers are white and arise five to ten centimeters above the thick foliage. The white flower petals are six to ten millimeters long. The petals are, in turn, surrounded by five green sepals.Levesque, C.M., Burger, J.F. (1982). Insects (Diptera, Hymenoptera) associated with Minuartia groenlandica (Caryophyllaceae) on Mount Washington, New Hampshire, USA, and their possible role as pollinators. Arctic and Alpine Research, 14(2), 117.
