Procumbent Pearlwort

Procumbent Pearlwort (also Matted Pearlwort or Birdeye Pearlwort) is a low-growing, perennial plant with a spreading habit.

Species introduction

At a glance
Latin name: 
Sagina procumbens
Family: 
Pinks
Family Latin name: 
CARYOPHYLLACEAE
Category: 
Flowering Plants

Species description

Species description

Procumbent Pearlwort (also Matted Pearlwort or Birdeye Pearlwort) is a low-growing, perennial plant with a spreading habit. It flowers from May to September and is fairly common throughout Britain. 

There are seven different species of Pearlwort plants. Each favours different habitats and/or different regions of Britain. Procumbent Pearlwort is a prostrate plant with hairless stalks, having the ability to root from its nodes. 

This plant is tiny, and easily hidden by other, larger plants. Indeed, it is so small that even during three years of species surveys it escaped our attention, finally becoming noticed in October 2023 only when an adjacent colony of moss was being photographed with a macro lens. It had seeded itself in the join between two large slabs of marble headstone. 

In two places, Procumbent Pearlwort has become an invasive species. On Gough Island, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the South Atlantic, and the Prince Edward Islands off the south coast of South Africa, the plant must have been introduced on the clothing or footwear of visitors. It has grown at an alarming rate and needed a special clearance program to avoid other, native plants being smothered. This is highly unlikely to happen in Heene Cemetery!

Species photographs

Larger photograph(s) (click to magnify)

Details

Species family information

The plants of this family are mainly found in temperate regions, the best known members being pinks and carnations.

Category information

Nucleic multicellular photosynthetic organisms lived in freshwater communities on land as long ago as a thousand million years, and their terrestrial descendants are known from the late Pre-Cambrian 850 million years ago. Embryophyte land plants are known from the mid Ordovician, and land plant structures such as roots and leaves are recognisable in mid Devonian fossils. Seeds seem to have evolved by the late Devonian. The Embryophytes are green land plants that form the bulk of the Earth’s vegetation. They have specialised reproductive organs and nurture the young embryo sporophyte. Most obtain their energy by photosynthesis, using sunlight to synthesise food from Carbon Dioxide and Water.

The earliest known plant group is the Archaeplastida, which were autotrophic. Listing just the surviving descendants, which evolved in turn, we have the Red Algae, the Chlorophyte Green Algae, the Charophyte Green Algae, and then the Embryophyta or land plants. The earliest embryophytes were the Liverworts, followed by the Hornworts, and the Mosses. Then we have the Vascular Plants, the Lycophytes and Ferns, followed by the Spermatophytes or seed plants, the Gnetophytes, Conifers, Ginkgos, and Cycads, and finally the Magnoliophyta (Angiosperms) or flowering plants.