Plantae > Tracheophyta > Magnoliopsida > Caryophyllales > Caryophyllaceae > Silene > Silene acaulis

Silene acaulis (moss campion; cushion-pink)

Synonyms:

Wikipedia Abstract

Silene acaulis, known as moss campion or cushion pink, is a small mountain-dwelling wildflower that is common all over the high arctic and tundra in the higher mountains of Eurasia and North America, (south to the Alps, Carpathians, southern Siberia, Pyrenees, British Isles, Faroe Islands, Rocky Mountains). It is an evergreen perennial. It is also called the compass plant, since the flowers appear first on the south side of the cushion. (Various other plants also have this name.)
View Wikipedia Record: Silene acaulis

Infraspecies

Silene acaulis acaulis (Moss campion)
Silene acaulis cenisia
Silene acaulis exscapa
Silene acaulis longiscapa
Silene acaulis vanensis

Attributes

Allergen Potential [1]  Medium-Low
Bee Flower Color [2]  Blue
Flower Color [2]  Pink
Edible [3]  May be edible. See the Plants For A Future link below for details.
Flower Type [3]  Hermaphrodite
Hazards [3]  Although no mention of toxicity has been seen for this species, it does contain saponins. Although toxic, these substances are very poorly absorbed by the body and so tend to pass through without causing harm. They are also broken down by thorough cooking. Saponins are found in many plants, including several that are often used for food, such as certain beans. It is advisable not to eat large quantities of food that contain saponins. Saponins are much more toxic to some creatures, such as fish, and hunting tribes have traditionally put large quantities of them in streams, lakes etc in order to stupefy or kill the fish;
Leaf Type [3]  Evergreen
Lifespan [3]  Perennial
Pollinators [3]  Lepidoptera, Insects, Lepidoptera
Structure [5]  Herb
Usage [3]  Plants form a rooting carpet and can be grown as a ground cover when planted about 25cm apart each way;
Height [3]  1.968 inches (0.05 m)
Width [3]  6 inches (0.15 m)
Light Preference [4]  Mostly Sunny
Soil Acidity [4]  Moderate Acid
Soil Fertility [4]  Infertile
Soil Moisture [4]  Moist
View Plants For A Future Record : Silene acaulis

Protected Areas

Ecosystems

Predators

Providers

Consumers

Parasitized by 
Microbotryum silenes-acaulis[9]

External References

USDA Plant Profile

NatureServe Explorer

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1Derived from Allergy-Free Gardening OPALS™, Thomas Leo Ogren (2000)
♦ 2Arnold SEJ, Faruq S, Savolainen V, McOwan PW, Chittka L, 2010 FReD: The Floral Reflectance Database — A Web Portal for Analyses of Flower Colour. PLoS ONE 5(12): e14287.
♦ 3Plants For A Future licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
♦ 4ECOFACT 2a Technical Annex - Ellenberg’s indicator values for British Plants, M O Hill, J O Mountford, D B Roy & R G H Bunce (1999)
♦ 5Kattge, J. et al. (2011b) TRY - a global database of plant traits Global Change Biology 17:2905-2935
♦ 6Biological Records Centre Database of Insects and their Food Plants
♦ 7Disparate determinants of summer and winter diet selection of a general herbivore, Ochotona princeps, M. Denise Dearing, Oecologia (1996) 108:467-478
♦ 8Making The Forest And Tundra Wildlife Connection
♦ 9Jorrit H. Poelen, James D. Simons and Chris J. Mungall. (2014). Global Biotic Interactions: An open infrastructure to share and analyze species-interaction datasets. Ecological Informatics.
♦ 10Insect-flower associations in the high Arctic with special reference to nectar., Hocking, B. 1968. Oikos 19:359-388
Abstract provided by DBpedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0