Deptford pink has straight, strong, narrow stems that bear small clusters of pink flowers with white dots. It's common statewide in sunny, open locations such as pastures and roadsides.
Deptford pink is a stiffly erect annual or biennial with slender stems.
The flowers are in small groups (cymes), subtended by long, linear bracts and a green calyx; the corolla lobes are 5, fringed at the tips, pinkish or purplish red with white dots (rarely all white).
Blooms May–October.
The leaves are opposite, very narrow, linear, to 3 inches long, and hairy.
Similar species: There are four Dianthus species recorded for our state. All of them are native to Europe or western Asia, and all but Deptford pink are rather uncommon. They would most likely be encountered only as escapes from cultivation. Carnations are in this same genus.
Height: to 20 inches.
Statewide.
Habitat and Conservation
Occurs in fields, pastures, prairies, waste places, and roadsides. Often grows in large colonies in abandoned fields.
A native of Europe, it was probably first introduced to North America as a garden ornamental, although today is rarely cultivated. Several other Dianthus species are popular for gardening.
Status
Nonnative wildflower, naturalized in much of North America. Native to Europe.
Human Connections
Members of genus Dianthus are commonly called "pinks," and many of them bear pink-colored flowers. But although the flowers of many pinks are pink, it is the characteristic "pinked" petals (zigzag-edged, as if cut by a pinking shears) that gave them their name. It was the flowers of pinks that inspired the word pink as a color name. Pink wasn't used as the name for a color until the late 1600s, but pink as an verb (to cut in a punched or pecked pattern) dates back to the 1300s.
Deptford, now a part of London, is where a 1633 botanical book claimed this species grew. However, since that tome said it was a "creeping pink" with leaves lying "flat upon the ground," it seems a different species had been observed. Other languages use different common names.
Although Deptford pink is not native to North America and is considered invasive in some states, it is now hard to find on the island of Britain, having been extirpated from Scotland and known from only about 30 localities in England and Wales.
Ecosystem Connections
Whether on purpose or by accident, people have moved plants across the globe. In some cases, these introduced plants can escape and become classified as "naturalized," which means they grow, reproduce, and persist on their own, out of cultivation. But not all naturalized plants are invasive, and a plant that is invasive in some regions may not be invasive in others.
- A narrow definition of "invasive" is an alien species whose introduction does, or is likely to cause economic or environmental harm, or harm to human health.
- Another way of distinguishing between plants that are invasive, and those that are only nonnative/naturalized, is to consider whether the species easily becomes established in native habitats and outcompetes native plants. Nonnative plants that become established only in disturbed habitats, such as gardens, lawns, roadsides, pastures, and crop fields, are usually less worrisome for our native ecosystems. They are usually not labeled as invasive.
