Rose-pink, also called rose gentian, is a biennial wildflower whose first year is spent as a basal rosette of leaves; it sends up a flowering stalk the second year. The many opposite branches make it look like a candelabra; the stems are square in cross-section and are winged.
Each flower is borne on a stalk arising from the upper leaf axils, to 1 inch across, with 5 spreading corolla lobes; pink (sometimes white), with a green or yellow inner ring; delicately scented.
Blooms June–September.
The leaves are opposite, sessile, clasping the stem, ovate to lanceolate, lacking teeth, to 1½ inches long.
Key identifiers:
- Flowers distinctive, usually pink, sometimes white
- Stems square, slightly winged
- Branches in flower cluster opposite
- Leaves opposite, sessile, clasping
Similar species: Two other species of marsh pinks (genus Sabatia) occur in Missouri. All have pink or white flowers.
- Prairie rose gentian (Sabatia campestris) has the branches in the flower cluster alternate (not opposite); its calyx tube is prominently 5-ribbed or winged (not smooth), and the plant grows only to about 9 inches tall. It is found in prairies, fields, and roadsides, scattered mostly in the southern two-thirds of the state. Less common than S. angularis.
- Marsh pink, or narrowleaf rose gentian (Sabatia brachiata), is considered critically imperiled in our state, having been recorded only from Butler County in southeast Missouri. On it, the lower half of the stem is circular in cross-section (not square as in rose-pink) and is not angled, though the upper half of the stem is angled. Also, its leaf bases are not clasping. Otherwise, it resembles rose-pink. It occurs mostly in states to our southeast; Missouri represents the northwestern edge of its range.
Height: to 2 feet.
Scattered in the southern half and northeastern quarter of the state.
Habitat and Conservation
Occurs in glades, openings of moist to dry upland forests, banks of streams and rivers, bottomland prairies, moist depressions of upland prairies, and fens; also pastures, old fields, fallow fields, quarries, cemeteries, ditches, railroads, and roadsides.
Status
Native Missouri wildflower.
Human Connections
This showy native wildflower should be used more often in flower gardens. The plants reseed themselves and can have a more or less permanent presence. They prefer well-drained, fairly acid soil and an open situation. Don’t dig plants from the wild; get plants or seeds from reputable wildflower nurseries.
Ecosystem Connections
Bees visit the flowers to feed on and collect pollen for their young.
At least one moth, the short-lined chocolate (Argyrostrotis anilis), has been reported using rose pink as its caterpillar food plant. This moth is attractively brown the way rose gentian is attractively pink. It mostly feeds on members of the rose family, such as hawthorns and wild crabapples, cherry, and plums.
