Plants of South Eastern New South Wales
Centaurium erythraea
Common name
Common centaury, Pink stars, Centaury
Family
Gentianaceae
Where found
Dry forest, woodland, grassy areas, disturbed sites, and damp areas. Widespread.
Notes
Introduced annual or biennial herb to 0.5 m tall. Stems angular, hairless. Basal leaves in a rosette, rarely withered at flowering. If withered, they leave leaf scars close together at the base of the plant. Basal leaves 2.5-5 cm long, 8-20 mm wide, hairless, stem leaves opposite each other, 1-4 cm long, 5-15 mm wide, hairless, decreasing in size up the stems. Flowers 7-15 mm long, pink, tubular, with 5 lobes, each 4-6 mm long, in branched clusters. Corolla dries rose-pink. Calyx mostly 4-6 mm long and less than two-thirds the length of the corolla tube. Flowers all year.
Hybridises with Centaurium tenuiflorum.
Differs from Schenkia australis in that both branches of the inflorescence are about the same size. Style slightly forked; stigma lobes kidney-shaped to shoe-shaped, fleshy. Seed case linear.
PlantNET description: http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Centaurium~erythraea
(accessed 7 January, 2021)
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