Howell's miner's lettuce facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Howell's miner's lettuce
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Plantae
Clade:	Tracheophytes
Clade:	Angiosperms
Clade:	Eudicots
Order:	Caryophyllales
Family:	Montiaceae
Genus:	Montia
Species:	M. howellii
Binomial name
Montia howellii S.Watson
Script error: The function "autoWithCaption" does not exist.
Synonyms
Maxia howelii (S. Watson) Ö. Nilsson Montiastrum howellii (S. Watson) Rydb.

Script error: No such module "Check for conflicting parameters".

Montia howellii, also known as Howell's miner's lettuce or Howell's montia, is a small flowering plant. It belongs to the Montiaceae family. This plant grows naturally in western North America. You can find it from British Columbia in Canada down to northern California in the United States.

Howell's miner's lettuce likes wet places. It often grows in moist meadows and special seasonal ponds called vernal pools. Sometimes, you can even spot it growing in shallow puddles of water.

What is Howell's Miner's Lettuce?

This plant is a tiny annual herb. This means it lives for only one year. It grows very close to the ground, forming a small mat. It usually reaches about 9 centimeters (about 3.5 inches) tall.

Its leaves are long and thin, a bit like grass blades. They are arranged alternately along the stem. Each leaf can grow up to 2.5 centimeters (about 1 inch) long.

How It Reproduces

Howell's miner's lettuce has tiny flowers. There are usually 2 to 6 flowers on each plant. Each flower has small green parts called sepals. These sepals are like little leaves that protect the flower bud. They are only about 2 millimeters long. The petals are white and even smaller, less than a millimeter long.

These flowers are quite special! They can often fertilize themselves without even opening. This process is called cleistogamy. It's a clever way for the plant to make seeds. This can happen even if there are no insects around to help with pollination.