Single Record

Counties: Alamosa, Conejos, Costilla, Mineral, Rio Grande, Saguache, San Juan

PhotoRecords: YES Loraine Yeatts: Conejos Co, flank of Conejos Peak 7 Aug 2008

Comments: This remarkable starwort has been recorded from both sides of the Watershed on mountain tops and ridges and scree slopes such as on Alberta Peak. Conejos Peak, Sheep Mountain, Stony pass, Greenhalgh Mountain, west fork of Crestone Creek. There are a few records from the Rio Grande drainage in north New Mexico (in the border counties of Taos and Colfax), and from Mormon Mountain in Sevier Co, Utah. Otherwise the species would be a Colorado endemic. Historically it has been treated as conspecific with Stellaria irrigua of the Altai Mountains of Siberia, hence its common name (see Weber and Wittmann, 2012, p. 50), but in 2019 Mathew M. Sharples and Erin A. Tripp showed that the USA flower is a distinct species of its own and named it, fittingly, S. sanjuanensis (this revision has not yet been accepted by FNA or BONAP). Sharples and Tripp also noted that the Watershed species called Stellaria umbellata should be named S. irrigua (which see). Note that S. irrigua has flowers terminal and umbellate, usually with no petals; S. sanjuanensis has petaled flowers in the upper leaf axils.