Creeping Baby's-breath Gypsophila repens
Creeping Baby's-breath is an introduced perennial herb, found in Canada and the lower 48 states. It grows to 0.5 ft.
More about this plant
Gypsophila repens, the alpine gypsophila or creeping baby's breath, is a species of flowering plant in the family Caryophyllaceae, native to the mountains of central and southern Europe, where it grows on dry, chalky slopes. The Latin name literally means "creeping chalk-lover". It is a prostrate, mat-forming herbaceous perennial, growing around 20 cm (8 in) tall by 30–50 cm (12–20 in) wide. For much of the summer it bears masses of star-shaped flowers which may be white, lilac or light purple, in loose panicles. Wikipedia →
Growing & care
USDA PLANTS · TRY- Hardiness
- ≥ zone 7 derived from its U.S. range
- Height
- 0.5 ft
- Lifespan
- Perennial
- Foliage
- Broadleaf
Related plants
More Gypsophila →
How we know this (3) Methods & honest limits
We read each species’ measured specific leaf area (leaf area per unit dry weight) from the Global Spectrum dataset and band it: thin & fast (high SLA), medium, or thick & tough (low SLA). The global median is about 10 mm²/mg.
Honest limits: A species-mean from pooled measurements — individual plants vary with light and site. A broad strategy signal, not a precise per-plant figure.
We place each species on Grime’s competitor–stress-tolerator–ruderal (C–S–R) triangle using the globally-calibrated “StrateFy” method: leaf size drives the competitor score, dense low-area leaves the stress-tolerator score, and thin high-area leaves the ruderal score. The result is a C/S/R percentage mix and one of 19 strategy classes; we show it in plain words and keep the percentages for the curious.
Honest limits: A species-mean strategy from pooled global leaf measurements — a broad ecological signal, not a precise per-plant or per-site value. Derived, never a measured fact.
A recorded categorical fact: each species is tagged C3 (standard), C4 (heat/water-efficient) or CAM (succulent, night-time CO₂ uptake) — or a facultative combination. We only show a trait card for the noteworthy C4/CAM cases; C3 is the unremarkable majority, kept in the data but not surfaced as a card.
Sources for this entry (17) Open & cited
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PlantKey’s data is open under CC BY-SA 4.0 — free to reuse and adapt, with attribution and the same licence. Photos keep their own per-image licence + credit (see Sources above).
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