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Caryophyllaceae family

Twinflower Sandwort Minuartia obtusiloba

Native

Twinflower Sandwort is a perennial shrub native to Alaska, Canada, and the lower 48 states. It grows to 0.1 ft and blooms Jun – Aug.

Growing & care

USDA PLANTS · TRY
Conditions
Sources · Conditions
Cold hardiness (derived) — Hardiness
Hardiness
≥ zone 6 derived from its U.S. range
Size & form
Sources · Size & form
TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0) — Height
USDA PLANTS — Lifespan
Height
0.1 ft
Lifespan
Perennial
In the garden
Ground-cover layer — Sits in the ground-cover of a layered food forest or polyculture.Open guide →
derived roles
The garden year bloom → fruit → fall colour
J
F
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A
M
J
J
A
S
O
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Bloom
Bloom (the flower's colour)
Bloom · Jun – Aug — 866 obs · USA-NPN — Nature's Notebook (CC BY 4.0)
Species characteristics from USDA PLANTS (public domain) + TRY (CC BY) — general guidance, not a guarantee for your exact site. Deer "browsing" is documented palatability, not a deer-proof claim.

Wildlife & pollinators

How pollinator value is scored →
Wildlife & visitors 1 bird

Open records of who else uses Twinflower Sandwort — a generalist food-web signal, kept separate from the keystone Ecological Value.

Recorded eaten by 1 bird species (fruit, seed, browse):

Lagopus leucura · White-Tailed Ptarmigan
Interaction records (observations, not exhaustive) from GloBI → (CC0). Counts are distinct species; names are the most-recorded. Common names from Wikidata (CC0).
Species thumbnails re-hosted from iNaturalist — Creative Commons, credited per image (hover for credit). Click any species to see it on iNaturalist. Not exhaustive; many taxa have no openly-licensed photo yet.
Frequently grows with

Across 39 U.S. vegetation-survey plots that recorded Twinflower Sandwort, these catalog species turned up most often in the same plot — a real field co-occurrence signal, not a planting prescription.

Sheep Fescue · 33% Eightpetal Mountain-avens · 31% Largeflower Fleabane · 31% Ross' Avens · 31% Spike Trisetum · 31% Spiked Woodrush · 28% Cushion Phlox · 28% Dunhead Sedge · 26%
"%" = share of this plant's plots that also held the species. From sPlotOpen → (Sabatini et al. 2021, CC BY 4.0) — open vegetation plots: wild community composition, not garden design.
How we know this (1) Methods & honest limits
Leaf build Direct fact

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.

Díaz, S. et al. (2022) The global spectrum of plant form and function: enhanced species-level trait dataset. Scientific Data 9:755.
Derived values are computed from open data by a published method — labelled, cited, and never shown as a direct observation. Full methodology →
Sources for this entry (15) Open & cited
[01] Scientific name & family — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[02] Growth habit & duration — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[03] Native status & distribution — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[04] Common name — USDA PLANTS (via GBIF)
[05] Invasive / introduced status — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — native status
[06] Wetland indicator — USACE National Wetland Plant List (2022)
[08] Ecological value — GloBI
[11] Functional traits — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)
[12] Cold hardiness (derived) — Derived from U.S. range × USDA PHZM zones
[13] Wildlife & visitors — GloBI — Global Biotic Interactions (CC0)
Spot an error or have a better photo? Every field links to its source, and the whole dataset is open.
Cite this page Open data, please attribute

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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