Flowering or red or scarlet or crimson flax Flowering or red or scarlet or crimson flax

Herbs, annual, 10–60 cm, glabrous, glaucous. Stems ascending or sometimes decumbent at base, usually freely branched. Leaves: blade linear to lanceolate or narrowly elliptic, 10–30 × 2–3(–7) mm. Inflorescences cymes, few-flowered. Pedicels 10–25 mm. Flowers heterostylous; sepals lanceolate, 7–11 mm, margins glabrous, apex acuminate; petals bright red to maroon, fading to purple, broadly obovate, 15–30 mm; stamens 8–10 mm; anthers 5 mm; staminodia not seen; styles connate proximal 1/2, 4.5 mm (short-styled) or 8–10 mm (long-styled); stigmas clavate. Capsules ovoid-globose, 6–7 mm diam., apex apiculate, segments persistent on plant, margins not seen. Seeds 2–3 × 0.5–1 mm. 2n = 16.

Flowering Apr–Sep. Disturbed areas; 0–2700 m; introduced; Calif., Colo., Fla., Ky., Nebr., N.Y., Ohio, Pa., Tex., Utah; n Africa.

Linum grandiflorum occasionally escapes from gardens and persists along roadsides and trails. This showy garden plant has blue anthers.