Slender parsley-piert

Aphanes australis, the slender parsley-piert, is a tiny prostrate annual herb in the family Rosaceae native to western and southern Europe and naturalized in parts of North America, Australia, and South America. Plants form small spreading or ascending tufts only 2-10 cm tall, with slender freely branching stems clothed in short appressed hairs. Leaves are alternate, palmately three-lobed, 3-7 mm across, with each primary lobe further divided into 2-3 narrow finger-like segments; the leaves are mid- to grey-green and finely hairy. Each leaf is subtended by a conspicuous, leaflike, lobed stipule that completely surrounds the stem and partially encloses the tiny flower clusters. Flowers are minute (about 1-1.5 mm), greenish, lacking petals, with four sepals and 1-2 stamens, borne in dense fascicles in the axils of the stipules at every node. Aphanes australis is distinguished from the closely related A. arvensis by smaller, narrower stipule lobes that are converging rather than spreading, and by slightly smaller fruits. Flowering occurs from April through October. The fruit is a tiny dry achene enclosed in the persistent hypanthium. The species inhabits dry sandy or gravelly arable fields, paths, sparse turf, and disturbed open ground on acidic to neutral soils.