Woodland false buttonweed

Spermacoce remota, the woodland false buttonweed, is a perennial herb or weak sub-shrub of the madder family (Rubiaceae) reaching up to 70 cm in height. The stems are slender, erect to ascending, round or square in cross-section, and lightly pubescent. Opposite, lanceolate leaves are up to 5 cm long with entire margins and short petioles, joined at the nodes by interpetiolar stipules characteristic of the family. Small white tubular flowers, each only a few millimetres wide, are clustered in dense terminal and sometimes axillary heads at the upper nodes; the four-lobed corolla surmounts an inferior ovary that ripens into a small, two-seeded capsule. The species is widespread in the Neotropics, occurring through the Caribbean, Mexico, Central and South America in disturbed ground, woodland edges, roadsides, and pastures, and is naturalised across parts of the Old World tropics. It is a known oviposition host for butterflies such as Anartia fatima.