Claytonia virginica, familiarly called spring beauty, is such a common plant here that whole hillsides where it grows are covered with its flowers during its brief blooming period. A few weeks later the shiny black seeds ripen and then the plants are gone above ground for the rest of the year. Below ground a miniature potato-like structure keeps things going until next year.
Claytonia belongs to the same botanical family as
Portulaca,
Montia,
Lewisia,
Talinum and
Phemeranthus and with all of these it shares a sort of waxy, turgid succulence. The leaves have the same curiously rubbery, floppy quality felt in the native "aloe",
Agave virginica (Manfreda virginica), although they are much smaller.
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