Flower:

Tightly packed flattish clusters of a few to many flowers at the end top of the stem, branch tips, and arising from the upper leaf axils. Flowers are white to greenish, 1/8 to ¼ inch across, tubular with 5 pointed, spreading lobes that give it a star shape. The inside of the tube is green and holds 5 yellow-tipped stamens.

Leaves and stem:

Leaves are alternate, somewhat variable in shape but generally elliptic, widest below, at or above the middle, toothless, hairless, ½ to 2 inches (to 5+ cm) long, 1/8 to ~½ inch (to 16 mm) wide, pointed or blunt at the tip, and little or no stalk. Color is green, gray-green or blue-green, sometimes with a waxy coating (glaucous). Stems are smooth and slender, branched or not. Plants can form colonies from long rhizomes.

Fruit:

Fruit is an oval to round drupe usually about ¼ inch (4 to 9 mm) long with the remains of the sepals at the tip. The drupe turns blue to brown as it matures and contains a single large seed.

Notes:

Bastard Toadflax is semi-parasitic, feeding on other plants through its rhizomes. There are 3 subspecies in North America, only one of which is known to be in Minnesota: subsp. umbellata, which has green leaves that lack a waxy coating and have a conspicuous midvein, fruit 4 to 6 mm long, and rhizomes are whitish. Subsp. pallida is present in the western half of North America and, while there are reports of it in Minnesota, there are no herbarium records at this time; its leaves are green to gray-green, have a waxy coating and an obscure midvein, fruit is larger, to 9 mm long, and rhizomes are blue, drying blackish. If present, it is most likely to be in our western counties. The third subspecies, californica, is limited to the west coast and mountainous regions of the southwestern US; it is much like pallida but somewhat larger with persistent over-wintering stems.