Paronychia argentea, commonly known as Algerian tea, is an herbaceous plant from the family Caryophyllaceae that grows in sandy areas, ways, abandoned fields and dry terrains.
It is an annual species with procumbent habits, which reaches 30 cm height. Similar to Paronychia capitata but with almost all glabrous leaves, a rigid and prominent sow, and calyx lobules with transparent margins.
The stem is glabrous or pubescent, with opposite, elliptical and mucronate leaves.
The flowers grow in lateral and terminal glomerulus. They are hermaphrodite, pentamerous and actinomorphic, accompanied with scaly silver bracts bigger that themselves. The fruit is an achene.
They can be encountered all around the Mediterranean Sea. It grows in abandoned or dry terrains, dunes and ditches, and flourishes from winter to summer.
It is used stewed, as a diuretic and blood purifier, and as a plaster to cure wounds.
Paronychia argentea was described by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and published in ' 3: 230. 1778[1779].
Paronychia argentea (Fam. Caryophyllaceae) infraspecific number of chromosomes and taxa: 2n=28