BORAGINACEAE BORAGE FAMILY 
HOARY PUCCOON. STONESEED 
Lithospermum canescens (Michx.) Lehm. 
This very showy spring flower grows in rather dry, usually 
sandy places where there is little shade. It is found from Ontario 
to Virginia and Alabama, west to Arizona, Utah and British 
Columbia, and blooms from 
April to June. 
It is a perennial whose stems 
and leaves are more or less 
covered with very short whitish 
hairs, at least when young. 
The stems are 6-18 inches high 
and may be solitary or clus- 
tered and either simple or 
branched. The oblong to linear 
leaves, up to 1% inches long, 
are sessile by a narrowed base 
and the lowest are often mere 
appressed scales. 
The dimorphous flowers are 
bright orange-yellow, ses- 
sile and usually quite numer- 
ous. The 5 narrow segments of 
the calyx are much shorter 
than the tube of the corolla. 
In the tube are 5 little append- 
ages which form a crest in the 
throat. The 5 stamens are at- 
tached to the corolla tube. The 
nutlets when mature are much 
shorter than the calyx seg- 
ments, white, smooth and shin- 
ing, hence the name Stoneseed. \ c 
The Hairy Puccoon, Litho- \} 
Spermum Gmelini (Michx.) 
Hitchce., is also found in Illinois, especially in the sandy areas near 
Lake Michigan. It is similar to the Hoary Puccoon but may easily 
be distinguished by the fact that the flowers are not sessile and the 
much larger corolla is woolly bearded at the base inside. Gmelin’s 
Puccoon is another name for this species, distributed from western New 
York to Florida and west to Minnesota, Colorado and New Mexico. 
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