FIGWORT FAMILY SCROPHULARIACEAE 
TURTLEHEAD. BALMONY 
Chelone glabra L. 
The Turtlehead blooms from July to September in low wet 
places throughout the eastern half of the continent. It is a peren- 
nial 1-3 feet high, which has toothed opposite leaves and a long 
terminal flower cluster. 
The white flowers begin 
blooming at the base of the 
cluster and open progres- 
sively upward. The 2-lipped 
corolla is tubular, shaped 
like a turtle’s head and 
nearly closed. There are 4 
perfect stamens, in pairs, 
and 1 small and sterile. 
Anthers and filaments are 
woolly. The style is long and 
slender. The fruit is a cap- 
sule containing many flat- 
tened and winged seeds. 
The Red Turtlehead, 
Chelone obliqua L., is less tall, 
being 20-32 inches high, and 
sometimes its branches are 
spreading. It is a native of 
the swamps of extreme southern Illinois. The leaves are broadly 
lanceolate to oblong and mostly short petioled, acuminate at the tip 
and narrowed at the base, 2-6 inches long and with sharp teeth some- 
what spreading. The plant is particularly distinguished by its rose- 
purple flowers in terminal and axillary spikelike racemes. The 
bracts surrounding the flowers are minutely fringed with short hairs. 
This is strictly a southern plant, known only from Virginia to southern 
Illinois and Florida, and blooming from July to September. 
Frequently mistaken for a purple form of Catalpa is the Pau- 
lownia or Empress Tree, Paulownia tomentosa (Thunb.) Steud., a 
large tree from Japan that has become extensively naturalized along 
the bluffs of the Ohio in the vicinity of Golconda. The enormous 
leaves are almost perfectly heart shaped and are opposite on the 
hairy stems. The flowers, borne in large terminal panicles, are tubular 
and s-parted, the deep royal purple and 5-limbed corolla slightly 
2-lipped. Stamens are 4, inserted low on the corolla tube. The fruit 
is a large unsightly capsule which contains winged seeds and remains 
on the tree until spring. 
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