ALUMROOT 



Heuchera richardsonii R. Br. 



May - June Many an alumroot plant has been hopefully transplanted 

 Wooded hills to many a garden, only to leave the gardener disillu- 

 sioned when May comes around again and the alumroot 

 blooms. For the cluster of basal loaves of the alunnoot is ornamental and 

 promising. It would seem that certainly a beaut ii'ul flower would belong 

 with such a handsome plant ; besides the leaves look almost exactly like 

 those of coral bells in the catalogs and gardens. 



Alumroot is related to coral bells, but the long, thin spikes of stems, 

 which rise from the leaf-tuft, blossom out in nothing so line as coral-like 

 flowers. Here are dull, grocnish-biow n blossoms, remotely boll-like, with 

 orange anthers thrusting out on green filaments. The cluster of flowers 

 in itself is a decorative gri)uj)ing. except when aphids have attached 

 themselves and spoiled any l)oauty it miglit have. But the color is undeni- 

 ably dull and unattiaotivo. Tluis the alumroot blossoms each May and 

 is usually unadmired for its flowers; the scalloped, round, hairy leaves, 

 arranged in a broad cluster at the base of the plant, are always handsome 

 throughout the growing season. 



Alumroot is fairly coimnon in dry woods, usually on slopes, with 

 wild blue phlox, mayapples, and other typical May blossoms of the 

 Illinois oak woods. 



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