112 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



Purple Virgin's Bower 



Atragene americana Sims 

 (Clematis verti-cillaris De Candolle) 



Figure XVII 



A trailing or partly climbing vine, somewhat woody and perennial 

 below, glabrous or nearly so. Leaves trifoliate; leaflets thin, ovate, acute, 

 toothed or entire and more or less cordate ; petioles and petiolules slender. 

 Flowers purplish blue, 2 to 4 inches broad, solitary on slender peduncles 

 in the axils of the leaves or at the ends of the branches. Sepals four, thin 

 and translucent, strongly veined, silky along the margins and veins; petals 

 four, spatulate, one-half to two-thirds of an inch long; stamens very 

 numerous, the outer ones usually with broadened filaments; styles long, 

 persistent, plumose throughout and about 2 inches long in fruit. 



Rocky woodlands and thickets, Hudson bay to Manitoba, south to 

 Connecticut, Virginia and Minnesota. Flowering in May and June. One 

 of our rarest wild flowers. 



Erect Silky Leather Flower 



Viorna ochroleuca (Aiton) Small 



Plate 74 



Stems erect, silky-hairy, i to 2 feet high and somewhat woody at the 

 base from a thickened, woody, perennial root. Leaves opposite, simple, 

 sessile, ovate or elliptical-ovate, blunt, smooth and glabrous above, silky 

 and reticulate-veined beneath, entire or rarely somewhat lobed; each stem 

 with a single terminal nodding flower about i inch long or less. Calyx 

 rather broadly cylindric in shape, composed of four or five thick sepals, 

 very silky without, their yellowish-green tips recurved; petals none. 

 Stamens numerous, parallel with the sepals, their anthers very narrow. 

 Pistils very numerous, their styles silky or plumose. In fruit the fleshy 

 sepals fall away leaving an erect head of small achenes plumose with the 

 long, yellowish -brown, persistent styles which are i to 2 inches long. 



