HARPERS GUIDE TO WILD FLOWERS 



Liverleaf. Hepatica 

 Hepatica triloba ("liver," from shape of leaf). — Family, Crow- 

 foot. Color, pale blue or violet, sometimes nearly white or with 

 a delicate trace of pink. Petals, none. Sepals, petal-like, colored, 

 6 to 12; directly beneath is an involucre of 3 small, roundish, 

 calyx - like leaves. Leaves, from the root, purple or mottled 

 with purple, 3-lobed, heart-shaped at base, roundish in outline, 

 leathery, evergreen. 



When the plant first comes the brown leaves of the last 

 summer are all the foliage it has, the new leaves appearing 

 later than the flower. Buds and stem very hairy. One of 

 our best-loved flowers, partly because one of the first. Mr. 

 Gibson considers it the earliest. He says: " When I picked 

 my arbutus in February, and when Burroughs and Doctor 

 Abbott gathered their claytonias, the latter in February, 

 we could doubtless all have found our hepatica, too; and I 

 am equally confident that my early blooms of rock-flower 

 and everlasting were never so early as to have stolen a march 

 on the liverworts. If the open winter lures any wood- 

 blossom to 'open its eye,' it will surely be the liverwort, 

 even as this flower occasionally anticipates the spring in 

 ordinary winter weather. I have before me a letter from an 

 authority who picked them under a foot of snow on De- 

 cember 9th, and this, too, in a winter not notably mild." 



Common all over the Atlantic States in light woods. (See 

 illustration, p. 309.) 



H. acutiloba differs from the preceding in having more pointed 

 leaf-lobes, 3 or 5 in number. Whole plant softly hairy, 4 to 9 

 inches high. 



Same range as preceding. 



Purple Clematis 



Clematis ochroleuca. — Family, Crowfoot. Color, purple. Corolla, 

 wanting. Calyx, of four leathery sepals, joined at their base, 

 purple on the outside, yellow within. Flowers, large, on long 

 peduncles, solitary, terminating the branches. Fruit, a collec- 

 tion of achenes, each furnished with a plumose tail. Leaves, 

 opposite, sessile, conspicuously net- veined, ovate, sometimes 3- 

 lobed, soft-silky underneath. Stems, low, 1 to 2 feet high, erect, 

 generally unbranched. May. 



Southern New York and Staten Island, to Georgia, in light 

 woods and copses. Rare and local. One of the pleasant 



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