BORAGINACEAE 



BORAGE FAMILY 



HOARY PUCCOON. STONESEED 



Litliospermiim 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 i}4 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. 



The Hairy Puccoon, Litho- 

 spermutn Gmelini (Nlichx.) 

 Hitchc, 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 trom western New 

 York to Florida and west to Minnesota, Colorado and New Mexico. 



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