FIGWORT FAMILY 



SCRbPHULARIACEAE 



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 I small and sterile, 

 x^nthers 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 ot Catalpa is the Pau- 

 lownia or Empress Tree, Paulownia tomentosa (Thunb.) Steud., a 

 large tree from Japan that has become extensively naturalized along 

 the blufi^s of the Ohio in the vicinity ot 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 5-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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