''Hydrophyllum virginianum'', commonly called Virginia waterleaf or eastern waterleaf, is a species of plant in the borage family (

Boraginaceae Boraginaceae, the borage or forget-me-not family, includes about 2,000 species of shrubs, trees and herbs in 146, to 156 genera with a worldwide distribution. The APG IV system from 2016 classifies the Boraginaceae as single family of the order ...

). It is an herbaceous perennial

plant Plants are predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. Historically, the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals, and included algae and fungi; however, all current definitions of Plantae exclud ...

native to Eastern

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...

where it is primarily found in the Midwest, Northeast, and Appalachian regions. Its natural habitat is in bottomland forests, mesic upland forests, and rocky forested bluffs.

Description

''Hydrophyllum virginianum'' is an herbaceous perennial that spreads by

rhizomes In botany and dendrology, a rhizome (; , ) is a modified subterranean plant stem that sends out roots and shoots from its nodes. Rhizomes are also called creeping rootstalks or just rootstalks. Rhizomes develop from axillary buds and grow hori ...

to form large colonies in wooded areas. It can also spread by seeds. The seedling usually appear early to mid-spring. Flowers are blue, white, or purple, appearing in mid to late spring. Flowers exposed to sunlight bleach rapidly. Often the newer leaves are solid green with white spots appearing as they age and later disappearing in early summer. VirginiaWaterleafSeedPods

Taxonomy

Populations in the southern

Appalachian Mountains The Appalachian Mountains, often called the Appalachians, (french: Appalaches), are a system of mountains in eastern to northeastern North America. The Appalachians first formed roughly 480 million years ago during the Ordovician Period. They ...

have purple to maroon flowers and differ in a number of other characters. The taxonomic status of these entities has been debated, with the most traditional treatments recognizing them at the varietal rank as ''Hydrophyllum virginianum'' var. ''atranthum''. However, specific status to these population (as ''Hydrophyllum atranthum'') is given in the 2020 edition of Alan Weakley's Flora of the Southeastern United States.

References

External links

Connecticut Botanical Society: ''Hydrophyllum virginianum''
virginianum Flora of North America Plants described in 1753 Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus {{Asterid-stub