Heuchera americana var. hispida

Petioles glabrous or very short stipitate-glandular. Flowers: hypanthium free 1.5-2 mm, campanulate; petals purple or pink, wider than sepals, margins fimbriate. 2n = 14.

Flowering Apr-Jun. Rich woods often over base-saturated granite and gneiss, or in shallow rocky soil; 200-1300 m; Md., N.C., Va., W.Va.

Variety hispida occurs in the mountains and hills of western Maryland and Virginia, eastern West Virginia, and Surry County, North Carolina, where var. americana and Heuchera pubescens overlap; it is intermediate between var. americana and H. pubescens in floral characters. Variety hispida was confused with H. richardsonii for almost a century, beginning in 1849 when Gray reduced H. richardsonii to synonymy under H. hispida, after some seeds of H. richardsonii germinated among H. hispida plants in a labeled plot and later replaced them (C. O. Rosendahl et al. 1933).

Hybrid swarm of spp. 3 and 7, for convenience designated with a binomial; scape with to 5 lf-like bracts; petioles glabrous or minutely glandular; lvs 7-9-lobed, the lobes mostly broadly rounded, the teeth rounded or obtuse to the mucronate apex; stem glandular in the infl, otherwise glabrous or nearly so; fls distinctly oblique, 6-8 mm above, 4.5-6 mm below; free part of the hypanthium 1.5-2 mm; pet purple, longer and wider than the sep, with fimbriate margins; stamens and style exserted. Mt. woods; Va., W.Va., and N.C.

Gleason, Henry A. & Cronquist, Arthur J. 1991. Manual of vascular plants of northeastern United States and adjacent Canada. lxxv + 910 pp.

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