Plants of the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden

Virginia Waterleaf is a native erect perennial forb growing 6 to 18 inches tall on stems that infrequently branch. Stems are rather weak, usually green, sometimes reddish-green (especially at the leaf nodes and base) and sometimes with fine hair.

The leaves are alternate, stalked and large - often up to 6 inches long - oval to triangular in outline and pinnately divided into 3 to 7 lobes, the lobes frequently separated into a base segment and a tip segment. Lobe margins are coarsely toothed. Lower leaves will have more segments than upper leaves. In some cases the leaves may look mottled.

The inflorescence is a branched dense hairy cyme of 8 to 20 stalked flowers held on a long stalk above the leaves.

The flowers are 5-part with a green hairy calyx that is very short and has five long pointed teeth and a corolla of five lobes (petals) that are white to lavender shaded, but do not spread open much. The five stamens and the 2-lobed style protrude from the corolla a considerable amount. Stamens alternate with the corolla lobes, have hairy whitish filaments and light purplish-brown anthers.

Seed: Fertile mature flowers produce a rounded seed capsule containing 2 to 4 brown dry seeds (four more frequently than 2 or 3). Seeds are an irregular oval shape with a wrinkled surface.

Habitat: Virginia Waterleaf is found extensively in the Woodland and Upland Garden at Eloise Butler. The roots are rhizomatous with a crown, fleshy and tough to weed out and the plant easily fills in any open space. The plant is an aggressive spreader from its many seeds and rhizomatous roots. Occasionally control measures must be applied. Removing the flower clusters before it goes to seed will at least limit the spread. It grows in the understory of open woods in rich moist soils and partial sun. The leaves die back by late summer.

Names: The genus Hydrophyllum is from two Greek words - hydor for 'water' and phyllon for 'leaf', applied because the stems and leaves of the original species of this genus were watery - not due to the spots on the leaves. The species virginianum refers to 'of the state of Virginia' where first collected. The author name for the plant classification of 1753 - 'L.' is for Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778), Swedish botanist and the developer of the binomial nomenclature of modern taxonomy. In earlier times this genus was in the Waterleaf (Hydrophyllaceae) family but has now been reclassified into the Boraginaceae.

Comparisons: The only other Waterleaf found in the state, Great Waterleaf, Hydrophyllum appendiculatum, has rounded leaves without the deep cut lobes and flowers with spreading petals where the stamens are not as conspicuously exserted.