An uncommon plant around here (its sister the Virginia Waterleaf is much less rare), this plant is distinguished from other members of its little family by its sycamore-like leaves and its lavender-blue flowers. We come back to this patch on a wooded slope in Beechview every year, and so far it has not disappointed us.
For a description of the species, see the Hydrophyllum appendiculatum reference page.
A small patch of Virginia Waterleaf in Beechview, just up the hill from the large patch of Appendaged Waterleaf (Hydrophyllum appendiculatum) we have visited almost every year.
For a description of the species, see the Hydrophyllum virginianum reference page.
Almost every year we visit this patch of Appendaged Waterleaf in Beechview, which seems to be thriving. This year we brought three different cameras. It is an uncommon plant around here, but abundant in this location.
For a description of the species, see the Hydrophyllum appendiculatum reference page.
A few years ago, some botanical references folded the family Hydrophyllaceae into the family Boraginaceae. Others disagree. We’re waiting for the botanists to sort it out before we make our move.
Just up the hill from a large patch of Appendaged Waterleaf (Hydrophyllum appendiculatum) in Beechview, we found two plants of Virginia Waterleaf (H. virginianum). Although old Pa Pitt has visited that patch of Appendaged Waterleaf annually for years, he has never seen Virginia Waterleaf there before, though he has run into it elsewhere more than once. It is an odd coincidence. Below, we see the divided leaves that distinguish H. virginianum from its relatives in these parts.
For a fuller description, see the Hydrophyllum virginianum reference page.
Every year we return to this patch of Appendaged Waterleaf in Beechview. It’s an unusual plant around here, but this patch seems to be flourishing and spreading, though menaced by the constant advance of Japanese monster knotweeds nearby.
The bluish lavender of the flowers is hard to capture on the camera sensor, but Father Pitt has tried to adjust the colors to look as close to nature as possible. He used two different cameras with wildly different ideas of color balance, so there will be color differences.
For a full description, see the Hydrophyllum appendiculatum reference page.
We took more than a hundred pictures on May 16 and picked out a dozen to publish. To avoid weighing down the main page, we’ll put most of them behind a “more” link.
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