Tag: Avens (White)

  • White Avens (Geum canadense)

    Geum canadense

    Little white flowers that often pass unnoticed at the edge of the woods, where they can be surprisingly abundant. Like many members of the rose family, these plants are a bit sloppy with their petals, which sometimes look rumpled as though they’ve been slept in. These plants were blooming in Bird Park, Mount Lebanon.

    White Avens
    Geum canadense
    Photographed June 20 with a Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z6.

    For a description of the species, see the Geum canadense reference page.

  • White Avens (Geum canadense)

    This unassuming little member of the rose family likes to grow at the edge of the woods; this plant was growing along a trail in Scott Township, where it was blooming in the early July. The white flowers bear more than a passing resemblance to the flowers of blackberries or strawberries.

    Gray describes the genus and the species, which he puts in the Eugeum or Geum-proper division of the genus:

    GEUM L. AVENS

    Calyx bell-shaped or flattish, deeply 5-cleft, usually with 5 small bractlets at the sinuses. Petals 5. Stamens many. Achenes numerous, heaped on a conical or cylindrical dry receptacle, the long persistent styles forming hairy or naked and straight or jointed tails. Seed erect; radicle inferior. Perennial herbs, with pinnate or lyrate leaves. (A plant name used by Pliny.)

    EUGEUM T. & G.  Styles jointed and bent near the middle, the upper part deciduous and mostly hairy, the lower naked and hooked, becoming elongated; head of fruit sessile in the calyx, calyx-lobes reflexed.

    Petals white or pale greenish-yellow, small, spatulate or oblong; stipules small.

    Receptacle of the fruit densely hairy.

    G. canadense Jacq. Stem (0.6-1.1 m. high) and petioles sparingly hairy; leaves soft-pubescent beneath or glabrate, the basal of 3-5 leaflets or undivided, those of the stern mostly 3-divided or -lobed, rather sharply toothed; stipules ovate-oblong, 1-1.5 cm. long, subentire; petals white. (G. album J. F. Gmel.) Borders of woods, etc., widely distributed.