血水草 Eomecon chionantha

  • Scientific Name: Eomecon chionantha Hance
  • Ref: J. Bot. 22:346. 1884
  • English Common Name: snow-poppy, dawn-poppy
  • Chinese Common Name: 血水草 xuèshuǐ∙cǎo
  • Family: Papaveraceae
  • Genus: Eomecon
  • Distribution: Forest understories, under shrubs, ravines, roadsides; 1400-1800 m. Anhui, N and W Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Guizhou, SW Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, E and SE Sichuan, NE and SE Yunnan, SW Zhejiang.
  • Photo: 03/31/2013
  • Note: species name for the snow-white flowers, Chinese name for the red-orange sap from broken stem
Herbs, perennial, patch-forming, glabrous. Roots orange; rootstock stoloniferous. Leaves all basal; petiole blue-gray, 10-30 cm, slender, basally with slightly inflated sheath; blade abaxially gray-green, often flushed lilac, cordate or reniform, rarely cordate-sagittate, 5-26 × 5-20 cm, palmately 5-7-veined, margin undulate, scalloped, apex acuminate or acute. Scape blue-gray and slightly mauve, 20-40 cm, 3-5-flowered. Bracts and bractlets ovate-lanceolate, 2-10 mm, margin thinly membra- nous, apex acuminate. Pedicel erect, 0.5-5 cm. Flower buds ovoid, ca. 1 cm, apex acuminate. Sepals 0.5-1 cm, glabrous. Petals white, obovate, 1-2.5 × 0.7-1.8 cm. Filaments 5-7 mm; anthers yellow, ca. 3 mm. Ovary ovoid or narrowly ovoid, 5-10 mm, glabrous; styles 3-5 mm; stigmas 2-lobed, decurrent to styles. Capsule narrowly elliptic, ca. 2 cm × 5 mm, styles to 1 cm (fruit immature). Fl. Mar-Jun, fr. Jun-Oct. 2n = 18*. (Flora of China)

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