露珠草 lu zhu cao

Circaea cardiophylla Makino; C. ×hybrida Handel-Mazzetti; C. kitagawae H. Hara.

Plants 20-150 cm tall, pubescent, usually densely so, with long, soft, spreading hairs, soft, falcately recurved hairs, and capitate and clavately tipped glandular hairs. Rhizomes not tuberous. Leaves narrowly to broadly ovate, 4-13 × 2.3-11 cm, base broadly cuneate to broadly rounded or truncate or more commonly cordate, margin denticulate to subentire, apex shortly acuminate. Racemes simple or branched near base, 2-20 cm; flowering pedicels ± clustered and perpendicular to axis of raceme, pubescent, with a minute setaceous bracteole at base. Buds with few to many, long, straight or slightly curved, rarely hooked, hairs. Floral tube 0.6-1 mm. Sepals reflexed in flower, white or pale green, ovate to broadly so, 2-3.7 × 1.4-2 mm, apex broadly to narrowly rounded to obtuse. Petals reflexed, white, ovate to broadly so, or depressed-obovate to broadly obovate, 1-2.4 × 1.2-3.1 mm, apex obcordate, apical notch 1/2-2/3 length of petal, petal lobes broadly rounded. Stamens spreading, shorter than to ca. as long as style; nectary wholly within floral tube and inconspicuous. Fruiting pedicel and mature fruit 4.4-7 mm. Fruit 3-3.9 × 1.8-3.3 mm, locules 2, obliquely obovoid to lenticular, abaxially flattened, base obliquely rounded or truncate to pedicel, with low, corky thickenings along margins and between locules, without prominent sulci. Seed 1 per locule. Fl. Jun-Aug, fr. Jul-Sep. 2n = 22.

Well-drained soils in mixed deciduous, rarely boreal, forests; near sea level to 3500 m. Anhui, Gansu, Guizhou, Hebei, Henan, Heilongjiang, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Jilin, Liaoning, Shaanxi, Shandong, Shanxi, Sichuan, Taiwan, Xizang, Yunnan, Zhejiang [N India, Japan, Kashmir, Korea, Nepal, Pakistan, Russia (Far East)].

"Circaea bodinieri" (H. Léveillé, Bull. Acad. Int. Geogr. Bot. 22: 224. 1912) belongs here but was a provisional name and was therefore not validly published (Vienna Code, Art. 34.1(b)).