Common names: Sharp-lobed Hepatica | |
Binomial name: Anemone acutiloba | |
Garden uses: flowers | |
Foliage: Basal, three-lobed, and hairy on the underside. Dead | |
leaves persist through winter | |
Flowers: white to pale blue | |
Wisconsin native range: found throughout Wisconsin in deciduous | |
woodlands. | |
The sharp-lobed hepatica is a spring ephemeral - a woodland plant | |
that flowers and sets seed shortly after the snow melts in the | |
spring. This kind of life-cycle allows the plant to capture the | |
sun early in the season before being cast into deep shade by the | |
emerging leaves of the deciduous forests in which it grows. Closely | |
related to the common hepatica (Anemone americana), it can be | |
distinguished from that species by the pointed lobes of its leaves. | |
Hepaticas do best in full to partial shade, as long as they get sun | |
in the springtime (i.e. grow in the shade of a tree, not on the | |
north side of a building). They like well-drained (but not | |
completely dry) soil conditions. | |
Hepatica blossoms | |
Hepatica flowers and newly-unfurled leaves |