Flower Garden Lovers

The Purple or Water Avens for the Wild Flower Garden

The Purple Avens wildflower is a member of the rose family. It has an interesting flower as you can read below should you consider it for your wild flower garden. Although native to most of the northern states, it is mostly a wet lands wild flower of the northeastern states. In Indiana, the purple avens is endangered and in Washington, its status is sensitve. That aside, the National Plant Database, states that the seed of this plant is routinely commercially available if you want to try it in your wild flower garden.

PURPLE or WATER AVENS
(Geum rivale) Rose family

Flowers - Purple, with some orange chrome, 1 in. broad or less, terminal, solitary, nodding; calyx 5-lobed, purplish, spreading; 5 petals, abruptly narrowed into claws, forming a cup-shaped corolla; stamens and pistils of indefinite number; the styles, jointed and bent in middle, persistent, feathery below.

Stem: 1 to 2 ft. high, erect, simple or nearly so, hairy, from thickish rootstock.

Leaves: Chiefly from root, on footstems; lower leaves irregularly parted; the side segments usually few and small; the 1 to 3 terminal segments sharply, irregularly lobed; the few distant stem leaves 3-foliate or simple, mostly seated on stem.

Fruit: A dry, hairy head stalked in calyx.

Preferred Habitat - Swamps and low, wet ground.

Flowering Season - May-July.

Distribution - Newfoundland far westward, south to Colorado, eastward to Missouri and Pennsylvania, also northern parts of Old World.

Mischievous bumblebees, thrusting their long tongues between the sepals and petals of these unopened flowers, steal nectar without conferring any favor in return. Later, when they behave properly and put their heads inside to feast at the disk on which the stamens are inserted, they dutifully carry pollen from old flowers to the early maturing stigmas of younger ones. Self-fertilization must occur, however, if the bees have not removed all the pollen when a blossom closes. When the purple avens opens in Europe, the bees desert even the primrose to feast upon its abundant nectar. Since water is the prime necessity in the manufacture of this sweet, and since insects that feed upon it have so much to do with the multiplication of flowers, it is not surprising that the swamp, which has been called "nature's sanctuary," should have its altars so exquisitely decked. This blossom hangs its head, partly to protect its precious nectar from rain, and partly to make pilfering well nigh impossible to the unwelcome crawling insect that may have braved the forbidding hairy stems.

Although, the compendium gives the common names as Purple Avens or Water Avens, there is an old herbal, The Modern Herbal by Mrs. M. Grieve, available from Botanical.com, that gives the following information about alternate common names and the wild flower's supposed medicinal properties: "In the eastern states of North America (where it is called Indian Chocolate, Cure All and Water Flower) it is much used as a popular remedy in pulmonary consumption, simple dyspepsia and diseases of the bowels consequent on disorders of the stomach, and is valued as a febrifuge and tonic." Reading information from old herbals and old plant compendiums can be quite interesting. They did use the plants this way back in the early 1900's.

Now, as noted above, this is a wildflower that is a water loving plant and is found in swampy and northern woodland areas along water. It likes shady, damp areas. As such, should you decide to try this wild flower in your wild flower garden, you will need to plant it in an area that stays damp and is shaded. Perhaps it would be a good addition to a water garden if such flower garden area has shady spots.

© 2005, Sandra Dinkins-Wilson

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© 2005, Sandra Dinkins-Wilson. Find more articles about the Wild Flower Garden and wildflowers at our informative website, Flower Garden Lovers.
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