Kingdom: Plantae

Phylum: Magnoliophyta -- flowering plants

Class: Magnoliopsida -- dicots

Order: Rosales

Family: Saxifragaceae -- saxifrage

Variety: The common phase on the Palouse seems to be var. glabella.

Common Name: lava alumroot

Species Code: HECY2

Origin: Native to dry, open grasslands and open forest, especially on lithosolic sites and talus slopes, of western North America from British Columbia south to California and east to Montana and Wyoming.

Rare: no

Form: forb, evergreen, perennial from a branching crown and short thick rhizomes, 15-90 cm tall; stem naked or with 1-3 brownish bracts, glabrous to glandular-pubescent below and thickly glandular-puberulent to glandular-hirsute above.

Duration: perennial

Longevity: long

Habitat Type: prairie, dry forest

Wetland Indicator Status: not listed

Leaves: numerous, basal, long petiolate, ovate to nearly reniform, smooth to glandular pubescent, generally longer than broad, 1-6 cm long, margins crenate-dentate; petioles glabrous to glandular hairy; cauline leaves lacking.

Mature height: 10-20 inches

Flowers: borne in an open spike-like panicle 3-20 cm long; campanulate, 10 mm long; calyx 6-8 mm long at anthesis, up to 10 mm long afterward, cream colored with the 5 sepals oblong-lanceolate to obovate; petals linear, 5 or fewer, shorter than the sepals or often lacking.

Flower color: white

Bloom: April, May, June, July

Bloom starts on: mid April

Bloom ends on: early July with a few flowers still blooming in late July

Fruit: many seeded capsule, 6-10 mm long, carpels with conical beaks; seeds dark brown, 0.6-0.9 mm long, oblong-ellipsoid.

Characteristics:
A highly variable species which has at times been separated into numerous species by some taxonomists. Four or five varieties are commonly recognized. All are intergrading and largely sympatric. The most common phase on the Palouse seems to be var. glabella.
H. glabella in Piper & Beattie 1914.
7,560,000 seeds/lb (USDA NRCS Pullman PMC 2005).
7,616,938 seeds/lb (USDA NRCS PLANTS Database 2009).
Reproduces sexually by seed and vegetatively by short rhizomes.
Fruit is a capsule.
Diploids only are known.
n=7 (Hitchcock et al 1969).
Flowers are perfect.
Flowers are self incompatible (Pellmyr et al 1996).
The moth Greya enchrysa is the most effective pollinator. Females effect pollination while ovipositing in the flower. The resulting larva consume some of the seeds. The females also drink nectar from the flowers but are not as efficient in pollinating the flowers during this activity. Flowers are also visited by bumblebees, solitary bees, and flies (Pellmyr et al 1996).
A braconid wasp of the genus Agathis is a parasitoid of larval Greya enchrysa (Althoff & Thompson 1999, 2001).
Roots have been used medicinally.

Sun requirement: full sun

Soil moisture: xeric

Precipitation: 10-35 inches (USDA NRCS PLANTS Database 2009).

Sowing time: fall

Transplant time: spring

Stratification: extended cold moist stratification

Seed yield: medium

Seed harvest: medium difficulty

Seed first harvest: second season

Seed cleaning: easy

Planting duration: long

Seed insect problem: none noted

Seed shatter: medium

Seed size: very small

Seed harvest date: late July

Seed comments: holds seed well if there is no wind

Herbaria: Specimen data and digital resources from The Consortium of Pacific Northwest Herbaria

Key words: native perennial upland forb

Propagation:
2 protocols in the Native Plant Network
Pullman WA Plant Materials Center
Glacier National Park, Montana

Other Propagation Information:
120 days cold moist stratification with light resulted in highest germination. Germinates at low temps during stratification (Nauman 2002).
Greene & Curtis (1950) reported 34% germination for a Heuchera sp. from Wisconsin after 2 months cold moist stratification.
Fresh seed of var. cylindrica from Chelan County, Washington, needed light to germinate but cold moist stratification did not increase germination. 18 weeks dry storage increased germination but stratification of stored seed did not (Hidayati & Walck 2002).

Notes: Heuchera cylindrica seeds need light to germinate, so they must be surface sown in the fall. They germinate well in pots, but sowing directly on the soil is risky. The leaves stay green all summer and even through the winter. The flowers are a rather bland white. Flowers in late May and June. Common names include round-leaf alumroot, roundleaf alumroot, lava alumroot (Skinner et al 2005).

References:
Althoff, David M., and John N. Thompson. 2001. Geographic Structure in the Searching Behavior of a Specialist Parasitoid: Combining Molecular and Behavioral Approaches. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 14:406-417.

Althoff, David M., and John N. Thompson. 1999. Comparative Geographic Structures of Two Parasitoid-Host Interactions. Evolution 53:818-825.

Greene, H.C., and J.T. Curtis. 1950. Germination Studies of Wisconsin Prairie Plants. American Midland Naturalist 43:186-194.

Hidayati, Siti N., and Jeffrey L Walck. 2002. Contrasting seed germination patterns for intracontinental disjuncts of Heuchera (Saxifragaceae) in North America: the eastern temperate H. parviflora and the western montane H. cylindrica. Canadian Journal of Botany 80:1185-1192.

Hitchcock, C. Leo, Arthur Cronquist, Marion Ownbey, and J.W. Thompson. 1969. Vascular Plants of the Pacific Northwest. University of Washington Press. Seattle, WA. 5 vol.

Nauman, C. 2002. Germination of 12 Palouse Prairie forbs after stratification under light and dark treatments. M.S. Thesis, University of Idaho, Moscow ID.

Pellmyr, Olle, John N. Thompson, Jonathan M. Brown, and Richard G. Harrison. 1996. Evolution of Pollination and Mutualism in the Yucca Moth Lineage. American Midland Naturalist 148:827-847.

Piper, C.V., and R.K. Beattie. 1914. The Flora of Southeastern Washington and Adjacent Idaho. Lancaster, PA: Press of the New Era Printing Company. 296 pp.

Skinner, David M., Paul Warnick, Bill French, and Mary Fauci. 2005. Characteristics and Uses of Native Palouse Forbs in Landscaping. USDA NRCS Pullman Plant Materials Center and Palouse Prairie Foundation. Online at http://www.wsu.edu/pmc_nrcs/Docs/Forbs_for_Landscaping.pdf

USDA NRCS, Pullman Plant Materials Center. 2005. Seed Weights of Some Palouse Native Species. Pullman Plant Materials Center, Pullman, Washington. Online at http://www.wsu.edu/~pmc_nrcs/Docs/Seed_Weights_Palouse_Native_Species.pdf

USDA NRCS. 2009. The PLANTS Database (http://plants.usda.gov, 3 September 2009). National Plant Data Center, Baton Rouge, LA 70874-4490 USA.

Links:

Plant Profile from the USDA PLANTS Database
Species information from the University of Washington Herbarium