Chelone Glabra

''Chelone glabra'', or white turtlehead, is a herbaceous species of

plant Plants are predominantly Photosynthesis, photosynthetic eukaryotes of the Kingdom (biology), kingdom Plantae. Historically, the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals, and included algae and fungi; however, all curr ...

native to North America. Its native range extends from

Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the Southeast United States Georgia may also refer to: Places Historical states and entities * Related to t ...

Newfoundland and Labrador Newfoundland and Labrador (; french: Terre-Neuve-et-Labrador; frequently abbreviated as NL) is the easternmost province of Canada, in the country's Atlantic region. The province comprises the island of Newfoundland and the continental region ...

and from

Mississippi Mississippi () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Mis ...

Manitoba , image_map = Manitoba in Canada 2.svg , map_alt = Map showing Manitoba's location in the centre of Southern Canada , Label_map = yes , coordinates = , capital = Win ...

. Its common name comes from the appearance of its flower petals, which resemble the head of a

tortoise Tortoises () are reptiles of the family Testudinidae of the order Testudines (Latin: ''tortoise''). Like other turtles, tortoises have a shell to protect from predation and other threats. The shell in tortoises is generally hard, and like ot ...

. In fact, in Greek, chelone means "tortoise" and was the name of a

nymph A nymph ( grc, νύμφη, nýmphē, el, script=Latn, nímfi, label=Modern Greek; , ) in ancient Greek folklore is a minor female nature deity. Different from Greek goddesses, nymphs are generally regarded as personifications of nature, are ty ...

who refused to attend the wedding of

Zeus Zeus or , , ; grc, Δῐός, ''Diós'', label=genitive Boeotian Aeolic and Laconian grc-dor, Δεύς, Deús ; grc, Δέος, ''Déos'', label=genitive el, Δίας, ''Días'' () is the sky and thunder god in ancient Greek religion, ...

and was turned into a turtle as punishment. Its natural habitat is wet areas, such as

riparian forests A riparian forest or riparian woodland is a forested or wooded area of land adjacent to a body of water such as a river, stream, pond, lake, marshland, estuary, canal, sink or reservoir. Etymology The term riparian comes from the Latin word ...

and

swamps A swamp is a forested wetland.Keddy, P.A. 2010. Wetland Ecology: Principles and Conservation (2nd edition). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. 497 p. Swamps are considered to be transition zones because both land and water play a role in ...

. Its classification at the

family Family (from la, familia) is a group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its members and of society. Idea ...

level has in the past been controversial, but as a result of

DNA sequence DNA sequencing is the process of determining the nucleic acid sequence – the order of nucleotides in DNA. It includes any method or technology that is used to determine the order of the four bases: adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine. Th ...

studies, it is now regarded as belonging to family

Plantaginaceae Plantaginaceae, the plantain family, is a large, diverse family of flowering plants in the order Lamiales that includes common flowers such as snapdragon and foxglove. It is unrelated to the banana-like fruit also called "plantain." In older ...

(the plantain family). In early taxonomic treatments the species was divided into a number of subspecific categories but more recent studies indicate no morphological or genetic basis for these taxonomic categories. ^{1/sup>

Description and ecology

This species has opposite, simple leaves, on stout, upright stems. The flowers are white, borne in late summer and early fall.

It is the primary plant on which the Baltimore checkerspot

The Baltimore checkerspot (''Euphydryas phaeton'') is a North American butterfly of the family Nymphalidae.
It has been the official state insect of the U.S. State of Maryland since 1973. The Baltimore checkerspot was named for the first Lord ...
butterfly will lay its eggs (although the butterfly to some extent will use a few other species).

''Chelone glabra'' is a popular browse plant for deer. It is also a foodplant for the sawflies '' Macrophya nigra'' and ''Tenthredo grandis

''Tenthredo'' (from the Greek ''tenthrēdōn'' "earth nesting wasp") is a genus of sawflies with more than 700 species of the family Tenthredinidae, subfamily Tenthredininae. It is of Holarctic distribution.
Description
Species of this genus ...
'' (Hymenoptera: Tenthredinidae), and a flea beetle in the genus Dibolia (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae) has also been shown to feed on it.

Uses

It has been used as a method of birth control by Abenaki people.

References

11. Allan D. Nelson; Wayne J. Elisens (1999). "Polyploid evolution and biogeography in Chelone (Scrophulariaceae): morphological and isozyme evidence". ''American Journal of Botany''. Botanical Society of America. 86(10): 1487–1501. doi:10.2307/2656929. JSTOR

JSTOR (; short for ''Journal Storage'') is a digital library founded in 1995 in New York City. Originally containing digitized back issues of academic journals, it now encompasses books and other primary sources as well as current issues of j ...
2656929. PMID

PubMed is a free search engine accessing primarily the MEDLINE database of references and abstracts on life sciences and biomedical topics. The United States National Library of Medicine (NLM) at the National Institutes of Health maintain the ...
10523288.

External links

*
*

{{-

Plantaginaceae
Flora of Eastern Canada
Flora of the Northeastern United States
Flora of the Southeastern United States
Flora of the Appalachian Mountains
Flora of the Great Lakes region (North America)
Plants described in 1753
Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus
Flora of the North-Central United States}