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''Dicentra canadensis'', the squirrel corn, is a flowering plant from eastern North America with oddly shaped white flowers and finely divided leaves.
Description
Squirrel corn has small yellow clusteredbulb
In botany, a bulb is structurally a short stem with fleshy leaves or leaf basesBell, A.D. 1997. ''Plant form: an illustrated guide to flowering plant morphology''. Oxford University Press, Oxford, U.K. that function as food storage organs duri ...
lets (looking roughly like kernels of corn
Maize ( ; ''Zea mays'' subsp. ''mays'', from es, maíz after tnq, mahiz), also known as corn (North American and Australian English), is a cereal grain first domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 10,000 years ago. Th ...
), finely dissected leaves
A leaf (plural, : leaves) is any of the principal appendages of a vascular plant plant stem, stem, usually borne laterally aboveground and specialized for photosynthesis. Leaves are collectively called foliage, as in "autumn foliage", wh ...
, and white heart-shaped flowers. The flowers are fragrant. It is a spring ephemeral
An ephemeral plant is one marked by short life cycles. The word ephemeral means transitory or quickly fading. In regard to plants, it refers to several distinct growth strategies. The first, spring ephemeral, refers to perennial plants that emerge ...
, leafing out and flowering in spring and going dormant in summer.
Distribution and habitat
It is native to deciduous woodland in easternNorth America
North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...
. It is also found among rock outcrops near mountains.
References
* * Bleeding hearts, Corydalis, and their relatives. Mark Tebbitt, Magnus Lidén, and Henrik Zetterlund. Timber Press. 2008.
External links
canadensis Ephemeral plants Flora of Eastern Canada Flora of the Eastern United States Flora of the Appalachian Mountains Garden plants of North America {{Ranunculales-stub