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Description: Harper heartleaf is a low, perennial evergreen herbaceous ground cover originating from an underground rhizome, which is whitish and cord-like. Harper heartleaf produces shallowly buried stems, which produce evergreen leaves that are strongly variegated on long stalks as well as additional branches. The species has been known to create a thick map from 1 to 3 meters squared. Its leaves are cordate to rounded and 2.5 to 7.0 cm in length and nearly so as wide. From March to early June, it produces solitary flowers in its leaf axils and beneath the leaf litter or just above it. The shape and size of the flower are crucial for identification. The urn-shaped to somewhat bell-shaped flowers have three conspicuously patterned, spreading calyx lobes. The calyx, which is 15 to 25 mm in length and half to nearly as wide, is slightly flared. The lobes are triangular, mottled with purple, 6 to 13 mm in length and 10 to 22 mm in width at the base. The inside of the calyx lobes have a ridged reticulation. The flowers have no petals, but have 12 stamens, which are fused to the side of the single, 6-chambered ovary. The tissue between the pollen sacs, the connective, extends beyond them, forming a short beak. From May to July a fruit is formed as a capsule-like berry that splits irregularly, exposing up to 15 seeds. The seeds are white with oily appendages and are 1.5 to 2.0 mm in length (Patrick et. al. 1995 and Carman 2001).
Habitat:
Harper heartleaf inhabits peaty soils at edges of forested bogs and along the edges of streams on the Piedmont, and on moist hammocks and bases of bluff forest slopes along and within floodplain forests of the Coastal Plain (Patrick et. al. 1995).
Range:
Harper heartleaf is endemic to Alabama and Georgia and is restricted to 20 to 30 colonies, some of which are threatened by hardwood forest degradation (NatureServe 2003).
References
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