Geum triflorum
species of plant
Geum triflorum, commonly known as prairie smoke, old man's whiskers, or three-flowered avens, is a spring-blooming perennial herbaceous plant of the Rosaceae family. It is a hemiboreal continental climate species that is widespread in colder and drier environments of western North America, although it does occur in isolated populations as far east as New York and Ontario. It is particularly known for the long feathery plumes on the seed heads that have inspired many of the regional common names and aid in wind dispersal of its seeds.
Description
Geum triflorum is a perennial herb with short, spreading rhizomes, which form colonies of stemless rosettes. The roots are fiberous and have a sassafras-like flavor. The leaves grow from a caudex and are 4–30 cm (1.6–12 in) long. They are divided into leaflets with deep divisions that makes the leaves resemble the leaves of a fern. The leaflets are arranged pinnately along a common leaf stem with smaller leaflets mixed in with 7–18 larger ones and single larger leaflet at the end of the leaf. The leaves are covered with extremely small downy hairs.
Early in the spring, the leaves often lie flat to the ground and are in poor condition, but they soon become more upright in response to the warmer days and lack of snow cover.
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This entry incorporates text from “Geum triflorum” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.