Professor Halsted has noted that this species bears staminate
flowers on one plant and pistillate flowers on another; whereas
the Hepatica Hepatica usually bears flowers of both sexes above
the same root. The blossoms, which close at night to keep warm,
and open in the morning, remain on the beautiful plant for a long
time to accommodate the bees and flies that, in this case, are
essential to the perpetuation of the species.


PURPLE VIRGIN'S BOWER
(Atragene Americana) Crowfoot family

Flowers - Showy, purplish blue, about 3 in. across; 4 sepals,
broadly expanded, thin, translucent, strongly veined, very large,
simulating petals; petals small, spoon-shaped; stamens very
numerous ; styles long, persistent, plumed throughout. Stem:
Trailing or partly climbing with the help of leafstalks and
leaflets. Leaves: Opposite, compounded of 3 egg-shaped, pointed
leaflets on slender petioles.
Preferred Habitat - - Rocky woodlands.
Flowering Season - May-June.
Distribution - Hudson Bay westward, south to Minnesota and
Virginia.

The day on which one finds this rare and beautiful flower in some
rocky ravine high among the hills or mountains becomes memorable
to the budding botanist. At an elevation of three thousand feet
in the Catskills it trails its way over the rocks, fallen trees,
and undergrowth of the forest, suggesting some of the handsome
Japanese species introduced by Sieboldt and Fortune to Occidental