Turtlehead, White Turtlehead, Chelone glabra L., Native Minnesota Wildflower plant, Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden

	Plants of the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden
	Common Name	Scientific Name	Plant Family	Garden Location	Prime Season
	Turtlehead	Chelone glabra L.	Figwort (Scrophulariaceae)	Woodland	Late Summer to Autumn
Other names and notes	(White Turtlehead). Turtleheads have flowers where the upper lip arches over the lower lip giving the resemblance to a turtle's head. The white flowers (can have a pink tinge on top) have two almost closed lips. The lower lip has three lobes with the center one bearded. The flower tube is 1 to 1-1/2" long. Flowers are on a short spike at the end of the stem and above the long lance shaped, toothed, opposite, and hairless leaves (which are distinctly different from Red Turtlehead); stems usually about 2 to 3 feet high and are usually unbranced below the the flower stems. These plants appear in a few places in the bog area and are greatly outnumbered by the Red Turtlehead. The genus name Chelone is Greek for tortoise and the species name glabra means smooth - no hair on the leaves or stem.


These blooms are from very late August.

Notes: This plant is indigenous to the Garden area. Eloise Butler catalogued it on Sept 6, 1907. She obtained additional plants from Malden, Mass. in Sept. 1909. It is listed on Martha Crone's 1951 census of Garden Plants. The plant is native to Minnesota in most counties in the East half of the State which marks the western edge of the plants range in the US.

Eloise Butler wrote this story about the plant: "A turtle takes a daily sunning on a rock in the little pond in the wild garden. His tail held stiffly erect suggested to someone a marlingspike, the tool that is associated with a boatswain. Accordingly the turtle was dubbed Bos’n, and a little one that has lately appeared, Bos’nette. Very appropriately, a plant with white-flowered spikes, named Chelone (turtle) [C. glabra L., Turtlehead] graces the sides of the same pond. It is easy to understand how the name turtlehead was applied to this plant growing in the damp places that turtles frequent, when one has an opportunity to compare the lips of the animal with those of the flower." Published 17 September, 1911, Minneapolis Sunday Tribune. Read article

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References: Plant characteristics are generally from sources 15, 16, 30, 31, 33, W2 & W3. Distribution principally from W2 and also 31, 34 and W1. Planting history generally from 1, 4 & 4a. Other sources by specific reference. See Reference List for details.

092012