Saxifrage Family

Saxifragaceae (saks-ih-frag-AY-see-ee)

Iconic Features

• Perennial herbs
• Often rounded leaves in a basal rosette
• Usually 5-petaled flowers
• Hypanthium present

Description (Jepson)

• Eudicotyledons (eudicots) – a major lineage of flowering plants including most plants traditionally described as dicots and generally characterized by
  • 2 seed leaves (dicotyledon)
  • Netted (reticulate) leaf venation
  • Flower parts in fours and fives
  • Pollen grains with 3 pores (tricolpate)
  • Vascular bundles in stem arranged in a ring
  • Taproot system
• Perennial herbs
• Leaves
  • Generally in a basal rosette
    • Any stem leaves are alternate (1 leaf at each junction with stem)
  • Usually wide and rounded; sometimes succulent
  • Often with a scalloped or coarsely-toothed edge
• Flowers
  • Inflorescence (flower arrangement) in a variety of forms
  • Usually bisexual, usually radially-symmetrical, star- or bell-shaped flowers
  • Usually 5 sepals (usually green outer flower parts) and 5 separate petals
    • Petals are white, yellow, or pink, and sometimes toothed or fringed
    • Usually 2 pistils (female flower parts), which may be partly fused
  • Sepals, petals, and stamens (male flower parts) fused at base into a cup-like structure (hypanthium)
  • Ovary superior (above the attachment of other flower parts) to inferior (below the attachment of other flower parts)
• Fruit is a capsule with many small seeds (a dry, multi-chambered fruit that splits open at maturity)

Notes

• Approximately 600 species
  • Found especially in northern temperate and cold climates
  • Most grow in moist, shaded woodlands
    • The Pacific Northwest has the greatest number of species in the world (Emily-Bell)
  • Includes saxifrages (Micranthes species), woodland stars (Lithophragma species), sugar scoops (Tiarella species), alumroots (Heuchera species), fringe cups (Tellima species), and astilbes (Astilbe species)
• Some species, e.g. coral bells (Heuchera sanguinea), are cultivated as ornamentals
• Scientific and common name from the included genus Saxifraga, from the Latin saxum, “rock,” and frango, “to break”
  • Saxifraga species are renowned for the ability to thrive in the crevices of exposed, alpine crags, thus appearing to break rock (Encyclopædia Britannica 2016)
  • Pliny (23 AD-79 AD) wrote in his Natural History that the name referred to the supposed ability of some species to break up kidney and bladder stones (Idaho 2012)
• Represented by 3 species at Edgewood

See General References

Specific References

Emily-Bell. Saxifragaceae – Saxifrage family. Better Learning through Botany.

Encyclopædia Britannica. 2016, Jan. 29. Saxifragaceae. Britannica.

Idaho Mountain Wildflowers. 2012, Jun. 27. Saxifrage family, Saxifragaceae.

Browse Some Edgewood Plants in this Family