
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
- Generally in a basal rosette
- 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
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

