| Polygonum alaskanum (Small) Wight | |||
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| Family | Polygonaceae — APG family: Polygonaceae | ||
| Synonyms | Polygonum alpinum var. lapathifolium Cham. & Schlecht., Polygonum alpinum subsp. alaskanum Small | ||
| Description | Root thick, woody; stem hollow, up to 2 meters tall, branched; leaves ovate, acute or ovate-lanceolate, with attenuate, acute apex, dark green above, paler beneath, crisp-pubescent in margin; inflorescence with divaricate, strigose-pubescent branch- es, many-flowered; calyx yellowish-white; fruiting calyx membranous, elliptic; fruit ovate, triangular in cross section, light brown. | ||
| Ecology | Spruce woods, along rivers. Described from Alaska to Washington. | ||
| Taxonomy notes | Closely related to P. phytolaccaefolium Meisn., which occurs south of the conti- nental glaciation, and to P. alpinum All., of Eurasia. Yukon specimens are almost always glabrous (var. glabréscens Hult.). Broken line on circumpolar map indicates range of P. phytolaccaefolium. | ||
| Uses | Young stems and leaves are eaten boiled by the natives. |
This is a digital representation of Eric Hultén’s ‘Flora of Alaska and Neighboring Territories: A Manual of the Vascular Plants’, which was published by Stanford University Press in 1968. The book was digitized by C. Webb (at UAMN) as part of the Flora of Alaska project, with funding by the US NSF (Grant 1759964 to Ickert-Bond & Webb), and with permission of Stanford University Press. Data and images © 1968 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. Univ. Usage licence: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0. NB: You may find OCR errors; please refer to the hard-copy if in doubt.