Question

Which plant is described by these clues? Linnaeus named the genus for a Finnish-born pupil of his who was sent across the eastern American colonies between 1748 and 1751 to find hardy plants worth bringing home to Sweden. Its {anthers} never split lengthwise; each one releases its pollen through a small pore at the tip, and there are twice as many {stamens} as there are lobes on the flower. The species epithet is Latin for broad-leaved, which separates it at a glance from the narrow-leaved shrubs it shares its genus with. Every one of its ten {stamens} is bent backwards with the tip lodged in a pocket in the flower wall, cocked under tension until a bumblebee trips it and the pollen is catapulted onto the insect's back. Leaves, flowers, roots and even the {nectar} carry {grayanotoxin}, so livestock that browse it are poisoned and honey made from its flowers is dangerous to eat. It fills the understorey of oak and pine woods through the southern Appalachians, thriving on acid rocky slopes and stream banks and knitting itself into thickets dense enough to turn back a walker. Its buds are crimped and ribbed like tiny fluted pastries before they open into shallow cups less than an inch (2 to 2.5 cm) across, white to rose and ringed inside with purple flecks. The leathery {evergreen} leaves are 2 to 5 inches (5 to 13 cm) long and roll downward and inward whenever the air drops to about 30 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 1 Celsius), which makes the shrub a rough thermometer. It grows so slowly that a plant needs 10 to 15 years to reach its full 5 to 15 feet (1.5 to 4.5 m), and it will not tolerate soil sweetened much above pH 6. Colonists and Native peoples carved its dense, pale, crack-resistant wood into spoons and other small utensils, and one New England carver has made some 20,000 spoons from it. It is the state flower of both Connecticut and Pennsylvania, and its early-summer bloom along the Blue Ridge draws crowds to the same slopes whose thickets hikers dread crossing.

Accepted Answer

Kalmia latifolia

Name That Plant #061