Heart-leaved bergenia

Description

Bergenia crassifolia (Syn. Bergenia cordifolia) is a species of flowering plant of the genus Bergenia in the family Saxifragaceae. Common names for the species include heart-leaved bergenia, heartleaf bergenia, leather bergenia, winter-blooming bergenia, elephant-ears, elephant's ears, Korean elephant-ear, badan, pigsqueak, Siberian tea, and Mongolian tea. The species epithet crassifolia means "thick-leaved", while the epithet in the synonym Bergenia cordifolia means "cordate (heart-shaped) leaf" (although the leaves may also be described as spoon-shaped). The cultivar 'Rosa Zeiten' has gained the Royal Horticultural Society's It grows to about 12 inches (30 cm) tall. The leaves are winter hardy in warmer climates and change colour in the range of rust brown to brown-red. The rhizome is creeping, fleshy, thick, reaching several meters in length and 3.5 cm in diameter, with numerous root lobes, highly branched, located near the soil surface, turning into a powerful vertical root. The stem is thick, leafless, glabrous, pink-red, 15-50 cm high. Leaves are in a basal dense rosette (wintering under the snow), dark green, which redden by autumn, with an almost rounded blade and a membranous sheath remaining up to two to three years. The leaf blade is broadly elliptical or almost rounded, rounded or chordate at the base, obtuse or indistinctly dentate, 3–35 cm long, 2.5–30 cm wide, on wide petioles not exceeding the length of the plate, equipped at the base with membranous vaginal stipules. Flowers are small, regular, lacking bracts, in apical thick paniculately-corymbiform inflorescence, usually two for long reddish leafless peduncle length of 4 cm. Calyx is naked half dissected into five oval top rounded lobes of up to 4 mm; petals obovate or broadly ovate, with a wide short marigold, 10-12 mm long, 6-8 mm wide, with a blunt-rounded apex and many veins, purple-red or pink. The stamens are twice as long as the calyx, and there are ten of them. Pistil has a semi-lower ovary, deeply divided into two (three) columns with wide stigmas. The fruit is an ellipsoidal, dry capsule with two diverging lobes opening along the abdominal suture. Seeds are numerous, oblong, smooth, glabrous, faceted, almost black, up to 2 mm long. The plant blooms in late spring and early summer before the appearance of young leaves. The seeds ripen in mid or late summer.