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Big fat bees, Baltimore butterflies and Turtlehead

© Gregg Pasterick

I've only seen Turtlehead (Chelone glabra) once, in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. That's not to suggest it's rare; it's not. In fact, it's a rather common flower that can be found in moist habitats such as stream banks and wetlands. It is somewhat unusual looking, though vaguely familiar. The flowers do resemble a turtle's head (the generic Chelone is from the Greek for "a tortoise."), and that is a little unusual. It is vaguely familiar because it also resembles louseworts and paintbrushes. That's because it belongs to the same family of Figworts or Snapdragons (Scrophulariaceae).

Turtlehead flowers blossom in tight terminal clusters. They are tubular, two-lipped, and white, occasionally with pink to lavender highlights. They grow to about an inch and a half in length; the upper lip arches over the hairy lower lip; there are fur stamens as well as a single sterile stamen.

The plant has long, toothed, lanceolate leaves, and stands one to three feet tall. It is a late summer to early autumn bloomer, and can be found as far north as Ontario and Nova Scotia, as far south as Georgia, and as far west as Missouri and Minnesota.

There are four species of Turtlehead in North America; C. glabra is probably the most widespread. Lyon's Turtlehead (C. lyonis), a southern U.S. species, has pink flowers. It is the species I came upon in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Because of the flower's design, Turtlehead relies upon big fat bees to pollinate them. The hairs on the lower lip are too great an obstacle for wingless insects to get by, and it takes a strong stroke for any winged insects to force their way into the tubular flower, never mind forcing aside the sterile stamen to get at the nectar. Hence big fat bees ...

Once those big fat bees get inside though, rooting around for nectar, all that motion and commotion gives the flower the appearance of chewing the bug. Yikes!

While the flower does not, in fact, eat the big fat bees pollinating them, the leaves are eaten by the larvae of the Baltimore checkerspot, a lovely northeastern butterfly. In other words, Turtlehead is a host plant.

The Baltimore lays a cluster of eggs on the plant late in the season. Young caterpillars feed in silk nests, and over-winter half-grown. In the spring they resume feeding, mature, form their chrysalis, and emerge ten days later as butterflies.

Turtlehead has had its share of folk uses down through the years, as well as its share of folk names. Francis Porcher, in 1863, wrote, "The Indians uses a strong decoction of the whole pant in eruptive diseases, biles, hemorrhoids, sores, &c. Few plants promise to become more useful in skillful hands: it ought to be tried in yellow bilious fever, the tropical liver complaint."