Stems erect, silky-hairy, 1 to 2 feet high and somewhat woody at the base from a thickened, woody, perennial root. Leaves opposite, simple, sessile, ovate or elliptical-ovate, blunt, smooth and glabrous above, silky and reticulate-veined beneath, entire or rarely somewhat lobed; each stem with a single terminal nodding flower about 1 inch long or less. Calyx rather broadly cylindric in shape, composed of four or five thick sepals, very silky without, their yellowish-green tips recurved; petals none. Stamens numerous, parallel with the sepals, their anthers very narrow. Pistils very numerous, their styles silky or plumose. In fruit the fleshy sepals fall away leaving an erect head of small achenes plumose with the long, yellowish-brown, persistent styles which are 1 to 2 inches long.

Memoir 15 N. Y. State Museum

Plate 74

Erect Silky Leather Flower - Vionia ochroleuca

Sandy fields and thickets, Staten Island and Pennsylvania, south to Georgia. Flowering in late May and June. In the southern states several additional species of Leather Flower (Viorna) are found, but this is the only one which enters New York.