Probably infrequent throughout the state on bare places on the crests of wooded ridges, on washed wooded slopes, and more rarely in moist, low woodland. It is commonly found on bare, gravelly places in woodland of all kinds but most commonly on the terraces of streams. This species is variable in the form of the leaves and in the amount of pubescence. Some leaves are nearly glabrous but the leaves of many specimens are more or less harsh-pubescent above; some are more or less pubescent all over above; some are pubescent only on the nerves and margin, and there are a few with only the margin rough-pubescent. I have not seen a specimen with the basal leaves strictly ciliate. I have specimens with the leaf margins rough-pubescent but the pubescence is not in lines and I do not class them as ciliate. Houstonia canadensis has been reported 13 times from Indiana and I had all my specimens so labeled, but after a careful restudy of the material, I changed all of them to Houstonia longifolia. I do not believe we have typical Houstonia canadensis in Indiana. Reported by many Indiana authors as Houstonia ciliolata Torr.

Stems few or solitary from a fibrous-rooted perennial base, mostly simple to the infl, 8-30 cm, glabrous or short-hairy; basal lvs ±numerous, persistent, petiolate, lanceolate to obovate, conspicuously ciliate; cauline lvs sessile, narrowly oblong to lanceolate or oblanceolate, 1-3 cm, glabrous or sparsely (rarely more densely) hairy, usually ciliate; infls terminal, small, few-fld; fls heterostylic; sep lance- linear, 1.8-3 mm; cor purple, hairy within, 5-9 mm, funnelform, the lobes more than half as long as the tube; stamens included or barely exserted; fr globose or depressed-globose, half-inferior, 2.5-3.5 mm; seeds meniscoid, with a ridge across the hollowed inner face; 2n=12, 14. Rocky woods and hillsides; Me. and s. Ont. to Minn., s. to sw. Va., Tenn. and Ark. May, June. (Houstonia c.; Houstonia ciliolata; Houstonia setiscaphia)

Gleason, Henry A. & Cronquist, Arthur J. 1991. Manual of vascular plants of northeastern United States and adjacent Canada. lxxv + 910 pp.

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