Aureolaria pectinata (Nutt.) Pennell

Sticky False Foxglove; Southern Oak Leach; Comb Leaf Yellow False Foxglove

Herb

Annual

Vascular

Southern Oak Leach is a native herbaceous annual in the Broomrape family (Orobanchaceae). It can be found throughout most of Alabama. Southern Oak Leach is a hemi-parasitic plant on the roots of various species of the red or black oak group (Quercus Section Lobatae). It occurs most often under oaks in dry or rocky areas and on roadside banks. Southern Oak Leach is an annual with a tap root. The stem is much branched, green or reddish in color, and glandular pubescent. The stems are up to 3 feet in height. Leaves are opposite or sub-opposite, petiolate to sessile, elliptic to lanceolate in outline, with deeply serrate margins or pinnately dissected. The leaves are densely glandular pubescent. Buds are orange-red in color and densely glandular pubescent. Flowers are solitary and axillary. The calyx is 5 lobed, the lobes deeply serrate. The calyx is glandular pubescent. The corolla is campanulate, yellow in color, and 5 lobed. The exterior of the corolla is glandular pubescent. The fruit is a capsule with many small seed. Southern Oak Leach is a hemi-parasite (half parasite), meaning that it contains chlorophyll and is capable of photosynthesis, but has a weak root system and requires a host in order to develop. This makes transplanting plants impossible. Some success has been obtained by sowing seed under suitable oak trees where the leaf litter had been removed and the soil roughly raked to expose fine roots. Injured plant parts turn black.--A. Diamond

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Native

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