Liverleaf
Hepatica nobilis
Family · Ranunculaceae · Poisonous
Read this before the sheet
This plant, or one that resembles it, is dangerous. Identifying is not authorising: no app has the authority to tell you that you may eat or touch a plant.
Emergency
The lilac-blue flower that opens on the floor of limestone mountain woods as early as February, among last year's leaf litter. In the Peninsula it is rare and confined to the north and northeast, and finding it is an event.
Oak woods · Uplands
Also known asliverwort, kidneywort
How to tell it
Leaves divided into three rounded lobes, leathery, often purple-blotched beneath, whose shape reminded the namers of a liver. Solitary lilac-blue or pink flowers with six to ten tepals, on a hairy stalk. Range: mainly a Spanish plant, practically absent from Portugal.
What it is confused with
No dangerous lookalikes known in the Iberian Peninsula.
What it is for
None
It was used for liver disease because of the leaf's shape, in reasoning that had nothing medical about it. Like all buttercup relatives, it contains protoanemonin and irritates skin and mucous membranes.
The law says
A rare species, protected in part of its Peninsular range. Photograph it, do not pick it.
Where it occurs
Each square is an area with recorded observations of this plant. The lighter background is the set of areas where any of the entries has been observed, and serves as a reference. Note what this is not: it is not where the plant lives, it is where people record it, so trails and towns always look fuller than the mountains. Data from GBIF.
Sources
Community
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