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Saxifragaceae family

Heartleaf Saxifrage Saxifraga nelsoniana

Native

Heartleaf Saxifrage is a perennial wildflower native to Alaska, Canada, and the lower 48 states. It grows to 0.7 ft.

Growing & care

USDA PLANTS · TRY
Conditions
Sources · Conditions
Cold hardiness (derived) — Hardiness
Hardiness
≥ zone 6 derived from its U.S. range
Size & form
Sources · Size & form
TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0) — Height · Foliage
USDA PLANTS — Lifespan
Height
0.7 ft
Lifespan
Perennial
Foliage
Broadleaf
In the garden
Ground-cover layer — Sits in the ground-cover of a layered food forest or polyculture.Open guide →
Living mulch / groundcover — Low, ground-hugging grower — can carpet bare soil as a living mulch, shading out weeds and holding moisture.Open guide →
derived roles
Species characteristics from USDA PLANTS (public domain) + TRY (CC BY) — general guidance, not a guarantee for your exact site. Deer "browsing" is documented palatability, not a deer-proof claim.

Wildlife & pollinators

How pollinator value is scored →
❧ Caterpillar hosts ~1 caterpillar species

Saxifraga supports ~1 caterpillar species.

Native butterfly & moth caterpillars are the base of the terrestrial food web — most songbirds rear their young almost entirely on them. As a host for native Lepidoptera this is a modest genus.

Recorded feeding on Saxifraga in North America, including:

Agriades franklinii · gossamer-winged butterfly Clossiana astarte · Astarte Fritillary Gynaephora groenlandica · tussock moth Gynaephora rossii · Ross' Tussock Moth Lampronia oregonella · yucca moth Lampronia trimaculella · yucca moth
+ 3 more species →
Polia richardsoni · owlet moth Synanthedon saxifragae · clearwing moth Udea saxifragae · snout moth
Keystone count (genus-level) from Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use records. Named species (a documented Nearctic sample, not exhaustive) from NHM HOSTS (CC0).
Species thumbnails re-hosted from iNaturalist — Creative Commons, credited per image (hover for credit). Click any species to see it on iNaturalist. Not exhaustive; many taxa have no openly-licensed photo yet.
Frequently grows with

Across 105 U.S. vegetation-survey plots that recorded Heartleaf Saxifrage, these catalog species turned up most often in the same plot — a real field co-occurrence signal, not a planting prescription.

Tealeaf Willow · 70% Dwarf Birch · 63% Bigelow's Sedge · 63% Longstalk Starwort · 58% Arctic Sweet Coltsfoot · 57% Largeflowered Wintergreen · 56% Wideleaf Polargrass · 55% Capitate Lousewort · 54%
"%" = share of this plant's plots that also held the species. From sPlotOpen → (Sabatini et al. 2021, CC BY 4.0) — open vegetation plots: wild community composition, not garden design.
Sources for this entry (13) Open & cited
[01] Scientific name & family — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[02] Growth habit & duration — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[03] Native status & distribution — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[04] Common name — USDA PLANTS (via GBIF)
[05] Invasive / introduced status — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — native status
[06] Ecological value — Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts
[09] Functional traits — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)
[10] Cold hardiness (derived) — Derived from U.S. range × USDA PHZM zones
[11] Caterpillar host count — Warren II 2026 (Dryad, CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts
[12] Caterpillar species — NHM HOSTS (CC0)
Spot an error or have a better photo? Every field links to its source, and the whole dataset is open.
Cite this page Open data, please attribute

PlantKey’s data is open under CC BY-SA 4.0 — free to reuse and adapt, with attribution and the same licence. Photos keep their own per-image licence + credit (see Sources above).

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