Agalinis aspera
Encyclopedia
Agalinis aspera is a non-poisonous plant of the genus
Genus
In biology, a genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms, which is an example of definition by genus and differentia...

 Agalinis
Agalinis
Agalinis Raf. is a genus of about 70 species in North, Central, and South America that until recently was aligned with members of the family Scrophulariaceae. As a result of numerous molecular phylogenetic studies based on various chloroplast DNA loci, it was shown to be more closely related to...

, habitating in the dry prairies. It can grow to be about eight to twenty-four inches tall. When the flowers bloom, the colors vary between purple and pink.

The tall foxglove is native to some parts of the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 and Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

. According to USDA Plants, the places where the tall foxglove can be found are, "Arkansas
Arkansas
Arkansas is a state located in the southern region of the United States. Its name is an Algonquian name of the Quapaw Indians. Arkansas shares borders with six states , and its eastern border is largely defined by the Mississippi River...

, Iowa
Iowa
Iowa is a state located in the Midwestern United States, an area often referred to as the "American Heartland". It derives its name from the Ioway people, one of the many American Indian tribes that occupied the state at the time of European exploration. Iowa was a part of the French colony of New...

, Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...

, Kansas
Kansas
Kansas is a US state located in the Midwestern United States. It is named after the Kansas River which flows through it, which in turn was named after the Kansa Native American tribe, which inhabited the area. The tribe's name is often said to mean "people of the wind" or "people of the south...

, Minnesota
Minnesota
Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...

, Missouri
Missouri
Missouri is a US state located in the Midwestern United States, bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. With a 2010 population of 5,988,927, Missouri is the 18th most populous state in the nation and the fifth most populous in the Midwest. It...

, North Dakota
North Dakota
North Dakota is a state located in the Midwestern region of the United States of America, along the Canadian border. The state is bordered by Canada to the north, Minnesota to the east, South Dakota to the south and Montana to the west. North Dakota is the 19th-largest state by area in the U.S....

, Nebraska
Nebraska
Nebraska is a state on the Great Plains of the Midwestern United States. The state's capital is Lincoln and its largest city is Omaha, on the Missouri River....

, Oklahoma
Oklahoma
Oklahoma is a state located in the South Central region of the United States of America. With an estimated 3,751,351 residents as of the 2010 census and a land area of 68,667 square miles , Oklahoma is the 28th most populous and 20th-largest state...

, South Dakota
South Dakota
South Dakota is a state located in the Midwestern region of the United States. It is named after the Lakota and Dakota Sioux American Indian tribes. Once a part of Dakota Territory, South Dakota became a state on November 2, 1889. The state has an area of and an estimated population of just over...

, Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...

, Wisconsin
Wisconsin
Wisconsin is a U.S. state located in the north-central United States and is part of the Midwest. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michigan to the northeast, and Lake Superior to the north. Wisconsin's capital is...

, and Manitoba
Manitoba
Manitoba is a Canadian prairie province with an area of . The province has over 110,000 lakes and has a largely continental climate because of its flat topography. Agriculture, mostly concentrated in the fertile southern and western parts of the province, is vital to the province's economy; other...

". It cannot be found in other locations is because they do not have the right habitats. The foxglove likes to bloom in the low wet meadows or along hillsides and the bloom period for the tall foxglove is from June to September.

It is in the family Orobanchaceae
Orobanchaceae
Orobanchaceae, the broomrape family, is a family of flowering plants of the order Lamiales, with about 90 genera and more than 2000 species. Many of these genera were formerly included in the family Scrophulariaceae sensu lato...

, but previously was a member of the Scrophulariaceae
Scrophulariaceae
Scrophulariaceae, the figwort family, are a family of flowering plants. The plants are annual or perennial herbs with flowers with bilateral or rarely radial symmetry. Members of the Scrophulariaceae have a cosmopolitan distribution, with the majority found in temperate areas, including...

 family It was realigned following molecular phylogeny
Molecular phylogeny
Molecular phylogenetics is the analysis of hereditary molecular differences, mainly in DNA sequences, to gain information on an organism's evolutionary relationships. The result of a molecular phylogenetic analysis is expressed in a phylogenetic tree...

 data from the chloroplast genome
Genome
In modern molecular biology and genetics, the genome is the entirety of an organism's hereditary information. It is encoded either in DNA or, for many types of virus, in RNA. The genome includes both the genes and the non-coding sequences of the DNA/RNA....

.

Dr. Virginia Freire and Dr. Emmet J. Judziewicz (biology professors at the University of Wisconsin) mentioned that agalinis is Latin for "remarkable flax" and aspera is also Latin for " 'rough' or 'harsh' from coarse nature of leave," .

The tall foxglove is considered endangered. One of the reasons why this plant is being wiped out is partially because of its location. When the tall foxglove is growing in the low wet plains, they tend to drain out and take the plants along with it. According to COSEWIC, "human impact poses the greatest threat to these populations because most of them are in road allowance areas. Any major disturbance of the road allowance undertaken for road expansion, road straightening, etc., would put these populations at risk," .
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