Flora Pittsburghensis

Author: Father Pitt

  • Forget-Me-Not (Myosotis scorpioides)

    Myosotis-scorpioides-2009-10-22-Wexford-01

    The “true” Forget-Me-Not is a European import that makes itself at home along brooks and streams; these grew by a little tributary of the Pine Creek near Wexford. Though Forget-Me-Nots are famously blue, we often see pink ones as well. On these particular plants, the newer flowers are pink, fading to blue as they age.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    MYOSOTIS [Rupp.] L. SCORPION-GRASS. FORGET-ME-NOT
    Corolla-tube about the length of the 6-toothed or 5-cleft calyx, the throat with 5 small and blunt arching appendages opposite the rounded lobes; the latter convolute in the bud! Stamens included, on very short filaments. Nutlets compressed. Low and mostly soft-hairy herbs, with entire leaves, those of the stem sessile, and with small flowers in naked racemes, which are entirely bractless, or occasionally with small leaves next the base, prolonged and straightened in fruit. (Name composed of myos, mouse, and os, ear, from the short and soft leaves in some species.)

    M. scorpiodes. (TRUE F.) Perennial; stems ascending from an oblique creeping base, 3-7 dm. high, loosely branched, smoothish; leaves  rough-pubescent, oblong-lanceolate or linear-oblong; calyx-lobes much shorter than its tube; limb of corolla 5-8 mm. broad, sky-blue, with a yellow eye. (M. palustris Hill.) In wet ground, Nfd. to w. N. Y., and southw. May-Sept. (Nat. from Eu.)

  • Canada Goldenrod (Solidago canadensis)

    Solidago-canadensis-2009-09-25-Oakmont-02

    Goldenrods are the bees’ best friends. This one, which was blooming in late September, grew in front of a corrugated steel fence near a disused railroad siding in Oakmont. It may be common to the point of superabundance, but there is no more elegant wild flower than Canada Goldenrod.

    From Gray’s Manual of Botany: S. canadensis L. Stem rather slender, 0.3-1.5 m. high, glabrous at least below, often minutely pubescent above; leaves narrowly lanceolate, thin, glabrous above, minutely pubescent on the nerves beneath, mostly sharp-serrate, the middle ones 6-13 cm. long, 5-18 mm. wide; heads tiny, crowded in recurved racemes and forming dense broadly pyramidal panicles; pedicels strongly pilose; involucral bracts linear, mostly attenuate, greenish-straw-color. (Var. glabrata Porter.) Thickets and rich open soil, Nfd. to N. Dak., s. to W. Va. and Ky. July-Sept.

  • Dayflower (Commelina communis)

    Commelina-communis-2009-08-30-Beechview-02

    Also called “Wandering Jew,” and a close relative of the Wandering Jew often found in supermarket hanging baskets. This is the Asiatic Dayflower: the two upper petals are pure blue; the lower one is white. Virginia Dayflower, a native but rarer species, has a blue lower petal. The flowers close in the late afternoon; thus the name. We find this common flower everywhere, blooming all summer till frost; here it was blooming beside a front porch in Beechview.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    COMMELINA [Plum.] L. DAY-FLOWER
    Flowers irregular. Sepals somewhat colored, unequal; the 2 lateral partly united. Two lateral petals rounded or kidney-shaped, on long claws, the odd one smaller. Stamens unequal, 3 of them fertile, one of which is bent inward; 3 of them sterile and smaller, with imperfect cross-shaped anthers; filaments naked. Often procumbent and rooting at the joints. Leaves contracted at base into sheathing petioles; the floral one heart-shaped and clasping, folded together or hooded, forming a spathe inclosing the flowers, which expand for a single morning and are recurved on their pedicel before and afterward. Petals blue. Flowering all summer. Ours all with perennial roots, or propagating by striking root from the joints. (Dedicated to the early Dutch botanists J. and G. Commelin.)

    C. communis L. Slender and creeping, nearly glabrous; leaves lanceolate, 2-5 cm. long; spathe cordate, acute, with margins not united; seeds shallowly pitted, granulate-reticulated. (C. nudiflora auth., not L.) Alluvial banks, Del. to Fla., w. to Kan. and Tex. A frequent weed of dooryards and gardens, northeastw. to e. Mass. (E. Asia, Trop. reg.)

  • Fleabane (Erigeron strigosus)

    Erigeron-strigosus-2009-08-26-Export-01

    Also called “Daisy Fleabane,” “Fleabane Daisy,” “Plains Fleabane,” “Prairie Fleabane,” and probably many other names. Pittsburghers usually call them “little daisies.” Old herbal legend has it that dried plants repel fleas. Fleabane is very common around here; if it were not, it would be treasured as a garden ornamental. It blooms for a good bit of the summer; these were blooming in late August at the edge of a back yard near Export. The seventh edition of Gray lists this as Erigeron ramosus, though the sixth had listed it as E. strigosus.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    ERIGERON L. FLEABANE
    Heads many-flowered, radiate, mostly flat or hemispherical; the narrow rays very numerous, pistillate. Involucral bracts narrow, equal, and little imbricated, never coriaceous, neither foliaceous nor green-tipped. Receptacle flat or convex, naked. Achenes flattened, usually pubescent and 2-nerved; pappus a single row of capillary bristles, with minuter ones intermixed, or with a distinct short outer pappus of little bristles or chaffy scales. Herbs, with entire or toothed and generally sessile leaves, and solitary or corymbed naked-pedunculate heads. Disk yellow; rays white, pink, or purple. (The ancient name presumably of a Senecio, from er, spring, and geron, an old man, suggested by the hoariness of some vernal species.)

    E. ramosus (Walt.) BSP. (DAISY F.) Stem panicled-corymbose at the summit, roughish like the leaves with minute appressed hairs, or almost smooth; leaves entire or nearly so, the upper lanceolate, scattered, the lowest oblong or spatulate, tapering into a slender petiole; rays white, twice the length of the minutely hairy involucre. (E. strigosus Muhl.) Fields, etc., common. June-Oct. Stem smaller and more simple than the preceding [E. annuus], with smaller heads but longer rays. Var. DISCOIDEUS (Robbins) BSP., with the rays minute, scarcely exceeding the involucre, occurs in s. N. E. and N. Y.

  • Pigweed (Amaranthus retroflexus)

    Amaranthus-retroflexus-2009-09-30-01

    It’s easy to dismiss as just another green weed, but Pigweed is a close cousin of the cultivated amaranths, of which various varieties are grown both for their seeds (from which a flour can be made) and their beauty. If its flowers were any other color, Pigweed might join the ranks of the ornamental amaranths. Here, against a backdrop of dark green English ivy by a sidewalk in Beechview, we can appreciate the elegant architecture of Pigweed, and pause to admire it before we go back to ignoring it as usual.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    AMARANTHUS [Tourn.] L. AMARANTH
    Flowers 3-bracted. Calyx glabrous. Stamens 5, rarely 2 or 3, separate; anthers 2-celled. Stigmas 2 or 3. Fruit an ovoid 1-seeded utricle, 2-3-beaked at the apex, mostly longer than the calyx, opening transversely or sometimes bursting irregularly. Embryo coiled into a ring around the albumen. Coarse annual weeds, with alternate and entire petioled setosely tipped leaves, and small green or purplish flowers in axillary or terminal spiked clusters; in late summer and autumn. (Amarantos, unfading, because the dry calyx and bracts do not wither.)

    A. RETROFLEXUS L. (GREEN A., PIGWEED.) Roughish and more or less pubescent; leaves dull green, long-petioled, ovate or rhombic-ovate, undulate; the thick spikes crowded in a stiff glomerate panicle; bracts awn-pointed, rigid, exceeding the acute or obtuse sepals. Cultivated grounds, common; indigenous southwestw. (Adv. from Trop. Am.)