Flora Pittsburghensis

Author: Father Pitt

  • Zinnia (Zinnia elegans)

    This once-ubiquitous garden annual was out of fashion for decades, but is now making a comeback. It never really went out of style in old city neighborhoods where gardeners still grow their gardens from seed. It’s also happy to escape from gardens and go wild wherever it finds an opportunity. Here we see one that sprouted against the curb at the edge of a busy street in Beechview, where it found just enough soil to flourish and bloom in late July.

    Gray does not list this species, so we turn to Williamson Nevin Geddes, who describes many commonly cultivated plants in his Brief Flora of the Eastern United States (1904).

    ZÍNNIA, L. Annual or perennial, American, chiefly Mexican herbs, with opposite, mostly sessile and entire leaves, and solitary terminal heads of showy tubular and radiate, variously colored flowers. Disk flowers perfect, with 5 velvety lobes. Rays pistillate, persistent on the akenes. Involucral scales imbricated, in several rows. Receptacle conical or at length cylindrical, its chaff clasping the disk flowers. Akenes of disk compressed, their pappus of 1 to 2 awns; those of the rays 3-angled, without pappus.

    Z. élegans, Youth and Old Age. L.  A Mexican annual, 1° to 3° high, the parent of most of the garden Zinnias, with ovate-elliptic, clasping leaves 2′ to 3′ long, peduncles longer than the leaves and smaller upward, and heads 2′ to 5′ wide. Rays reflexed, originally in a single series, purple or lilac, but by cultivation double and of nearly every color, except blue and green, from white to dark purple. Disk flowers originally yellow or orange, but in the double forms nearly or entirely wanting. Pales serrated. Akenes of disk 2-awned. July to Oct.

  • Velvet-Leaf (Abutilon theophrasti)

    A pernicious weed to farmers, but to city dwellers an interesting and harmless wild flower. It likes cultivated or recently disturbed ground, and will happily sprout up in a porch planter. Originally it comes from Asia, where it is used both for food and for its tough fiber. This plant was growing on a sunny bank in Beechview that had recently been dug up.

    The distinctive crown-shaped seedpods are fascinating to children.

    Flowers. Golden yellow; about an inch wide; typical mallow form, with five regular petals and a column of united stamens; borne in leaf axils.

    Leaves. Quite large, heart-shaped; velvety; strong pinnate veining; at right angles to fleshy petioles, which are about half the length of the leaves.

    Stems. Thick and fleshy; velvety; about 3 feet high (a meter or so).

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    ABÙTILON [Tourn.] Mill. INDIAN MALLOW. Carpels 2-9-seeded, at length 2-valved. Radicle ascending or pointing inward. Otherwise as in Sida. (Name of unknown origin. )

    A. theophrasti Medic. (VELVET LEAF.) Tall annual, 6-12 dm. high; leaves roundish-heart-shaped, taper-pointed, velvety; peduncles shorter than the leaf-stalks; corolla yellow; carpels 12-16, hairy, beaked. (A. Avicennae Gaertn.; A. Abutilon Rusby.) — Waste places, vacant lots in cities, etc. (Nat. from India.)

    –

    In Nature’s Garden (1900), Neltje Blanchan remembers when this flower was a pampered garden pet:

    There was a time, not many years ago, when this now common and often troublesome weed was imported from India and tenderly cultivated in flower gardens. In the Orient it and allied species are grown for their fibre, which is utilized for cordage and cloth; but the equally valuable plant now running wild here has yet to furnish American men with a profitable industry. Although the blossom is next of kin to the veiny Chinese bell-flower, or striped abutilon, so common in greenhouses, its appearance is quite different.

  • White Campion (Silene latifolia ssp. alba)

    A European immigrant that has established itself all over eastern North America. It likes cultivated or recently disturbed ground; this plant was growing in a lot in Beechview that had recently been filled in, where it was blooming in late June. It also goes by the name of Evening Lychnis, because its flowers are nocturnal, closing during the day unless the weather is dreary, as it was on the rainy day when this picture was taken.

    The taxonomy of this species is in a dreadful state. It seems that most current botanists accept the name we give above (Silene latifolia subspecies alba), but in published works we find it listed under a wide variety of names, some of them confusingly similar to the names of confusingly similar species. Older botanists place this species in the genus Lychnis, which differs from Silene in very small structural details of the flowers—so small, apparently, that botanists have now decided to disband the genus, absorbing its members into Silene. Thus in Gray this species is Lychnis alba; but Gray also records Silene latifolia as a synonym for S. vulgaris, the Bladder Campion. Other botanists record this species as Silene alba.

    We give Gray’s descriptions of both Lychnis and Silene, since his description of the one depends on the other:

    SILÈNE L. CATCHFLY. CAMPION. Calyx 5-toothed, 10-many-nerved, naked at the base. Stamens 10. Styles 3, rarely 4. Pod 1-celled, sometimes 3-celled at least at the base, opening by 3 or 6 teeth at the apex. — Flowers solitary or in cymes. Petals mostly crowned with a scale at the base of the blade. (Name from sialon, saliva, from the viscid exudation on the stems and calyx of many species. The English name Catchfly alludes to the same peculiarity.)

    LÝCHNIS [Tourn.] L. CAMPION. Styles 5, rarely 4, and pod opening by as many or twice as many teeth; otherwise nearly as in Silène. (Ancient Greek name for a scarlet or flame-colored species, from lychnos, a light or lamp.)

    Calyx-teeth not twisted; petals showy, much exserted; plant green.

    Flowers dioecious or polygamous.

    L. alba Mill. (WHITE CAMPION.) Leaves ovate to lance-oblong; flowers white or pink, fragrant, opening in the evening; calyx-teeth longer [than in L. dioeca], attenuate; capsule ovoid conical, narrow-mouthed at dehiscence. (L. vespertina Sibth.) — Waste grounds and roadsides, but less common [than L. dioeca]. (Adv. from Old World. ) — Resembles Silene noctiflora but has 5 styles.

    –

    In his Field Book of American Wild Flowers, F. Schuyler Mathews gives us this description:

    A charming plant naturalized from the old country, with densely fine-hairy, ovate-lance-shaped leaves and stem, both dark green; the leaves opposite. The sweet-scented flowers are white, closely resembling those of Silene noctiftora; in Lychnis, however, the flower has five styles, in Silene, three. Both species open their blossoms toward evening and close them during the following morning. The white petals are deeply cleft and crowned at the base with miniature petajlike divisions. The calyx is inflated, and often stained maroon-crimson along the ribs, which are sticky-hairy; after becoming still more inflated it withers and leaves exposed the vase-shaped light brown seed-vessel, pinked at the small opening above. 1-2 feet high. In waste places and borders of fields, from Me. to N. J. and N. Y. Probably farther west. Found at Phillip’s Beach, Marblehead, Mass.

  • Field Sow Thistle (Sonchus arvensis)

    Like a punk dandelion. The leaves are shaped like dandelion leaves, but ringed with spines. The flower heads are like a slightly inebriated dandelion head, with its rays a bit ragged and unkempt. This plant grew in a corner of a front yard in Beechview, where it was blooming in early August.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    SÓNCHUS [Tourn.] L. SOW THISTLE. Heads many-flowered, becoming tumid at base. Involucre more or less imbricated. Achenes obcompressed, ribbed or striate, not beaked; pappus copious, of very white exceedingly soft and fine bristles mainly falling together. — Leafy-stemmed coarse weeds, chiefly smooth and glaucous, with corymbed or umbellate heads of yellow flowers produced in summer and autumn. (The ancient Greek name. )

    Perennial, with creeping rootstocks; flowers bright yellow, in large heads.

    S. arvénsis L. (FIELD S.) Leaves runcinate-pinnatifld, spiny-toothed, clasping by a heart-shaped base; peduncles and involucre bristly; achenes transversely wrinkled on the ribs. — Roadsides, fields, and gravelly shores, Nfd. and N. S. to N J., w. to the Rocky Mts., commonest northw. (Nat. from Eu.)

  • Purple Coneflower (Echinacea purpurea)

    One of our most beloved wild flowers, the Purple Coneflower is at the eastern edge of its native range here; but ornamental plantings have made it a common sight, and from those ornamental plantings come seeds that reinforce the wild population. These plants grew in a clearing in Scott Township, where they were blooming in late July. Up close, the vivid red-orange of the disk florets is as striking as the bright pink-purple of the rays.

    This is the Echinacea so much prized by herbalists for its supposed use against colds.

    Gray describes the genus (which he lists as Brauneria) and the species:

    BRAUNÈRIA Neck. PURPLE CONE-FLOWER. Heads many-flowered; rays mostly drooping, pistillate but sterile. Bracts of the involucre imbricated, lanceolate, spreading. Receptacle conical, the lanceolate carinate spiny-tipped chaff longer than the disk-flowers. Achenes thick, short, 4-sided; pappus a small toothed border.—Perennial herbs, with stout and nearly simple stems naked above and terminated by a single large head; leaves chiefly alternate, 3-5-nerved. Rays rather persistent; disk purplish. (Named, it is said, for Jacob Brauner, a German herbalist of the early part of the 18th century.) Echinacea Moench.

    Rays purple, rose-color, or rarely white.

    B. purpurea (DC.) Britton. Stem smooth, or in one form rough-bristly; leaves rough, often serrate; the lowest ovate, 5-nerved,veiny, long-petioled ; the others ovate-lanceolate; involucre imbricated in 3-5 rows; rays 15-20, dull purple (rarely whitish), 2.5-4.5 cm. long or more. (Echinacea Moench.) — Prairies and banks, from w. Pa. and Va. to Mich., Ia., and southw.; reported as adventive eastw. July.