Flora Pittsburghensis

Author: Father Pitt

  • Poke (Phytolacca americana)

    Phytolacca-americana-2009-09-25-01

    The inky black berries of Poke, probably poisonous but beautiful nonetheless. This is the only member of its family in our area, but it’s certainly common enough. Gray lists it as Phytolacca decandra.

    Gray describes the family, genus, and species.

    PHYTOLACCACEAE (POKEWEED FAMILY)

    Plants with alternate entire leaves and perfect flowers, having the general characters of Chenopodiaceae, but usually a several-celled ovary composed of as many carpels united in a ring, and forming a berry in fruit.

    PHYTOLACCA [Tourn.] L. POKEWEED

    Calyx of 6 rounded and petal-like sepals. Stamens 5-30. Ovary of 5-12 carpels united in a ring, with as many short separate styles, in fruit forming a depressed-globose 5-12-celled berry, with a single vertical seed in each cell. Embryo curved in a ring around the albumen. Tall and stout perennial herbs, with large petioled leaves, and terminal racemes which become lateral and opposite the leaves. (Name compounded of phyton, plant, and the French lac, lake, in allusion to the crimson coloring matter which the berries yield.)

    1. P. decandra L. (COMMON POKE or SCOKE, GARGET, PIGEON BERRY.) A smooth plant, with a rather unpleasant odor, and a very large poisonous root (often 1-1.5 dm. in diameter) sending up stout stalks at length 2-3 m. high; calyx white; stamens and styles 10; ovary green; berries in long racemes, dark-purple, ripe in autumn. Low grounds and rich soil, s. Me. to Ont., Minn., and south w. July-Sept.

  • Foamflower (Tiarella cordifolia)

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    Somewhat uncommon here, but found on some wooded hillsides; these plants grew near the Trillium Trail in Fox Chapel. They bloom around the first of May, just when the trilliums and Virginia Bluebells are at their peak.

    From Gray’s Manual:

    TIARELLA L. FALSE MITERWORT
    Calyx bell-shaped, 5-parted. Petals 5, with claws. Stamens long and slender. Styles 2. Capsule membranaceous, 2-valved; the valves unequal. Seeds few, at the base of each parietal placenta, globular, smooth. Perennials ; flowers white. (Name a diminutive from tiara, a tiara, or turban, from the form of the pistil, which is like that of Mitella, to which the name of Miterwort properly belongs.)

    1. T. cordifolia L. Leaves from the rootstock or summer runners, heart-shaped, sharply lobed and toothed, sparsely hairy above, downy beneath; stem (1-4 dm. high) leafless or rarely with 1 or 2 leaves ; raceme simple ; petals oblong, often subserrate. Rich rocky woods, N. S. and N. B. to Minn., Ind., and southw. in the mts. Apr.-June.

  • Wingstem (Actinomeris alternifolia)

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    These tall, sunny-yellow flowers often grow at the edge of the woods. They are also called “Yellow Ironweed”; although they are not closely related to the true ironweeds (Vernonia altissima and Vernonia noveboracensis, for example), the plants look very similar without the flowers, and the stems are similarly strong. The flowers are distinctive: the rays are presented in a slovenly sort of way, with some flowers never growing more than two of them. The flowers with more rays often look like a sloppy drawing of a daisy, with rays of different sizes and shapes arranged asymmetrically.  The disks are spiny-looking, with large florets arranged pincushion-fashion.

    From Gray’s Manual:

    ACTINOMERIS Nutt.
    Heads many-flowered; rays neutral, few or none. Involucral bracts few, herbaceous, nearly equal, soon deflexed beneath the globular disk. Receptacle small, chaffy. Achenes flat, obovate, winged or wingless, at maturity spreading in all directions; pappus of 2-3 smooth persistent awns. Tall branching perennials, with serrate feather-veined leaves tapering to the base and mostly decurrent on the stem. Heads corymbed; flowers chiefly yellow. (Name from aktis, a ray, and meris, a part;  alluding to the irregularity of the rays.)

    1. A. alternifolia (L.) DC. Stem somewhat hairy, usually winged above, 1-2 m. high; leaves alternate or the lower opposite, oblong or ovate-lanceolate, pointed at both ends; rays 2-8, irregular. (A. squarrosa Nutt.; Verbbesina alternifolia Britton.) Rich soil, N. J. to Ont., Ia., Kan., and southw. Aug.-Sept.

  • Smaller Forget-Me-Not (Myosotis laxa)

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    Normally found near streams, but this plant was happy by a city sidewalk in Beechview, on the shady north side of a house near the exit of a drainpipe. Here we see it much enlarged; for a sense of scale, note the chain-link fence in the background.

    Although Gray’s ambiguous note “(Eu.)” might seem to mean that the species comes from Europe, it seems rather to be a native species that also occurs in Europe.

    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. laxa Lehm. Perennial from filiform subterranean shoots; stems very slender, decumbent; pubescence all appressed; leaves lanceolate-oblong or somewhat spatulate; calyx-lobes as long as the tube; limb of corolla rarely 5 mm. broad, paler blue. In water and wet ground, Nfd. to Ont., and southw. May-Aug. (Eu.)

  • Sweet Alyssum (Lobularia maritima)

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    A popular bedding plant that liberally seeds itself. When seeds get washed downhill, they lodge in sidewalk cracks, where they’re quite happy to grow and bloom all summer and well into fall, producing more seeds to lodge in sidewalk cracks, and making the garden Alyssum one of our more common urban weeds. This plant grew where the sidewalk met a stone retaining wall in Beechview.

    From Gray’s Manual:

    LOBULARIA Desv. SWEET ALYSSUM

    Pod small, orbicular, with only one or two wingless seeds in a cell; valves nerveless, somewhat convex, the margin flattened. Petals white, entire. Cotyledons accumbent. Hairs of the stem and leaves 2-pointed, appressed, attached in the middle. (Latin lobulus, a little lobe, probably referring to the 2-lobed hairs. )

    1. L. MARITIMA (L.) Desv. Slightly hoary; leaves linear; flowers small, honey-scented. (Alyssum Lam.; Koniga R. Br.) Often cultivated, and occasionally spontaneous. (Introd. from Eu.)