Flora Pittsburghensis

Author: Father Pitt

  • Red Clover (Trifolium pratense)

    This ubiquitous European import grows almost anywhere the grass isn’t mowed too frequently. It keeps blooming throughout the season: this flower was going strong in early November in Beechview. It came to America as a pasture crop, and soon found that it really liked our open spaces.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    TRIFOLIUM [Tourn.] L. CLOVER. TREFOIL
    Calyx persistent, 5-cleft, the teeth usually bristle-form. Corolla mostly withering or persistent; the claws of all the petals, or of all except the oblong or ovate standard, more or less united below with the stamen-tube; keel short and obtuse. Tenth stamen more or less separate. Pods small and membranous, often included in the calyx, 1-6-seeded, indehiscent, or opening by one of the sutures. Tufted or diffuse herbs. Leaves mostly palmately (sometimes pinnately) 3-foliolate; leaflets usually toothed. Stipules united with the petiole. Flowers in heads or spikes. (Name from tres, three, and folium, a leaf.)

    T. PRATENSE L. (RED C.) Perennial; stems ascending, somewhat hairy; leaflets oval or obovate, often notched at the end and marked on the upper side with a pale spot; stipules broad, bristle-pointed; heads ovoid, sessile or not rarely pedunculate; corolla magenta to whitish; calyx soft-hairy. Fields and meadows; extensively cultivated. (Introd. from Eu.)

  • Toothwort (Cardamine concatenata)

    Cut-Leaf Toothworts are common in rich open woods; this one was blooming on a wooded hillside in Mount Lebanon in late April. The leaves are distinctive: they grow in whorls of three, and they are narrow and deeply divided, with jagged teeth on each lobe. The flowers of Broadleaf Toothwort (Cardamine diphylla) are similar, but the leaves are very different.

    Gray puts the Toothworts in the genus Dentaria, and lists this one as Dentaria laciniata.

    DENTARIA [Tourn.] L. TOOTHWORT. PEPPER-ROOT
    Pod lanceolate, flat. Style elongated. Seeds in one row, wingless, the funiculus broad and flat. Cotyledons petioled, thick, very unequal, their margins somewhat infolding each other. —Perennials, of damp woodlands, with long fleshy sometimes interrupted scaly or toothed rootstocks, of a pleasant pungent taste; stems leafless below, bearing 2 or 3 petioled compound leaves about or above the middle, and terminated by a corymb or short raceme of large white or purple flowers. (Name from dens, a tooth.)

    D. laciniata Muhl. Tubers deep-seated; stems pubescent above; cauline leaves 3, whorled or nearly so, the lateral leaflets deeply cleft, glabrous or pubescent, the segments linear to narrowly oblong, conspicuously gash-toothed; basal leaves, when present, similar; flowers white or purplish; calyx 6-9 mm. long; petals 1-2 cm. long. Rich damp woods, w. Que. and Vt. to Minn., and southw. Apr., early May.

  • Dame’s Rocket (Hesperis matronalis)

    Pittsburghers usualy call it “phlox,” but this ubiquitous late-spring flower is really a member of the mustard or crucifer family, as you can tell by the four-petaled flowers (real Phlox flowers have five petals). It came from Europe as a garden flower and quickly made itself at home. It would be hard to conjure up any inhospitable feelings toward this welcome guest, whose bright flowers decorate roadsides and back yards everywhere (these flowers were blooming in Mount Lebanon in late May). Each colony blooms in a mixture of colors from deep magenta to white, and many plants grow flowers with splashes or stripes of contrasting colors.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    HESPERIS [Tourn.] L. ROCKET
    Pod linear, nearly cylindrical; stigma lobed, erect. Seeds in 1 row in each cell, oblong, marginless. Cotyledons incumbent. Biennial or perennial, with serrate sessile or petiolate leaves, and large purple flowers. (Name from hespera, evening, from the evening fragrance of the flowers.)

    H. MATRONALIS L. (DAME’S VIOLET.) Tall: leaves lanceolate, acuminate; pods 5-10 cm. long, spreading. Sometimes cultivated, and spreading to roadsides, etc. (Introd. from Eu.)


  • New York Ironweed (Vernonia noveboracensis)

    Few floral sights are more spectacular than a meadow filled with Ironweed, whose vivid purple can never be adequately captured in a photograph. This meadow was blooming in early September along a tributary of the Pine Creek near Wexford.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    VERNONIA Schreb. IRONWEED
    Heads discoid, 16-many-flowered, in corymbose cymes; flowers perfect; involucre shorter than the flowers, of much imbricated bracts. Achenes cylindrical, ribbed; pappus double, the outer of minute scale-like bristles, the inner of copious capillary bristles. Perennial herbs, with leafy steins, alternate acuminate or very acute serrate leaves and mostly purple (rarely white) flowers. (Named for William Vernon, an early English botanist, who traveled in North America. )

    V. noveboracensis Willd. Rather tall (1-2 m.); leaves long-lanceolate to lance-oblong, more or less pubescent beneath, gradually narrowed but not at all acuminate toward the base; cyme open; heads mostly 30-40-flowered; involucre purplish (or in white-flowered individuals green), campanulate; the bracts ovate or lance-ovate, with loosely ascending or recurved-spreading filiform tips; pappus purple or purplish. Low ground near the coast, Mass, to Va. and Miss.; reported from Pelee I., L. Erie (Macoun).

  • Mayapple (Podophyllum peltatum)

    The fruit of the Mayapple or Mandrake is edible in small quantities, if you get it when it’s really ripe; otherwise the whole plant is poisonous, and even ripe fruits are toxic in large quantities. The best advice would probably be to enjoy the plant as one to look at rather than one to consume. Its distinctive umbrella-like leaves form large colonies in the spring woods. Stalks with only one leaf will not bloom, but a stalk that branches in a Y-shape into two leaves will grow a single fairly large flower in the crook of the Y. You have to lift the leaves or stoop down to see these flowers, but the effort is worth it. This plant was blooming in early May on a wooded hillside overlooking a stream in Mount Lebanon.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    PODOPHYLLUM L. MAY APPLE. MANDRAKE
    Flower-bud with three green bractlets, which early fall away. Sepals 6, fugacious. Petals 6 or 9, obovate. Stamens twice as many as the petals in our species; anthers linear-oblong, not opening by uplifted valves. Ovary ovoid; stigma sessile, large, thick and undulate. Fruit a large fleshy berry. Seeds covering the very large lateral placenta, in many rows, each seed inclosed in a pulpy aril. Perennial herbs, with creeping root-stocks and thick fibrous roots. Stems 2-leaved, 1-flowered. (Name from pous, a foot, and phyllon, a leaf, probably referring to the stout petioles.)

    P. peltatum L. Stamens 12-18; leaves 5-9-parted, the lobes oblong, rather wedge-shaped, somewhat lobed and toothed at the apex. Rich woods, w. Que. and w. N. E. to Minn., and southw. May. Flowerless stems terminated by a large round 7-9-lobed leaf, peltate in the middle, like an umbrella; flowering stems bearing two one-sided leaves, and a nodding white flower from the fork; fruit ovoid, 2.5-5 cm. long, ripe in July, sweet and slightly arid, edible.