Flora Pittsburghensis

Author: Father Pitt

  • Goldmoss (Sedum sarmentosum)

    Also known as Stringy Stonecrop or Wild Stonecrop (a name it shares with  Sedum ternatum), this little succulent really likes city yards where the soil is a bit dry. But it can seed itself anywhere and grows very fast: this plant grew up in a nursery pot with a Korean lilac, and by the end of May was covered with starry yellow flowers. Often planted as a groundcover; it can be invasive, but its shallow roots make it very easy to yank out if you don’t like it.

    This species was introduced from Asia after Gray’s time as a rock-garden specialty, but apparently Pittsburgh is very much to its liking. It does not appear in Gray’s Manual.

  • Bugles (Ajuga reptans)

    Also called Bugleweed, a name it shares with Lycopus virginicus. This is a popular groundcover at garden centers, usually in varieties with bronze or variegated leaves. The original green-leaved version is thoroughly naturalized here; it persists in old plantings for decades, but it also pops up on its own, especially at the edge of an open woodland. The flowers are normally blue, but there is an uncommon lavender form, as we see in this stand in Beechview.

    AJUGA L. BUGLE WEED
    Calyx 5-toothed. The large and spreading lower lip of the corolla with the middle lobe emarginate or 2-cleft. Stamens as in Teucrium, but anther- cells less confluent. (From a- privative, and xygon, Latin jugum, yoke, from the seeming absence of a yoke-fellow to the lower lip of the corolla.)

    A. reptans L. Perennial, 1-2.5 dm. high, smooth or but slightly pubescent, with copious creeping stolons; leaves obovate or spatulate, sometimes sinuate, the cauline sessile, the floral approximate, subtending several sessile blue flowers. Locally in fields, Me. and Que. to s. N. V. May-July. (Nat. from Eu.)

  • Philadelphia Fleabane

    The amazing number of ray flowers gives these flower heads either a delicate or a shaggy appearance, depending on how much they’ve been whipped about by the wind. The rays can be either white or, as here, pink. The flowers start to bloom in May; these were blooming in Squirrel Hill on about May 15.

    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. philadelphicus L. Hairy; stem leafy, corymbed, bearing several small heads; leaves thin, with a broad midrib, oblong; the upper smoothish, clasping by a heart-shaped base, mostly entire ; the lowest spatulate, toothed; rays innumerable and very narrow, rose-purple or flesh-color. Throughout, locally common, generally in alluvial soil. May-Aug.

  • Appendaged Waterleaf (Hydrophyllum appendiculatum)

    A somewhat uncommon plant in wstern Pennsylvania, but abundant here at the side of a wooded street in Beechview, where it was blooming in mid-May. To judge by the way it grew here, it likes moist soil at the edge of the woods. The family resemblance to the more common Virginia Waterleaf is obvious, but the flowers of Appendaged Waterleaf are a middle blue or blue-violet color, and the leaves are maple-shaped.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    HYDROPHYLLUM [Tourn.] L. WATERLEAF
    Calyx 5-parted, sometimes with a small appendage in each sinus, early open in the bud. Corolla bell-shaped, 5-cleft; the lobes convolute in the bud: the tube furnished with 5 longitudinal linear appendages opposite the lobes, forming a nectariferous groove. Stamens and style mostly exserted; lilainents more or less bearded. Ovary bristly hairy (as is usual in the family); the placentae soon free from the walls except at the top and bottom. Capsule ripening 1-4 seeds, spherical.—Perennials, with petioled ample leaves, and wvhite or bluish-purple cymose-clustered flowers. (Name formed of hydor, water, and phyllon, leaf; of no obvious application.)

    H. appendiculatum Michx. Hairy; stem-leaves palmately 5-lobed, rounded, the lobes toothed and pointed, the lowest pinnately divided; cymes rather loosely flowered; filiform pedicels and calyx bristly-hairy. Damp woods, N. Y. and Ont. to Minn., and southw. May, June.

  • Rue Anemone (Thalictrum thalictroides)

    This beautiful flower takes advantage of the early days of spring, when the trees in the open woods are still mostly leafless, to get most of its growing and blooming done. By summer it’s gone. It looks a bit like a white (or sometimes pink) buttercup, and indeed it belongs to the same family. This plant was blooming in late April in the Squaw Run valley in Fox Chapel.

    Gray places this species in the genus Anemonella:

    ANEMONELLA Spach.
    Involucre compound, at the base of an umbel of flowers. Sepals 5-10, whiteand conspicuous. Petals none. Achenes 4-15, ovoid, terete, strongly 8-10-ribbed, sessile. Stigma terminal, broad and depressed. Low glabrous perennial; leaves all radical, compound. (Name a diminutive of Anemone, to which this plant has sometimes been referred.)
    A. thalictroides (L.) Spach. (RUE ANEMONE.) Stem and slender petiole of radical leaf (1-3 dm. high) rising from a cluster of thickened tuberous roots; leaves 2-3-ternately compound; leaflets roundish, somewhat 3-lobed at the end, cordate at the base, long-petiolulate, those of the 2-3-leaved 1-2-ternate involucre similar; flowers several in an umbel; sepals oval (1.2 cm. long, sometimes pinkish), not early deciduous. (Syndesmon Hoffmannsegg.; Thalictrum anemonoides Michx.) Woods, common, s. N. H. to Minn., Kan., Tenn., and n. w. Fla. Rarely the sepals, stamens or involucre are variously modified.