Flora Pittsburghensis

Author: Father Pitt

Dayflower (Commelina communis)

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.)

October 18, 2009
Fleabane (Erigeron strigosus)

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.

October 17, 2009
Pigweed (Amaranthus retroflexus)

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.)

October 16, 2009
Virginia Waterleaf (Hydrophyllum virginianum)

A very attractive flower that can form large colonies near streams; this colony was blooming in early June near a small stream in Peters Township. The flowers may be either violet-blue or white. The much less common Appendaged Waterleaf (H. appendiculatum) has a looser cluster of blue or blue-violet flowers and maple-shaped leaves, rather than the distinctively divided leaves of the Virginia Waterleaf.

Although Gray says the name Hydrophyllum (Greek for “Waterleaf”) is “of no obvious application,” other observers trace the name to the whitish blotches that may appear on the leaves, looking like water stains.

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. virginianum L. Smoothish, 2-7 dm. high; leaves pinnately divided; the divisions 5-7, ovate-lanceolate or oblong, pointed, sharply cut-toothed, the lowest mostly 2-parted, the uppermost confluent; peduncles longer than the petioles of the upper leaves, forked ; calyx-lobes narrowly linear, bristly-ciliate; flowers 1 cm. or less long; anthers oblong-linear. Rich woods, N. H. and w. Que., westw. and southw. May-Aug. H. patens Britton, indistinguishable as to foliage, is said to differ in its somewhat more ciliate petioles, appressed calyx-lobes, and more spreading corolla-lobes.

October 15, 2009
Queen Anne’s Lace (Daucus carota)

The ancestor of our common carrots and parsley, this European import is everywhere. But that doesn’t make it any less beautiful. The tiny off-white flowers are carried in dense flat clusters (“compound umbels,” to use botanical language). You can often find a single tiny purple floret in the center of the cluster. Later, the umbels close up into a seed cluster that strongly resembles a bird’s nest.

Although the root is edible, the plant is easily confused with poisonous members of the same family, especially the notorious Poison Hemlock that killed Socrates.

Gray describes the genus and the species:

DAUCUS [Tourn.] L. CARROT
Fruit oblong, flattened dorsally; stylopodium depressed; carpel with 5 slender bristly primary ribs and 4 winged secondary ones, each of the latter bearing a single row of barbed prickles; oil-tubes solitary under the secondary ribs, two on the commissural side. Bristly annuals or biennials, with pinnately decompound leaves, foliaceous and cleft involucral bracts, and compound umbels which become strongly concave. (The ancient Greek name.)

D. CAROTA L. Biennial; stem bristly; ultimate leaf-segments lanceolate and cuspidate; rays numerous. Fields and waste place ; a pernicious weed. The flowers vary from white to roseate or pale yellow, the central one in each umbel usually dark purple. (Nat. from Eu.)

October 14, 2009