Flora Pittsburghensis

Author: Father Pitt

  • Enchanter’s Nightshade (Circaea lutetiana)

    A woodland plant with inconspicuous two-petaled flowers whose odd shape deserves a closer look, perhaps with a glass. This plant grew in a small, shady clearing in the woods in Mount Lebanon, where it was blooming in the middle of June.

    Enchanter’s Nightshade has a longstanding reputation as a sorcerer’s plant, and indeed it may have been brought from Europe for that purpose. Modern magic-supply houses often sell the seeds.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    CIRCAEA [Tourn.] L. ENCHANTER’S NIGHTSHADE
    Calyx-tube slightly prolonged, the end filled by a cup-shaped disk, deciduous; lobes 2, reflexed. Fruit indehiscent, small and bur-like, bristly with hooked hairs, 1-2-celled; cells 1-seeded. —Low perennials, with opposite leaves on slender petioles, and small whitish flowers in racemes, produced in summer. (Named for Circe, the enchantress.)

    C. lutetiana L. Tall (3-9 dm. high); leaves ovate, tending to ovate-oblong, mostly rounded at the base, of rather firm texture, slightly toothed; 7 bracts none; hairs of the roundish pyriform 2-celled fruit bristle-like (rarely wanting). Common in dry open woods, N. S. to Ont., and southw. (Eu.)

  • White Avens (Geum canadense)

    This unassuming little member of the rose family likes to grow at the edge of the woods; this plant was growing on a shaded bank in Mount Lebanon, where it was blooming in the middle of June. The white flowers bear more than a passing resemblance to the flowers of blackberries or strawberries.

    Gray describes the genus and the species, which he puts in the Eugeum or Geum-proper division of the genus:

    GEUM L. AVENS

    Calyx bell-shaped or flattish, deeply 5-cleft, usually with 5 small bractlets at the sinuses. Petals 5. Stamens many. Achenes numerous, heaped on a conical or cylindrical dry receptacle, the long persistent styles forming hairy or naked and straight or jointed tails. Seed erect; radicle inferior. Perennial herbs, with pinnate or lyrate leaves. (A plant name used by Pliny.)

    EUGEUM T. & G.  Styles jointed and bent near the middle, the upper part deciduous and mostly hairy, the lower naked and hooked, becoming elongated; head of fruit sessile in the calyx, calyx-lobes reflexed.

    * Petals white or pale greenish-yellow, small, spatulate or oblong; stipules small.

    + Receptacle of the fruit densely hairy.

    G. canadense Jacq. Stem (0.6-1.1 m. high) and petioles sparingly hairy; leaves soft-pubescent beneath or glabrate, the basal of 3-5 leaflets or undivided, those of the stern mostly 3-divided or -lobed, rather sharply toothed; stipules ovate-oblong, 1-1.5 cm. long, subentire; petals white. (G. album J. F. Gmel.) Borders of woods, etc., widely distributed.

  • Poison Hemlock (Conium maculatum)

    This is the plant “by which criminals and philosophers were put to death at Athens,” as Gray observes with  a humor as dry as an herbarium specimen. Most notoriously, the juice killed Socrates. It’s a European import that’s very common in Pittsburgh along roadsides and at the edge of the woods. The plants resemble their relative Queen Anne’s Lace (Daucus carota), but are much taller, with looser umbels borne profusely up and down the strong stems. Often the main stem has a distinctive whitish bloom.

    Needless to say, Poison Hemlock is very poisonous, so mixing it up with edible members of the same family can be a bad mistake. This plant grew on a hillside in Beechview, where it was blooming in the middle of June.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    CONIUM L. POISON HEMLOCK
    Fruit somewhat flattened at the sides, glabrous, with prominent wavy ribs; oil-tubes none, but a layer of secreting cells next the seed, the face of which is deeply and narrowly concave. Poisonous biennial, with spotted stems, large decompound leaves with lanceolate pinnatifid leaflets, involucre and involucels of narrow bracts, and white flowers. (Koneion, the Greek name of the Hemlock, by which criminals and philosophers were put to death at Athens.)

    C. maculatum L. A large branching herb, in waste places, Que. to Del., Pa., and westw. (Nat. from Eu.)

    http://florapittsburghensis.com/2009/10/14/queen-annes-lace-daucus-carota/

  • Norway Cinquefoil (Potentilla norvegica)

    Also called Rough Cinquefoil, because it has rough hairs all over. This paradoxical cinquefoil has three leaflets rather than five. It grows in waste places and isn’t too particular about soil; this plant grew in the middle of a gravel driveway near Cranberry, where it was blooming in mid-June.

    Gray makes this species a variety of P. monspeliensis:

    POTENTILLA L. CINQUEFOIL. FIVE-FINGER
    Calyx flat, deeply 5-cleft, with as many bractlets at the sinuses, thus appearing 10-cleft. Petals 5, usually roundish. Stamens many. Achenes many, collected in a head on the dry mostly pubescent or hairy receptacle; styles lateral or terminal, deciduous. Radicle superior. Herbs, or rarely shrubs, with com- pound leaves, and solitary or cymose flowers; their parts rarely in fours. (Name diminutive from potens, powerful, originally applied to P. Anserina, from its reputed medicinal powers.)

    P. monspeliensis L. Stout, erect, hirsute, 2-1) dm. high ; leaves 3-foliolate; leaflets obovate to oblanceolate, those of the uppermost leaves toothed nearly the whole length ; cyme rather close, leafy; calyx large; stamens 15-20. Open soil, Nfd. to Alaska, s. to D. C., Mo., Kan., and N. Mex. May-Aug. (E. Asia.)

    Var. norvegica (L.) Rydb. Less hirsute; leaflets more narrowly oblong, those of the uppermost leaves mostly 3-5-toothed near the end; inflorescence looser. (P. norvegica L.) Similar situations, e. Que. to n. N. E., L. Superior, and northwestw.; occasional on ballast southw. (Eurasia.)

  • Mouse-Ear Chickweed (Cerastium fontanum)

    A pretty little flower when we magnify it like this, Chickweed is one of those low lawn-dwellers that suburban homeowners abhor. If your lawn simply must be made up of uniform blades of grass snipped to a precisely even height, then chickweed is your enemy. Otherwise, it does little harm, and cheers us up with starry little flowers that reward a close look, giving us an incentive to get better acquainted with the natural world of our own front yards. This patch grew in a side yard in Beechview, where it was blooming in the middle of June.

    Gray describes the genus and the species, which he lists as C. vulgatum:

    CERASTIUM L. MOUSE-EAR CHICKWEED
    Sepals 5, rarely 4. Petals as many, 2-lobed or -cleft, rarely entire, often wanting in some of the flowers. Stamens 10 or fewer. Styles mostly 5, rarely 4 or 3, opposite the sepals. Pod 1-celled, usually elongated, -often 1 Curved, membranaceous, opening at the summit by twice as many teeth as there were styles, many-seeded. Seeds rough. (Name from Keras, a horn, alluding the shape of the pod.)

    C. vulgatum L. (COMMON M.) Stems clammy-hairy, spreading (1.5-4 dm. long); leaves chiefly oblong (varying to spatulate and ovate-lanceolate); upper bracts nearly herbaceous; flowers at first clustered; sepals 4-6 mm. long, obtusish; pedicels longer, the fruiting ones much longer than the -calyx. (C. viscosum of the Linnean herbarium; C. triviale Link.) Fields, dooryards, etc.; common. May-July. (Nat. from Eu.)