Flora Pittsburghensis

Author: Father Pitt

Common Mallow (Malva neglecta)

Photographed July 7.

Also known as Cheeses, because the seedpods look like tiny wheels of cheese. This little mallow grows in yards and vacant lots all over the city. Its flowers are small, but up close are obviously similar to Rose of Sharon, Hollyhock, and other members of the Mallow family. The blooming season is very long, and can last into the winter if the weather is warmer than average. These plants grew in Beechview, where they were blooming in early July.

Gray lists this species as M. rotundifolia:

MALVA [Tourn.] L. MALLOW. Calyx with a 3-leaved involucel at the base, like an outer calyx. Petals obcordate. Styles numerous, stigmatic down the inner side. Fruit depressed, separating at maturity into as many 1-seeded and indehiscent round kidney-shaped blunt carpels as there are styles. Radicle pointing downward. (An old Latin name, from the Greek name, malache, having allusion to the emollient leaves.)

Flowers fascicled in the axils.

M. rotundifòlia L. (COMMON M., CHEESES.) Stems procumbent from a deep biennial root; leaves round-heart-shaped, on very long petioles, crenate, obscurely lobed; petals twice the length of the calyx, whitish; carpels pubescent, even. —Waysides and cultivated grounds, common. (Nat. from Eu.)

July 7, 2022
Purple Coneflower (Echinacea purpurea)

Photographed July 5.

One of our most beloved wild flowers, the Purple Coneflower is at the eastern edge of its native range here; but ornamental plantings have made it a common sight, and from those ornamental plantings come seeds that reinforce the wild population. Up close, the vivid red-orange of the disk florets is as striking as the bright pink-purple of the rays. The flower heads are very attractive to bumblebees.

This is the Echinacea so much prized by herbalists for its supposed use against colds.

Gray describes the genus (which he lists as Brauneria) and the species:

BRAUNÈRIA Neck. PURPLE CONE-FLOWER. Heads many-flowered; rays mostly drooping, pistillate but sterile. Bracts of the involucre imbricated, lanceolate, spreading. Receptacle conical, the lanceolate carinate spiny-tipped chaff longer than the disk-flowers. Achenes thick, short, 4-sided; pappus a small toothed border.—Perennial herbs, with stout and nearly simple stems naked above and terminated by a single large head; leaves chiefly alternate, 3-5-nerved. Rays rather persistent; disk purplish. (Named, it is said, for Jacob Brauner, a German herbalist of the early part of the 18th century.) Echinacea Moench.

Rays purple, rose-color, or rarely white.

B. purpurea (DC.) Britton. Stem smooth, or in one form rough-bristly; leaves rough, often serrate; the lowest ovate, 5-nerved, veiny, long-petioled; the others ovate-lanceolate; involucre imbricated in 3-5 rows; rays 15-20, dull purple (rarely whitish), 2.5-4.5 cm. long or more. (Echinacea Moench.) — Prairies and banks, from w. Pa. and Va. to Mich., Ia., and southw.; reported as adventive eastw. July.

July 5, 2022
White Stonecrop (Sedum album)

Photographed July 1.

The USDA PLANTS Database does not record this species as wild in Allegheny County, but there are a lot of things the USDA doesn’t know. There was a substantial patch here in the Allegheny Cemetery, obviously not planted deliberately, though it may well be descended from White Stonecrop planted elsewhere in the cemetery.

Like our other species of Sedum, this one is a low succulent plant with starry flowers. It is easily distinguished from Goldmoss (Sedum sarmentosum) by its white flowers held aloft in clusters on stems well above the plant. Wild Stonecrop (Sedum ternatum) also has white flowers, but in arching branches intermingled with leaves rather than in clusters above the plant.

This plant was not well established enough in Gray’s time to make it into his Manual, but our description here should make it easy enough to identify.

July 2, 2022
Helleborine (Epipactis helleborine)

Photographed June 27.

A spike of fascinating little orchid flowers, with broad pointed leaves alternate on the stem. The distinctive flowers have lips that look like little slippers filled with chocolate sauce. The color of the flowers is quite variable, according to botanical references; they may be yellowish, or green, or purple. Many variants were on display in this patch, which grew on a shady front bank in front of an apartment building in Shadyside. The species probably came from Europe, apparently as a medicinal herb, and by the middle 1800s had established itself on our continent.

Gray calls the genus by an alternate name, Serapias:

SERÀPIAS L. Flowers in a loose or somewhat dense bracteose raceme. Sepals ovate-lanceolate, strongly keeled. Petals shorter, ovate, acute. Lip strongly saccate at base, the apical part broadly cordate, acute, with a raised scallus in the middle and two inconspicuous nipple-like protuberances on each side near the point of union with the sac. Column broad at the top, the basal part narrower; anther sessile, behind the broad truncate stigma on a slender-jointed base; pollen farinaceous, becoming attached to the gland capping the small rounded beak of the stigma. — Stem leafy. (Named for the Egyptian deity Serapis.) Epipactis of auth., not Boehm.

S. helleborine L. Plants 25-60 cm. high; leaves clasping the stem, conspicuously nerved, broadly ovate to lanceolate, acute; perianth about 8 mm. long, green suffused with madder-purple; lip similarly colored, but darker within, the apical portion as if jointed with the sac, bituberculate at base. (Epipactis helleborine Crantz; E. latifolia All.; E. viridiflora Reichenb.) — Rare and local, Que. and Ont. to Mass., N. T., and Pa. —Probably introduced from Europe in early times on account of supposed medicinal value. July-Aug. (Eu.)

June 27, 2022
White Clover (Trifolium repens)

Ordinary white clover may be our most common lawn weed, beating even dandelions. It is an inoffensive weed, however, and it has its advantages. It is easy to mow; it has a pleasant sweet scent on a hot summer day; and bees love it. Up close, we can see that each tiny flower has all the parts of a sweet-pea flower, though on a much smaller scale. The leaflets often have a pale crescent marked near the base, and of course an occasional leaf grows with four leaflets.

Gray describes the genus and the species:

TRIFÒLIUM [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 rèpens L. (WHITE C.) Smooth perennial; the slender stems spreading and creeping; leaflets inversely heart-shaped or merely notched, obscurely toothed; stipules scale-like, narrow; petioles and especially the peduncles very long; heads small and loose; calyx much shorter than the white corolla; pods about 4-seeded.—Fields and copses, everywhere; indigenous only in the northern part of our range.

June 26, 2022