Flora Pittsburghensis

Author: Father Pitt

  • Appendaged Waterleaf (Hydrophyllum appendiculatum)

    A somewhat uncommon plant in western 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.

  • Water Lily (Nymphaea odorata)

    White water lilies are common in ponds in our area; the pink form is rarer, but not very rare. The pink form is listed as forma rosea in some references, but Gray points out that the white form passes by degrees into the pink form, as we can see in these pictures. The pink form was fairly common in this pond in the Homewood Cemetery, where these plants were blooming in early June. It is possible that these plants are descended from a cultivated variety, but they are certainly naturalized now.

    Gray places this species in the genus Castalia, reserving Nymphaea for the yellow-flowered water lilies:

    CASTALIA Salisb. WATER NYMPH. WATER LILY. Sepals 4, green outside, nearly free. Petals numerous, in many rows, the innermost gradually passing into stamens, imbricately inserted all over the ovary. Stamens indefinite, inserted on the ovary, the outer with dilated fila ments. Ovary 12-35-celled, the concave summit tipped with a globular projection at the center, around which are the radiate stigmas; these project at the margin, and are extended into linear and incurved sterile appendages. Fruit depressed-globular, covered with the bases of the decayed petals, maturing under water. Seeds enveloped by a sac-like aril. — Flowers white, pink, yellow, or blue, very showy. (Kastalia, a mythical fountain on Parnassus, sacred to Apollo and the Muses.) NYMPHAEA L. in part.

    C. odoràta (Ait.) Woodville & Wood. (SWEET-SCENTED WATER LILY.) Rootstock with few and persistent branches; leaves orbicular (0.5-2.2 dm. wide), deeply-cordate-cleft at the base, the margin entire, often crimson beneath; stipules broadly triangular or almost kidney-shaped, notched at the apex, appressed to the rootstock; flower white, very sweet-scented (0.5-1.3 dm. in diameter, when fully expanded, opening early in the morning, closing in the afternoon); petals obtuse; anthers blunt; aril much longer than the distinctly stipitate ellipsoid seeds, these about 3 mm. long. (Nymphaea odorata Ait., including var. minor Sims.) — Ponds and still or slow-flowing water; common. June-Sept. Passing to the somewhat ill-defined forma ròsea (Fursh) Britton, with pink or bright pink-red flowers. — Shallow ponds, mostly near the coast. Var. gigantea (Tricker) Fernald. Larger; leaves 2-4 dm. broad, the margins turned up; flowers (white or nearly so) 1-1.5 dm. in diameter, less fragrant; sepals greenish. (Nymphaea odorata, var. Tricker.) — Del. to Fla. and La. (Mex., W. L, S. A.)

  • Tulip Tree (Liriodendron tulipifera)

    The Tulip Tree or Tulip Poplar (which, as botanical pedants will always point out, is not a poplar) is one of the finest native trees in our area. It grows very fast; it produces wood that is useful not only for furniture but also for musical instruments (dulcimer-makers prize it); it is strong and well-shaped; it can live for centuries; and it produces these attractive tulip-like flowers in the spring. There is almost nothing that can be said against it, except that, if it happens to sprout where it is not wanted, it is perhaps a little too vigorous. This tree was growing in Schenley Park, where it was blooming in late May.

    Gray describes the genus and the species, which is the only one native to North America:

    LIRIODÉNDRON L. TULIP TREE. Sepals 3, reflexed. Petals 6, in two rows, making a bell-shaped corolla. Anthers linear, opening outward. Pistils flat and scale-form, narrow, imbricating and cohering in an elongated cone, dry, falling away whole, like a samara or key, indehiscent, 1-2-seeded in the small cavity at the base. (Name from lirion, lily or tulip, and dendron, tree.)

    L. tulipifera L. — Leaves very smooth, with 2 lateral lobes near the base, and 2 at the apex, which appears as if cut off abruptly by a broad shallow notch; petals 6 cm. long, greenish yellow marked with orange; cone of fruit 7.5 cm. long. — Rich soil, Worcester Co., Mass., to Ont., Wisc., and southw. May, June. — A most beautiful tree, sometimes 40 m. high and 2-3 m. in diameter in the Western and Southern States, the timber commonly called Poplar or White Wood.

  • Indian Strawberry (Duchesnea indica)

    This little creeper, found in shady lawns everywhere, bears bland, tasteless fruit that looks like wild strawberries, but it’s easily distinguished by its yellow flowers. Children like to tell each other that the fruit is poisonous and then dare each other to eat it. It’s perfectly edible, but not really worth eating. It is nevertheless much valued by herbalists, who suppose it to have useful medicinal properties. These plants were growing in a lawn in Mount Lebanon, where they were blooming and fruiting in late May.

    The word “Indian” in the common name of a North American plant often means “not really.” Indian Tobacco is a lobelia; Indian Bean or Indian Stogie is the Catalpa tree. So it comes as a surprise that this plant, which seems to fit perfectly into that pattern, is actually an Asian import, named not for the aboriginal Americans but for India.

    Although most references place this species in the genus Duchesnea, it seems that modern genetic research (perhaps unsurprisingly) makes it a Cinquefoil in the genus Potentilla. It is not the only “Cinquefoil” with the wrong number of leaves.

    Gray describes the genus Duchesnea and the species:

    DUCHESNEA Sin. INDIAN STRAWBERRY. Calyx 5-parted, the lobes alternating with much larger foliaceous spreading 3-toothed appendages. Petals 5, yellow. Receptacle in fruit spongy but not juicy. Flowers otherwise as in Fragaria. Perennial herb with leafy runners and 3-foliolate leaves similar to those of the true strawberries. (Dedicated to Antoine Nicolas Duchesne, an early monographer of Fragaria.)

    D. indica (Andr.) Focke. Fruit red, insipid. (Fragaria Andr.) Waste ground, grassy places, etc., s. N. Y. and e. Pa. to Fla., Ark., and Mo. (Introd. from Eurasia.)

  • Clustered Black Snakeroot (Sanicula gregaria)

    It’s harder than it ought to be to find information about this species: many standard wildflower books skip it, but it is abundant in Frick Park, where it forms huge colonies. These plants were blooming in late May. Greenish-yellow flowers with very long (in proportion to the flower) stamens and lower leaves with five roughly equal leaflets are distinguishing marks. Other species of Black Snakeroot around here have white flowers and compound leaves with the lower pair of leaflets split almost to the base.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    SANÍCULA [Tourn.] L. SANICLE. BLACK SNAKEROOT. Calyx-teeth manifest, persistent. Fruit globular; the carpels not separating spontaneously, ribless, thickly clothed with hooked prickles. — Perennial rather tall glabrous herbs, with few palmately lobed or parted leaves, those from the base long-petioled. Umbels irregular or com pound, the flowers (greenish or yellowish) capitate in the umbellets, perfect, and with staminate ones intermixed. Involucre and involucels few-leaved. (Name said to be from sanare, to heal; or perhaps from San Nicolas.)

    Styles much exceeding the bristles of the fruit, recurved.

    S. gregària Bicknell. Stem slender, 6 dm. high; leaves 5-foliolate; leaflets obovate, cleft and serrate; fruit only 3-4(-6) mm. long, somewhat stipitate. — Rich woods, St. John Valley, N. В.; s. N. H. to Minn., Ark., and Ga.