Flora Pittsburghensis

Author: Father Pitt

  • Lesser Celandine (Ficaria verna)

    Ficaria verna

    Formerly known as Ranunculus ficaria, Lesser Celandine is a European import that is rapidly colonizing our stream valleys. Only seven years ago we wrote that it was “not very common around here except in a few stream valleys,” but since then it has popped up a number of other places where it was previously unknown. These particular flowers were blooming in Bird Park, Mount Lebanon, where the plant was not to be found in 2015, but has since established some sizeable clumps and is rapidly becoming a notable feature of the early-spring flora.

    Ficaria verna
    Photographed April 12.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    RANÚNCULUS [Tourn.] L. CROWFOOT. BUTTERCUP. Annuals or perennials; stem-leaves alternate. Flowers solitary or somewhat corymbed, yellow, rarely white. (Sepals and petals rarely only 3, the latter often more than 5. Stamens occasionally few.) — (A Latin name for a little frog; applied by Pliny to these plants, the aquatic species growing where frogs abound.)

    § 1. FICÀRIA Boiss. Roots tuberous-thickened; sepals 3; petals about 8, yellow, with a free scale over the honey gland.

    R. ficària L. (LESSER CELANDINE.) Glabrous and somewhat succulent; leaves basal on long stoutish petioles, ovate, rounded, deeply cordate, subcrenate; flowers scapose, 2 cm. in diameter. (Ficaria Karst.) — Wet places, occasional; Mass. to D. C. Apr., May. (Introd. from Eurasia.)

  • Skunk Cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus)

    Photographed March 5.

    The odd flowers of Skunk Cabbage push their way up from the muck in late winter. If there’s snow, they will melt their way through it: they actually produce heat to bore a hole through snow cover. The name comes from the foul odor of the leaves when crushed; the brown mottling of the flowers resembles rotting meat, which attracts the earliest flies of the season.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    SYMPLOCÁRPUS Salisb. SKUNK CABBAGE. Stamens 4, opposite the sepals, with at length rather slender filaments; anthers extrorse, 2-celled, opening lengthwise. Style 4-angled and awl-shaped; stigma small. Ovule solitary, suspended, anatropous. Fruit a globular or ovoid mass, composed of the enlarged and spongy spadix, inclosing the spherical seeds just beneath the surface, which is roughened with the persistent fleshy sepals and pyramidal styles.— Perennial herb, with a strong odor like that of the skunk, and also somewhat alliaceous; a very thick rootstock, and a cluster of very large and broad entire veiny leaves, preceded in earliest spring by the nearly sessile spathes, which barely rise out of the ground. (Name from symploke, connection, and karpos, fruit, in allusion to the coalescence of the ovaries into a compound fruit.)

    S. foétidus (L.) Nutt. Leaves ovate, cordate, becoming 3-6 dm. long, short-petioled; spathe spotted and striped with purple and yellowish-green, ovate, incurved. (Spathyema Raf.)—Bogs and moist grounds, N. S. to N. C, w. to Ont., Minn., and Ia.

  • Calico Aster (Symphyotrichum lateriflorum)

    Photographed October 4.

    Formerly Aster latiflorus (-us instead of –um because Aster is masculine). These are the asters with tiny flower heads, often hundreds of them thickly covering the whole plant, that you see everywhere at the edges of lawns, in sidewalk cracks, and popping out from under hedges. Calico Asters (as we mentioned once before) are quite variable. “Consists of many races,” say Britton & Brown of this species, “differing in leaf-form, inflorescence and pubescence.” “Extensively variable,” says Gray. In other words, asters thumb their noses at the notion of a “species.” These are worth looking at with a magnifying glass: the disk flowers (the ones that make up the center of the flower head) look like little starfish, changing from pale translucent yellow through pink to deep rose. Flowers at all stages are on the plant at once, giving it the calico effect for which it is named.

  • New England Aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae), Pink Form

    Photographed September 15.

    The American members of the genus Aster have been moved to the genus Symphyotrichum, and we hope they like it there. This is our showiest Aster, and the pink form is fairly rare; Gray would make it var. roseus (which, in the neuter genus Symphyotrichum instead of the masculine Aster, would be var. roseum). We also have pictures of the usual purple form and the very rare white form.

    Gray describes the genus Aster (where all North American species of Symphyotrichum lived until recently) and the species:

    ASTER [Tourn.] L. STAR-WORT, FROST-FLOWER, ASTER. Heads many-flowered, radiate; the ray-flowers in a single series, fertile. Bracts of the involucre more or less imbricated, usually with herbaceous or leaf-like tips. Receptacle flat, alveolate. Achenes more or less flattened; pappus simple, of capillary bristles (double in 4 and 5). Perennial herbs (annual only in 7 and 8), with corymbed, panicled, or racemose heads, flowering chiefly in autumn. Rays white, purple, blue, or pink; the disk yellow, often changing to purple. Species often without sharply defined limits, freely hybridizing. (Name aster, a star, from the radiate heads of flowers.)

    A. nòvae-ángliae L. Stem stout, hairy, 0.5-2.6 m. high, corymbed at the summit; leaves numerous, lanceolate, entire, acute, auriculate-clasping, 930. A. oblongifolius. clothed with minute pubescence, 0.5- 1 dm. long; bracts nearly equal, linear-awl-shaped, loose, glandular-viscid, as well as the branchlets; rays violet-purple, rarely white, very numerous; achenes hairy. Moist chiefly calcareous grounds, centr. Me. to w. Que., westw. and south w. Aug.-Oct. Heads large ; a very handsome species, popular in cultivation. (Escaped from gardens, and locally naturalized in Eu.) FIG. 931. Var. róseus (Desf.) DC. Rays pink or rose-color. Range of the typical form, local.

  • Hedge Bindweed (Calystegia sepium)

    The pure white form is by far the more common; we have recently seen a beautiful bicolor, but the pure white is as elegant as a wedding gown. We may curse this weed when it invades our hedges and gardens, but even the most heartlessly intolerant gardener probably sneaks an admiring look at the flowers when no one is paying attention. These flowers were blooming in a little patch of dirt along Carson Street in the middle of the South Side.

    Gray makes Calystegia (which he apparently named) a division of the genus Convolvulus. He describes the genus, division, and species:

    CONVOLVULUS [Tourn.] L. BINDWEED. Corolla funnel-form to campanulate. Stamens included. Capsule globose, 2-celled, or imperfectly 4-celled by spurious partitions between the 2 seeds, or by abortion 1-celled, mostly 2-4-valved. Herbs or somewhat shrubby plants, twining, erect, or prostrate. (Name from convolvere, to entwine.)

    CALYSTEGIA (R. Br.) Gray. Stigmas oval to oblong; calyx inclosed in
    2 broad leafy bracts.

    C. sepium L. (HEDGE B.) Glabrous or essentially so; stem high-twining or sometimes trailing extensively; leaves triangular-halberd-shaped, acute or pointed, the basal lobes obliquely truncate and often somewhat toothed or sinuate-lobed or merely rounded; peduncles chiefly elongated, 4-angled; bracts rounded to sharp-acuminate at tip; corolla white or rose-color, 3-5 cm. long. (Including var. americanus Sims.) Moist alluvial soil or along streams. June-Sept. (Eurasia.)