Flora Pittsburghensis

Author: Father Pitt

  • Star of Bethlehem (Ornithogalum umbellatum)

    A European native that has made itself quite at home here, Star of Bethlehem can often be found in weedy patches of low grass. Until it blooms, its narrow leaves are hard to distinguish from the grass around them. The six-pointed white flowers are unmistakable, with six yellow-tipped stamens whose flattened “filaments” seem to form a miniature duplicate flower inside the larger one. This plant was blooming in early May in the Allegheny Cemetery, where it is regularly mowed but seems not to care much.

    Although most traditional references place the Star of Bethlehem in the lily family Liliaceae, modern botanists separate it into the asparagus family Asparagaceae.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    ORNITHÓGALUM [Tourn.] L. STAR OF BETHLEHEM. Perianth of 6 (white) spreading 3-7-nerved divisions. Filaments 6, flattened-awl-shaped. Style 3-sided; stigma 3-angled. Capsule roundish-angular, with few dark and roundish seeds in each cell, loculicidal. — Scape and linear channeled leaves from a coated bulb. Flowers corymbed, bracted; pedicels not jointed. (A whimsical name from ornis, a bird, and gala, milk.)

    O. umbellàtum L. Scape 1-2.5 dm. high; flowers 5-8, on long and spreading pedicels; perianth-divisions green in the middle on the outside. — Escaped from gardens. (Introd. from Eu.)

  • Blue Phlox (Phlox divaricata)

    Blue Phlox is certainly one of our most ornamental woodland flowers, and a garden treasure as well. These plants were blooming in early May in Bird Park, Mount Lebanon, where you can find great drifts of Blue Phlox on the wooded hillside overlooking the field.

    In the picture at the top of the article, note the occasional four-petaled flower.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    PHLOX L. Calyx somewhat prismatic, or plaited and angled. Corolla with a long tube. Stamens very unequally inserted in the tube of the corolla, included. Capsule ovoid, with sometimes 2 ovules but ripening only a single seed in each cell. — Perennials (except a few southern species), with opposite and sessile perfectly entire leaves, the floral often alternate. Flowers cymose, mostly bracted; the open clusters terminal or crowded in the upper axils. (Phlox, flame, an ancient name of Lychnis, transferred to this North American genus.) Most of our species are cultivated in gardens.

    Herbaceous, with flat (broad or narrow) leaves.

    Stems, at least the flowering ones, ascending or erect; flowers in corymbed or simple cymes; corolla-lobes obovate or obcordate.

    Calyx-teeth long and slender; more or less hairy or glandular-pubescent.

    Leafy shoots from the base creeping or decumbent; leaves rather broad.

    P. divaricata L. (BLUE PHLOX.) Stems spreading or ascending from a decumbent base, 2-5 dm. high; leaves oblong- or lance-ovate or the lower oblong-lanceolate, 2-6 cm. long, acutish; cyme corymbose-panicled, spreading, loosely flowered; calyx-teeth slender awl-Shaped, longer than the tube; lobes of the pale lilac or bluish corolla obcordate or wedge-obovate and notched at the end, or often entire, equaling or longer than the tube, with rather wide sinuses between them. — Rocky damp woods, w. Que. to Minn., and south w. May, June — A form occurs near Crawfordsville, Ind., with reduced flowers, the narrow entire acuminate corolla-lobes scarcely half as long as the tube.

  • Bloody Butcher (Trillium recurvatum)

    Why is this clump of Bloody Butchers here? It was blooming in early May in Bird Park, Mount Lebanon—but neither Gray nor the USDA PLANTS database places any wild populations of Trillium recurvatum anywhere in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area, or even within two hundred miles. It is a prairie-state plant, almost unknown in Ohio, and not common till Indiana, although (oddly) there is apparently an isolated wild population way over in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Since we first photographed this stand last year, the clump has doubled in size, so it is well established; but there is not another anywhere in the park. Have we discovered another isolated wild population, like the one in Lancaster County? Did someone mistakenly introduce this plant to Bird Park on the assumption that it was a native wildflower? Introduced or not, it is thriving and multiplying, so we have to call it naturalized now.

    The Bloody Butcher is similar to the Toadshade (Trillium sessile), which also has mottled leaves and upright mahogany flowers; but the species name recurvatum points out the distinctive feature of this plant: the sepals that curve backward, and the petals that curve back in, making a little enclosed apartment to give the pollinators some privacy. If, however, we have wrongly identified this plant, we trust that the Internet will come to our rescue and correct us.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    TRÍLLIUM L. WAKE ROBIN. BIRTHROOT. Sepals 3, lanceolate, spreading, herbaceous, persistent. Petals 3, larger, withering in age. Stamens 6; anthers linear, on short filaments, adnate. Styles awl-shaped or slender, spreading or recurved above, persistent, stigmatic down the inner side. Seeds ovate, horizontal, several in each cell. — Low perennial herbs, with a stout and simple stem rising from a short and praemorse tuber-like rootstock, bearing at the summit a whorl of 3 ample, commonly broadly ovate, more or less ribbed but netted-veined leaves, and a terminal large flower; in spring. (Name from tres, three; all the parts being in threes.) — Monstrosities are not rare with the calyx and sometimes petals changed to leaves, or the parts of the flower increased in number.

    Ovary and fruit 6-angled and more or less winged.

    Flower sessile; leaves usually mottled.

    T. recurvàtum Beck. Leaves contracted at the base into a petiole, ovate, oblong, or obovate; sepals reflexed; petals pointed, the base narrowed into a claw, oblong-lanceolate to -ovate, dark purple; fruit ovoid, strongly winged above, 1.8 cm. long. — Rich woods, O. to Minn., Ark., “Miss.,” and Tenn.

  • Common Cinquefoil (Potentilla simplex)

    This plant looks very much like Indian Strawberry until we notice that the leaves apparently have five leaflets rather than three; we say apparently, because Gray tells us that the leaves are “3-foliolate but apparently 5-foliolate by the parting of the lateral leaflets.” The plants spread by wiry little runners; see the picture at the bottom of this article. These plants were blooming in early May in the lawn of the Allegheny Cemetery.

    It is very difficult to distinguish between this species and Dwarf Cinquefoil (Potentilla canadensis), and indeed Gray considers Potentilla simplex a variety of P. canadensis:

    POTENTÍLLA L. CINQUEFOIL. FIVE-FINGER. Calyx flat, deeply .5-cleft, with as many bracilete 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 compound leaves, and solitary or cymose flowers; their parts rarely in fours. (Name a diminutive from potens, powerful, originally applied to P. Anserina, from its once reputed medicinal powers.)

    Styles filiform, lateral; peduncles axillary, solitary, 1-flowered; achenes glabrous; receptacle very villous; herbaceous perennials, with yellow petals.

    P. canadénsis L. Suberect (2-7 dm. high) or procumbent, at length often rooting at the tip; stem spreading-hirsute, flowering from the node above the second well-developed internode; leaves 3-foliolate but apparently 5-foliolate by the parting of the lateral leaflets; leaflets commonly more oblong, serrate rather than dentate, obscurely villous or entirely glabrate above, canescent-silky to green and merely appressed-villous on the veins beneath. — Dry sandy soil, s. Me. to Vt., along the Great Lakes to Minn., Kan., and southw. May-July.

    Var. símplex (Michx.) T. & G. Stem covered with shorter appressed or sub-appressed hairs or glabrate; leaflets (apt to be oblanceolate) rather shortly appressed-villous on the veins beneath. (P. simplex Michx.) — Chiefly In dry sandy soil, very common; N. S., southw. and westw.

  • Miterwort (Mitella diphylla)

    The Miterwort is a flower that rewards a close examination: a casual glance would never reveal the intricate snowflake fringes on the individual flowers. These plants were blooming in late April along the Trillium Trail in Fox Chapel.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    MITELLA [Tourn.] L. MITERWORT, BISHOP’S CAP. Calyx short, adherent to the base of the ovary, 6-cleft. Petals 5, slender. Stamens 5 or 10, included. Styles 2, very short. Capsule short, 2-beaked, 1-celled, with 2 parietal or rather basal several-seeded placentae, 2-valved at the summit. Seeds smooth and shining. Low and slender perennials, with round heart-shaped alternate slender-petioled leaves on the rootstock or runners, and naked or 2-few-leaved flowering steins. Flowers small, in a simple slender raceme or spike. Fruit soon widely dehiscent. (Diminutive ofmitra, a cap, alluding to the form of the young pod.)

    M. diphylla L. Hairy; leaves heart-shaped, acute, somewhat 3-5-lobed, toothed, those on the many-flowered stem 2, opposite, nearly sessile, with interfoliar stipules; flowers white, in a raceme (1.5-2 dm. long); stamens 10. Rich woods, Que. and N. E. to N. C., w. to Minn., Ia., and Mo. May.