Flora Pittsburghensis

Author: Father Pitt

  • Ground Ivy (Glechoma hederacea)

    Ground Ivy, Creeping Charlie, or Gill-Over-the-Ground, is a foreign invader, and for grass purists it’s a hated broadleaf weed. It is, however, easy to get along with. It smells minty fresh when you mow it, and it produces these stunningly beautiful flowers in the spring. This colony was growing in a lawn in Mount Lebanon, where it was blooming in late May.

    The pictures in this particular article have been donated to Wikimedia Commons under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. No permission is needed to use them for any purpose.

    Gray places this in the genus Nepeta:

    NEPETA L. CAT MINT. Calyx tubular, often incurved. Corolla dilated in the throat; the upper lip erect, rather concave, notched or 2-cleft; the lower 3-cleft, the middle lobe largest, either 2-lobed or entire. —Perennial herbs. (The Latin name, thought to be derived from Nepete, an Etruscan city.)

    N. hederacea (L.) Trevisan. (GROUND IVY, GILL-OVER-THE-GROUND.) Creeping and trailing; leaves petioled, round-kidney-shaped, crenate, green both sides; corolla thrice the length of the calyx, light blue. (Glecoma L.; Glechoma Benth.) Damp or shady places, near towns—May-July. (Nat. from Eu.)

  • Dame’s Rocket (Hesperis matronalis)

    Pittsburghers usually call it “phlox,” or—as we have heard a Pittsburgher say—“some sort of phlock.” But this ubiquitous late-spring flower is really a member of the mustard or crucifer family, as you can tell by the four-petaled flowers (real Phlox flowers have five petals). It came from Europe as a garden flower and quickly made itself at home. It would be hard to conjure up any inhospitable feelings toward this welcome guest, whose bright flowers decorate roadsides and back yards everywhere. Each colony blooms in a mixture of colors from deep magenta to white, and many plants grow flowers with splashes or stripes of contrasting colors. The flowers in these pictures were blooming in late May; the solid colors were in Mount Lebanon, and the bicolors in Beechview.

    The pictures in this particular article have been donated to Wikimedia Commons under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. No permission is needed to use them for any purpose.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    HESPERIS [Tourn.] L. ROCKET. Pod linear, nearly cylindrical; stigma lobed, erect. Seeds in 1 row in each cell, oblong, marginless. Cotyledons incumbent. Biennial or perennial, with serrate sessile or petiolate leaves, and large purple flowers. (Name from hespera, evening, from the evening fragrance of the flowers.)

    H. matronalis L. (DAME’S VIOLET.) Tall: leaves lanceolate, acuminate; pods 5-10 cm. long, spreading. Sometimes cultivated, and spreading to roadsides, etc. (Introd. from Eu.)

  • Bluets (Houstonia caerulea)

    KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA

    KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERAAlso known as Quaker Ladies, these tiny blue flowers form tidy clumps in shaded lawns and roadsides. Small as the delightful four-petaled flowers are, they rise from a plant that seems tiny out of all proportion to the flowers. These were blooming in late May (a little late this year) in Frick Park.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    HOUSTÔNIA L. Calyx 4-lobed, persistent; the lobes in fruit distant. Corolla usually much longer than the calyx-lobes, the lobes valvate in the bud. Anthers linear or oblong. Style 1; stigmas 2. Ovary 2-celled. Pod top-shaped, globular, or didymous, thin, its summit or upper half free from and projecting beyond the tube of the calyx, loculicidal across the top. Seeds 4-20 in each cell, pitted. — Small herbs, with short entire stipules connecting the petioles or narrowed bases of the leaves, and cymose or solitary and peduncled flowers; these dimorphous, in some individuals with exserted anthers and short included style; in others the anthers included and the style long, the stigmas therefore protruding. (Named for Dr. William Houston, an English botanist, who collected in tropical America.)

    Small and delicate, vernal-flowering; peduncles 1-flowered; corolla salverform; upper half of the broad and someirhat 2-lobed pod free; seeds globular, with a very deep round cavity occupyiny the inner face.

    Perennial by delicate filiform creeping rootstocks or creeping stems; peduncles filiform, 2-5 cm. long.

    H. caerulea L. (BLUETS, INNOCENCE.) Glabrous; stems erect, slender, sparingly branched from the base, 0.5-2 dm. high; lrares oblong-spatulate,6-9 mm. long; peduncle filiform, erect; corolla light blue, pale lilac or nearly white, with a yellowish eye, the straight slender long-exserted tube much longer than its lobes or than those of the calyx. — Moist and grassy places, N. S. to Ga., w. to Ont., Wise, and Ala.; producing from early spring to midsummer its delicate little flowers.

  • Golden Ragwort (Senecio aureus)

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    Now Packera aurea, but the old name is so much better known that most Internet searchers are not likely to find an article on “Packera.”

    Golden Ragworts are attractive flowers, a bit like a yellow aster, that bloom in the middle spring, just after the tulips in your garden. The heart-shaped basal leaves and the pinnately lobed (rather fern-like) stem leaves are distinctive. They like a somewhat shady location; these were blooming in late May (a little later than usual this year) near a stream in Scott Township.

    A peculiar property of Golden Ragworts is their resistance to the autofocus systems on most digital cameras. If one does not resort to manual focus, it takes a great many pictures to get a few that are decently in focus. If you are a graduate student in evolutionary biology, here is a thesis topic for you.

    Gray (with help from J. M. Greenman) describes the genus and the species:

    SENECIO [Tourn.] L. GROUNDSEL. RAGWORT. SQUAW-WEED. Revised By J. M. Greenman. Heads many-flowered; rays pistillate or none; involucre cylindrical to bell-shaped, simple or with a few bractlets at the base, the bracts erect-connivent. Receptacle flat, naked. Pappus of numerous very soft and capillary bristles.— Ours herbs, with alternate leaves and solitary or eorymbed heads. Flowers chiefly yellow. (Name from senex, an old man, alluding to the hoariness of many species, or to the white hairs of the pappus.)

    S. aureus L. (GOLDEN R. ) Stems erect from rather slender rootstocks, 3-8 dm. high, at first often lightly floccose-tomentose, soon glabrate; lower leaves long-petioled, ovate-rotund to slightly oblong, 1.5-8 cm. long, two thirds as broad, crenate-dentate; stem-leaves lyrate to laciniate-pinnatifid; the uppermost sessile, amplexicaul, often bract-like; inflorescence cymose-corymbose; heads radiate; rays yellow; achenes glabrous. — In wet meadows, moist thickets, and swamps, Nfd., s. to Va., w. to Wisc., Mo., and Ark. May-Aug.

  • Foamflower (Tiarella cordifolia)

    Obviously this is one of our favorite flowers, since this is its third time being featured here. (More pictures are here and here.)

    As we see here, some forms of this species grow leaves with deep red markings along the veins, and those forms have been developed into cultivated varieties with even more pronounced red markings. All the plants in this hollow in Schenley Park had the red markings on their leaves. They were blooming in early May, a little later than usual this year.

    The pictures in this particular article have been donated to Wikimedia Commons under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. Do what you like with them; no permission is needed.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    TIARELLA L. FALSE MITERWORT. Calyx bell-shaped, 5-parted. Petals 5, with claws. Stamens long and slender. Styles 2. Capsule membranaceous, 2-valved; the valves unequal. Seeds few, at the base of each parietal placenta, globular, smooth. Perennials; flowers white. (Name a diminutive from tiara, a tiara, or turban, from the form of the pistil, which is like that of Mitella, to which the name of Miterwort properly belongs.)

    T. cordifolia L. Leaves from the rootstock or summer runners, heart-shaped, sharply lobed and toothed, sparsely hairy above, downy beneath; stem (1-4 dm. high) leafless or rarely with 1 or 2 leaves; raceme simple; petals oblong, often subserrate. Rich rocky woods, N. S. and N. B. to Minn., Ind., and southw. in the mts. Apr.-June.