Flora Pittsburghensis

Author: Father Pitt

  • Wild Basil (Satureja vulgaris)

    A hairy and aromatic little mint that likes open woods, and is not above popping up in a shaded lawn, as this one did near Normalville. It’s a close relative of Summer and Winter Savory. The flowers are a delightfully pure shade of pink, hard to reproduce exactly in a photograph.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    SATURÈJA [Tourn.] L. SAVORY, CALAMINT. Calyx tubular to bell-shaped, 10-13-nerved, naked or hairy in the throat. Corolla with a straight tube and an inflated throat, distinctly 2-lipped; the upper lip erect, flattish, entire or notched; the lower spreading, 3-parted, the middle lobe usually largest. Stamens 4, somewhat ascending. — Herbs or shrubs, with mostly purplish or whitish flowers produced all summer; inflorescence various. (The ancient Latin name.) Including Clinopodium L., Calamintha Lam.

    Flowers in sessile dense many-flowered clusters, and involucrate with conspicuous setaceous-subulate bracts; calyx nearly naked in the throat.

    6. S. vulgàris (L.) Fritsch. (basil.) Hairy, erect, 2-6 dm. high; leaves ovate, petioled, nearly entire; flowers lavender to pink, in globular clusters; hairy bracts as long as the calyx. (Clinopodium L.; Calamintha Clinopodium Benth.) —Woods, thickets, and alluvial banks, Nfd. to Va., О., Ind., and Man. (Eurasia.)

  • Giant Bur-Reed (Sparganium eurycarpum)

    According to the most recent genetic research, bur-reeds are most closely allied to cattails, and they grow in similar conditions. Botanists now place them in the cattail family Typhaceae, but until recently they were usually given their own family, Sparganiaciae. The burs are rather fierce-looking but decorative in an odd way. This clump was growing at the edge of a pond near Normalville, where it was showing off its burs in the middle of August.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    Spargànium [Tourn.] L. BUR-REED. Heads scattered along the upper part of the simple or sparingly branched leafy stem, the bracts caducous or the lower persisting and leaf-like. — Perennials with fibrous roots and creeping horizontal rootstocks. Flowering through the summer. The fertile heads becoming bur-like from the divergent beaks, bat the pistils at maturity falling away separately. (Name ancient, probably from sparganon, a band, in allusion to the ribbon-like leaves.)

    Fertile flowers closely sessile: fruit brondly obovoid.

    S. eurycárpum Kngelm. Stems stout, erect (8-13 dm. high); leaves mostly flat and merely keeled; pistil attenuate into a short style bearing 1 or 2 elongated stigmas; fruit heads 2-6 or more. 2-3 cm. in diameter; fruit angled, often 2-seeded, 7-8 mm. long when mature, with a broad and depressed or retuse summit abruptly tipped in the center. — Borders of ponds, lakes, and rivers, N. S. and Me., southw., and westw. to the Pacific, chiefly at low altitude.

  • A Small Technical Difficulty

    In some browsers, the image-size settings are not recognized correctly on this site. Since nothing changed in any of the articles, it’s clearly a software bug. Until the problem is addressed, some articles will look a little strange. We apologize for the inconvenience. [UPDATE: The text of this article has changed a little, because we were not previously aware that the problem was not universal.]

  • Black Cohosh (Actaea racemosa)

    Also known as Fairy Candles for the way it lights up the deep shade of the woods, or as Black Snakeroot, or Bugbane, and more commonly placed in the genus Cimicifuga until recently. It can tolerate a very shady location, and often grows in thick woods. This plant was one of a small colony growing on a thickly wooded hillside in Mount Lebanon, where it was blooming in early July.

    Flowers. Tiny, white, in forked racemes 3 or more feet (a meter) tall, occasionally up to 9 feet (3 meters); the stamens are the most visible part.

    Leaves. Large, smooth, in whorls of 3, each doubly compound leaf made of three leaflets which themselves are subdivided in three or five leaflets (see the picture below); the leaflets irregularly and jaggedly toothed, the terminal leaflet usually 3-lobed.

    Stems. Smooth, with enlarged purplish joints where the leaves are joined; some whitish bloom on the lower part.

    Gray describes the genus Cimicifuga and the species, which he places in the Macrotrys subgenus:

    CIMICÍFUGA L. BUGBANE. Sepals 4 or 5, failing off soon after the flower expands. Petals, or rather transformed stamens, 1-8, small, on claws, 2-horned at the apex. Stamens as in Actaea. Pistils 1-8, forming dry dehiscent pods in fruit. — Perennials, with 2-3-ternately divided leaves, the leaflets cut-serrate, and white flowers in elongated wand-like racemes. (Name from cimex, a bug, and fugere, to drive away.)

    MACRÒTRYS (Raf.) T. & G. (as Macrotys). Pistil solitary or sometimes 2-3, sessile; seeds smooth, flattened and packed horizontally in the pod in two rows, as in Actaea; stigma broad and flat.

    C. racemòsa (L.) Nutt. (BLACK SNAKEROOT, BLACK COHOSH.) Stem 1-2.0 rn. high, from a thick knotted rootstock; leaves 2-3-ternately and then often quinately compound; leaflets subcuneate to subcordate at the base; racemes in fruit becoming 3-9 dm. long; pods ovoid. — Rich woods, s. N. E. to Wise, and southw.; cultivated and escaped eastw. July.

    [Because modern botanists have moved this species over to the genus Actaea, we give Gray’s description of that genus as well:

    ACTAÈA L. BANEBERRY, COHOSH. Sepals 4 or 6, falling off when the flower expands. Petals 4-10, small, flat, spatulate, on slender claws. Stamens numerous, with slender white filaments. Pistil single; stigma sessile, depressed, 2-lobed. Seeds smooth, flattened, and packed horizontally in 2 rows. — Perennials, with ample 2-3-ternately compound leaves, the ovate leaflets sharply cleft and toothed, and a short and thick terminal raceme of white flowers. (From aktea, actaea, ancient names of the Elder, transferred by Linnaeus.)]

  • Viper’s Bugloss (Echium vulgare)

    Easily recognized by its columns of vivid blue flowers; seen most often beside railroads or along roadsides. This is certainly one of our most decorative weeds. These plants were blooming in mid-June at the edge of a parking lot in New Stanton.

    Once in a while a plant will appear with pink flowers, usually fading to blue after they have been open for a while; a picture of one such is here.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    ÈCHIUM [Tourn.] L. VIPER’S BUGLOSS. Corolla with a cylindraceous or funnel-form tube; lobes rounded, spreading. Stamens mostly exserted, unequal. Style thread-form. Nutlets roughened or wrinkled, fixed by a flat base. (A plant name used by Dioscorides from echis, a viper.)

    E. VULGARE L. (BLUE-WEED, BLUE DEVIL.) Rough-bristly biennial; stem erect, 3-9 dm. high; stem-leaves linear-lanceolate, sessile; flowers showy, in short lateral clusters, disposed in a long and narrow thyrse or in an open panicle; buds pink; corolla brilliant blue (rarely pale or roseate). Roadsides and meadows, locally abundant. June-Sept. (Nat. from Eu.)

    Mrs. Dana, in How to Know the Wild Flowers, has this to say about our subject:

    When the blueweed first came to us from across the sea it secured a foothold in Virginia. Since then it has gradually worked its way northward, lining the Hudson’s shores, overrunning many of the dry fields in its vicinity, and making itself at home in parts of New England. We should be obliged to rank it among the “pestiferous” weeds were it not that, as a rule, it only seeks to monopolize land which is not good for very much else. The pinkish buds and bright blue blossoms, with their red protruding stamens, make a valuable addition, from the aesthetic point of view, to the bunch of midsummer field-flowers in which hitherto the various shades of red and yellow have predominated.

    In Wild Flowers Worth Knowing, Neltje Blanchan adds some of the traditional lore of the plant:

    Years ago, when simple folk believed God had marked plants with some sign to indicate the special use for which each was intended, they regarded the spotted stem of the bugloss, and its seeds shaped like a serpent’s head, as certain indications that the herb would cure snake bites. Indeed, the genus takes its name from Echis, the Greek viper.