Flora Pittsburghensis

Author: Father Pitt

  • Blue-Eyed Grass (Sisyrinchium angustifolium)

    Until they bloom, these little plants are nearly indistinguishable from the grass in which they grow. Even in bloom they’re easy to overlook, but they deserve a close inspection. This one was blooming in Scott in late June.

    The very similar, and indeed almost indistinguishable, S. montanum is also known from Westmoreland County, but not Allegheny County; our best bet, therefore, is that this plant is S. angustifolium.

    Gray describes the genus and the species (and, by the way, it seems etymologically implausible to describe the name of the genus as “meaningless,” even if we don’t happen to know what it meant):

    SISYRÍNCHIUM L. BLUE-EYED GRASS. Sepals and petals (perianth) alike, spreading. Capsule globular, 3-angled. Seeds globular. — Low slender perennials, with fibrous roots, grassy or lanceolate leaves, 2-edged or winged stems, and fugacious umbeled-clustered small flowers from a usually 2-leaved spathe. (A meaningless name, of Greek origin.)

    S. angustifölium Mill. Erect or ascending, stiff, glaucous, 1-5 dm. high; the simple (rarely forked) stems 1.5-3 mm. wide, distinctly winged, exceeding the scarcely broader leaves; spathes green, rarely purplish, the outer bract with margins united 3-6 mm. above the base, 2-6.5 cm. long, the inner 1-3 cm. long; perianth violet (rarely white); capsules dull brown or purple-tinged. — Meadows, fields, and damp sandy soil, Nfd. to B. C, s. to Va., Pa., Mich., Minn.; and in the Rocky Mts. May-July.

    In his Field Book of American Wild Flowers, Mathews gives us this description:

    A stiff grasslike little plant with linear, pale blue-green leaves less than the somewhat twisted and flat flower-stem in height. The flowers are perfect, with a prominent pistil, and three stamens; the six divisions are blunt and tipped with a thornlike point; they are violet-blue, or sometimes white; the centre of the flower is beautifully marked with a six-pointed white star accented with bright golden yellow, each one of the star-points penetrating the deeper violet-blue of the petallike division. The flower is mostly cross-fertilized by bees, and thft beelike flies (Syrphidce). Seed capsule globular. The name is Greek in origin, and is meaningless. 6-13 inches high. In fields and moist meadows, common from Me., south to Va., and west. Stem inch wide.

  • Three-Seeded Mercury (Acalypha virginica)

    In the fall this unassuming little weed can take on some surprisingly beautiful and varied autumn colors in the bronze range. This little patch grew out of a crack in a concrete driveway in Beechview, where it was beginning to show off its autumn colors (and its triple seeds) in late September. It grows everywhere in the city, although normally we don’t notice it much.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    ACALYPHA L. THREE-SEEDED MERCURY. Flowers monoecious; the sterile very small, clustered in spikes; the few or solitary fertile flowers at the base of the same spikes, or sometimes in separate ones. Calyx of the sterile flowers 4-parted and valvate in bud; of the fertile, 3-5-parted. Corolla none. Stamens 8-16; filament short, monadelphous at base; anther-cells separate, long, often worm-shaped, hanging from the apex of the filament. Styles 3, the upper face or stigmas cut-fringed (usually red). Capsule separating into 3 globular 2-valved carpels, rarely of only one carpel. — Herbs (ours annuals), or in the tropics often shrubs, resembling Nettles or Amaranths; the leaves alternate, petioled, with stipules. Clusters of sterile flowers with a minute bract; the fertile surrounded by a large and leaf-like cut-lobed persistent bract. (Akalyphe, an ancient name of the Nettle.)

    Fruit smooth or merely pubescent; seeds nearly smooth.

    A. virginica L. Smoothish or hairy, 3-6 dm. high, often turning purple; leaves ovate or oblong-ovate, obtusely and sparsely serrate, long-petioled; sterile spike rather few-flowered, mostly shorter than the large leaf-like palmately 5-9-cleft fruiting bracts: fertile flowers 1-3 in each axil. — Fields and open places, N. S. to Ont. and Minn., s. to the Gulf. July-Sept.

  • Tall Thoroughwort (Eupatorium altissimum)

    Our broad modern highways seem to have been the making of this plant around here. It likes the median strips of interstate highways better than any other environment, and its grey-green leaves topped with dusty white flowers make it a decorative companion to the goldenrods that often grow in the same places. The plant above was growing along the side of a highway near Rostraver; the one below in a vacant lot in West Mifflin; both were blooming in late September.

    Flower heads. Rayless, white, borne in layers of flat-topped clusters.

    Leaves. Dark greyish-green; lanceolate; the upper ones entire, the lower toothed past the midpoint; with three prominent parallel veins. Often there are two smaller leaves where the petiole meets the stem.

    Stems. Straight and study; greyish-green, paler than the leaves, often with a brown cast toward the base; much branched.

    This plant apparently hybridizes with E. serotinum, and is easily confused with it, probably even on this site.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    EUPATÒRIUM [Tourn.] L. THOROUGHWORT. Heads discoid, 3-many-flowered ; flowers perfect. Involucre cylindrical or bell-shaped, of more than 4 bracts. Receptacle flat or conical, naked. Corolla 6-toothed. Achenes 6-angled; pappus a single row of slender capillary barely roughish bristles. —Erect perennial herbs, often sprinkled with hitter resinous dots, with generally corymbose heads of white, bluish, or purple blossoms, appearing near the close of summer. (Dedicated to Eupator Mithridates, who is said to have used a species of the genus in medicine.)

    EUPATORIUM proper. Receptacle flat.

    Heads 3-20-flowered; involucre of 8-15 more or less imbricated and unequal bracts, the outer ones shorter; flowers white or nearly so.

    Leaves sessile or nearly so, xcith a narrow base, mostly opposite; heads mostly 5-flowered.

    Bracts not scarious or only obscurely so, obtuse, at length shorter than the flowers.

    E. altissimum L. Stem stout and tall, 1-2 m. high, downy; leaves lanceolate, tapering at both ends, conspicuously 3-nerved, entire, or toothed above the middle, 0.5-1.3 dm. long, the uppermost alternate; corymbs dense; bracts of the involucre obtuse, shorter than the flowers. — Dry soil, Pa. to Minn., Neb., and southw.

  • Butterfly Bush (Buddleia davidii)

    The generic name is more correctly spelled Buddleja, but the spelling Buddleia is much more familiar to gardeners.

    This favorite butterfly-garden plant often seeds itself, and it has a particular affinity for rocky ground, which in the city translates into sidewalk cracks. In the Pacific Northwest, and in Britain (where the climate is similar to our Pacific Northwest), the Butterfly Bush is an invasive weed. Here it’s an occasional volunteer; this plant sprouted near its parent in a front yard in Beechview, where it was blooming in late September.

    The most remarkable thing about Butterfly Bush, of course, is the way it attracts hordes of butterflies. It starts blooming in July, and it keeps blooming until frost. For most of that time, it will be surrounded by butterflies, along with hummingbird hawkmoths and occasional hummingbirds.

    Flowers. White to deep violet, but most commonly in the pink range, with a distinctive orange throat. Borne in spikes at the ends of the branches.

    Leaves. Lanceolate, with small teeth; softly downy; alternate; somewhat greyish green, much paler on the underside.

    Stems. Old growth is woody and twiggy; new growth in early summer may sprout vigorously from the base and reach a height of six or seven feet (about 2 m) by July. Often dies back to the ground over winter, but just as often regrows from old branches.

  • Japanese Hops (Humulus japonicus)

    In many ways an attractive vine, but a very invasive one, and all the harder to get rid of because it is covered with sticky prickles. It can cover a huge area quickly, and seems to be found more and more commonly in the Pittsburgh area. Easily mistaken at first glance for a wild cucumber, but distinguishable by the greenish (rather than pure white) male flowers and the deeply five-to-seven-lobed (rather than more shallowly five-lobed) leaves.

    Male flowers and female flowers are borne on separate plants; the female flower clusters are similar to the ones on the familiar domestic hops (H. lupulus) used in making beer. (Japanese hops are said to be poor for beer-making.) The male flowers, which stand up above the vines, are the ones you will notice in a large patch.

    These vines were growing in Bird Park in Mount Lebanon, where they were blooming in the middle of September.

    This plant had not yet commonly escaped when most of the standard references were written, but Britton’s Manual of the Flora of the Northern States and Canada includes it in an appendix:

    HUMULUS L. (See Appendix.) Herbaceous perennial rough vines, with broad opposite thin petioled palmately veined leaves, lanceolate membranous stipules, and dioecious axillary flowers, the staminate panicled, the pistillate in ament-like drooping clustered spikes. Staminate flowers with a 5-parted calyx, the segments distinct and imbricated, and 5 short erect stamens. Pistillate flowers in 2’s in the axil of each bract of the ament. consisting of a membranous entire perianth, clasping the ovary, and 2 filiform caducous stigmas. Fruiting aments cone-like, the persistent bracts subtending the compressed ovate achenes. Endosperm fleshy. Embryo spirally coiled. [Name said to be the diminutive of the Latin humus, earth.] Two species, the following [H. lupulus] widely distributed through the north temperate zone, the other [H. japonicus, our current subject] native of northeastern Asia.

    Humulus Japonicus Sieb. & Zucc. Japanese Hop. A twining vine, similar to the Common Hop, the leaves deeply pedately 5-7-cleft. Pistillate aments few-flowered, their bracts and bractlets deltoid, acuminate, hispid-pubescent at least on the margins, not glandular. In waste ground, Conn, to D.C. Introduced from Japan. Aug.-Sept.