Flora Pittsburghensis

Author: Father Pitt

  • Skunk Cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus)

    The natural habitat of skunk cabbage is muck, as we see in this patch from Fox Chapel. The plants were blooming at the beginning of March in a patch of sloshy ground next to the Squaw Run. These bizarre flowers come out beginning in February, before the leaves do.

    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.

  • Groundsel (Senecio vulgaris)

    As the specific name vulgaris implies, there is nothing unusual about Groundsel; but even for this opportunistic bloomer, there is something unusual about seeing flowers and ripe seeds in early February. Groundsel can take advantage of a very brief break in the weather to bloom, and the warm winter this year has given it the chance to burst into bloom all over.

    Gray describes the genus and the species—but we should not take what he says about the blooming season too seriously.

    SENECIO [Tourn.] L. Groundsel. Ragwort. Squaw-weed. Heads many-flowered; rays pistillate or none; involucre cylindrical to bellshaped, 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 corymbed 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.)

    Annuals (rarely becoming biennial); stems leafy to the Inflorescence; heads medium-sized, 1 сш. or less high during anthesis.

    S. vulgàris L. (Common Groundsel.) Low annual, 1-6 dm. high. corymbosely branched, glabrate, leafy to the inflorescence; leaves pinnatifid and toothed, 1-8 cm. long, 0.6-3 cm. broad; calyculate bracts (bracteoles) of the involucre distinctly black-tipped; rays none; achenes hirtellous. — Waste grounds, common. July-Sept. (Nat. from Eu.)

  • 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.