Flora Pittsburghensis

Author: Father Pitt

  • Crabapple (Malus coronaria)

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    Before the leaves are fully formed on most of the other trees, crabapple blossoms light up the woods all over western Pennsylvania. The crown of stamens and the blunt-toothed leaves are distinctive. These trees were blooming in Schenley Park in late April.

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    Gray places the genus Malus as a section in the larger genus Pyrus, but most modern botanists treat Malus separately. Gray’s description:

    PYRUS [Tourn.] L. Calyx-like receptacle urn-shaped, bearing б sepals. Petals roundish or obovate. Stamens numerous. Styles 2-5. Fruit a large fleshy pome, or smaller and berry-like, the 2-6 cells imbedded in the flesh, papery or cartilaginous, mostly 2-seeded. —Trees or shrubs, with showy flowers in corymbed or umbellike cymes. (The classical name of the Pear-tree.) A large genus, often subdivided, but with sections less strongly or constantly marked than our few species would suggest.

    MALUS (Hill) S. F. Gray. (APPLE.) Leaves simple; orifice of concave receptacle open; flesh of large subglobular fruit copious, free from sclerotic cells. Malus [Tourn.] Hill.

    Leaves and usually the outer surface of the calyx-lobes glabrate.

    Calyx-lobes persistent in fruit.

    P. coronaria L. (AMERICAN CRAB.) Tree, somewhat armed, 6-10 m. high; leaves ovate or elliptic, usually rounded or even cordate at the base; those of the sterile shoots somewhat triangular-ovate and lobed, sharply serrate; petals broadly obovate, white or nearly so; pome greenish-yellow, hard and sour, 2-2.6 cm. in diameter, depressed-globose. (Malus Mill.) — Thickets and open woods, N. J. to Ont., Kan., and southw.

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  • Foamflower (Tiarella cordifolia)

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    A saxifrage that loves the sides of rocky hills in the woods, especially in a stream valley; these were blooming in late April in a deep hollow in Schenley Park, just above a burbling brook, where it took a bit of acrobatics on the rocks to get near enough to photograph them.

    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; the plants along the Trillium Trail in Fox Chapel do not.

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    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.

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  • Lesser Celandine (Ranunculus ficaria)

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    A European import, uncommon except in a few areas where it has established enormous carpets that cover acres. The flowers have eight or so very glossy petals, so glossy that they cause blank white highlights in digital photographs. The heart-shaped leaves and dense, carpet-like habit easily distinguish this species from other buttercups.  These plants were blooming in the Squaw Run valley in Fox Chapel in late April. The scene below explains why the Celandine is a favorite subject of English poets and painters.

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    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    RANÚNCULUS [Tourn.] L. CROWFOOT. BUTTERCUP. Annuals or perennials; stem-leaves alternate. Flowers solitary or somewhat corymbed, yellow, rarely white. (Sepals and petals rarely only 3, the latter often more than 5. Stamens occasionally few.) — (A Latin name for a little frog; applied by Pliny to these plants, the aquatic species growing where frogs abound.)

    § 1. FICÀRIA Boiss. Roots tuberous-thickened; sepals 3; petals about 8, yellow, with a free scale over the honey gland.

    R. ficària L. (LESSER CELANDINE.) Glabrous and somewhat succulent; leaves basal on long stoutish petioles, ovate, rounded, deeply cordate, subcrenate; flowers scapose, 2 cm. in diameter. (Ficaria Karst.) — Wet places, occasional; Mass. to D. C. Apr., May. (Introd. from Eurasia.)

  • Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis)

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    Sanguinaria-canadensis-2013-04-10-Fox-Chapel-02There is only one member of the genus Sanguinaria, and here it is. These cheery little flowers pop up at about the same time as the Coltsfoots; this patch was blooming in early April beside a back road in Fox Chapel. The flowers open before the leaves are fully unfurled, so each flower stem is elegantly wrapped in a shell-like green leaf. The English and Latin names both come from the fact that the root is full of red juice.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    SANGUINARIA [Dill.] L. BLOODROOT. Sepals 2. Petals 8-12, spatulate-oblong. Stamens about 24. Style short; stigma 2-grooved. Pod ellipsoid or fusiform, turgid, 1-celled, 2-valved. Seeds with a large crest. — Low perennial; its thick prostrate rootstocks (surcharged with red-orange acrid juice) sending up in earliest spring a palmate-lobed leaf and 1-flowered scape. Flower white, handsome, the bud erect, the petals not crumpled. (Name from the color of the juice.)

    S. canadensis L. — Open rich woods; common. Apr., May.

  • Coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara)

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    Tussilago-farfara-2013-03-30-Bird-Park-02One of our earliest spring flowers, Coltsfoot bursts through the leaf litter in March and soon covers woodsy roadside banks with sunny yellow flowers. These flowers were blooming at the end of March beside the lower parking area at Bird Park in Mount Lebanon.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    TUSSILÀGO [Tourn.] L. COLTSFOOT. Head many-flowered; ray-flowers in several rows, narrowly ligulate, pistillate, fertile; disk-flowers with undivided style, sterile. Involucre nearly simple. Receptacle flat. Achenes slender-cylindric or prismatic; pappus copious, soft, and capillary. — Low perennial, with horizontal creeping rootstocks, sending up scaly scapes in early spring, bearing a single head, and producing rounded heart-shaped angled or toothed leaves later in the season, woolly when young. Flowers yellow. (Name from tussis, a cough, for which the plant is a reputed remedy.)

    T. farfara L. — Wet places and along brooks, e. Que. to Pa., O.,and Minn. (Nat. from Eu.)

    Another picture, and more description, is here.