Flora Pittsburghensis

Author: Father Pitt

  • Star Chickweed (Stellaria pubera)

    A chickweed with ambitions to be known as a wild flower rather than a mere weed. To that end it grows in the woods (rather than in your lawn) and produces flowers many times the size of the ones on the tiny chickweeds that grow in yards and gardens. Although spring is its primary blooming season, it can bloom again from later growth, often with smaller flowers than in the spring. This plant was one of a small colony growing along a woodland trail in Scott, where it was blooming in early July.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    STELLÀRIA L. CHICKWEED. STARWORT. Sepals 4-5. Petals (white) 4-5, deeply 2-cleft, sometimes none. Stamens 8, 10, or fewer. Styles 3, rarely 4 or 5, opposite as many sepals. Pod ovoid, 1-celled, opening by twice as many valves as there are styles, several-manyseeded. Seeds naked.—Flowers solitary or cymose, terminal or appearing lateral by the prolongation of the stem from the upper axils. (Name from stella, a star, in allusion to the star-shaped flowers.) Alsine L. in part, not Wahlenb.

    S. púbera Michx. (GREAT С.) Root perennial; leaves elliptic-oblong, ciliolate, 1.5-5 cm. long, sessile or the lowest somewhat petiolate; petals longer than the calyx; stamens 10. (Alsine Britton.) — Shaded rocks, N. J. and Pa. to Ind. and southw. May. — The petals are cleft sometimes half their length, sometimes nearly to the base. Late shoots produce much larger leaves and often reduced flowers.

  • Wild Bergamot (Monarda fistulosa)

    A native plant so popular in gardens that it may as easily be a garden escape as a properly wild plant. This large colony was growing in a hillside clearing in Scott Township where the ground had been recently disturbed; the flowers were blooming in early July.

    MONÁRDA L. HORSE MINT. Calyx 15-nerved, usually hairy in the throat. Corolla elongated, with a slightly expanded throat; lips linear or oblong, somewhat equal, the upper erect, entire or slightly notched, the lower spreading, 3-lobed at the apex, its lateral lobes ovate and obtuse, the middle one narrower and slightly notched. Stamens elongated, ascending, inserted in the throat of the corolla. — Odorous erect herbs, with entire or toothed leaves, and large attractive flowers in a few verticels closely surrounded by bracts. (Dedicated to Nicolás Monardes, author of many tracts upon medicinal and other useful plants, especially those of the New World, in the latter half of the 16th century.)

    * Stamens and style exserted beyond the linear straight acute upper lip of the corolla; heads solitary and terminal or sometimes 2 or 3; leaves acutely more or less serrate; perennials.

    + Leaves petioled; calyx-teeth scarcely longer than the width of the tube.

    ++ Glabrous or villous.

    = Calyx smooth or smoothish in the throat.

    M. fistulosa L. (WILD BERGAMOT.) Branches more or less villous or hirsute, 0.5-1.5 m. high; leaves ovate-lanceolate, pubescent especially beneath, the uppermost and outer bracts somewhat colored (whitish or purplish); calyz slightly curved, very hairy in the throat; corolla 2.5-1 cm. long, lilac or pink, the upper lip very hairy. — Dry soil, N. E. to Col. and Tex.; often cultivated and mostly introd. northeastw. Var. Rubra Gray. Stem smooth; corolla bright crimson or rose-red; habit of no. 1, but upper lip of corolla villous-bearded on the back at tip ; throat of calyx with the outer bristly hairs widely spreading. (M. media Willd.)—Me. to Ont. and Tenn.; mostly introd. northw. July, Aug.


  • Wood Sage (Teucrium canadense)

    A stately member of the mint family, whose straight and tall spikes would not be out of place in a formal perennial garden. This plant was one of a large colony growing in a hillside clearing in Scott Township, where they were blooming in early July.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    TEÙCRIUM [Tourn.] L. Germander

    Calyx 5-toothed. Corolla with the 4 upper lobes nearly equal, oblong, turned forward, so that there seems to be no upper lip; the lower lobe much larger. Stamens 4, exserted from the deep cleft between the 2 upper lobes of the corolla; anther-cells confluent. (Named for Teucer, king of Troy.)

    * Perennials; leaves merely dentate or serrate; inflorescences terminal, spiciform.

    + Inflorescence cylindric; calyx densely pubescent.

    T. canadénse L. (American G., Wood Sage.) Stems 1 m. or less high, appressed-pubescent, simple or branched; leaves lanceolate to ovate, serrate, 2.6-5 cm. broad, rounded or narrowed at base, ehort-petioled, hoary beneath, green and glabrous or sparingly appressed-pubescent but scarcely papillose above; whorls about 6-flowered, crowded in long and simple wand-like racemes; calyx canescent-pannose, the 3 upper lobes very obtuse, or the middle one acutish; corolla 1.6-2 cm. long, purplish, pink, or sometimes cream-color. — Rich low ground, N. E. to Neb., and southw. July-Sept.

  • Calliopsis (Coreopsis tinctoria)

    Also called Plains Coreopsis, and it is indeed native to the Great Plains. Its showy flowers, however, have made it welcome  in gardens everywhere, and it often escapes where it finds an environment that reminds it of home. This patch was growing in a hillside clearing in Scott Township, where the soil had recently been disturbed. It was blooming in early July.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    COREOPSIS L. Tickseed

    Heads many-flowered, radiate; rays mostly 8, neutral, rarely wanting. Involucre double; each series of about 8 bracts, the outer foliaceous and somewhat spreading; the inner broader and appressed, nearly membranaceous. Receptacle flat, with membranaceous chaff deciduous with the fruit. Achenes flat, obcompressed (i.e. flattened parallel with the bracts of the involucre), often winged, not narrowed at the top, 2-toothed or 2-awned, or sometimes naked at the summit; the awns not barbed downwardly. — Herbs, generally with opposite leaves and yellow or party-colored (rarely purple) rays. Too near the last section of Bidens, but generally well distinguished as a genus. (Name from koris, a bug, and opsis, appearance; from the form of the achene.)

    §1. Style-tips truncate or nearly so; outer involucre small and short; rays rosecolor or yellow, with brown base; pappus an obscure border or none.

    С tinctoria Nutt. Annual, glabrous, often 1 m. high; leaves 1-2-pinnately divided, the lobes lanceolate to linear; achenes oblong, wingless; rays yellow, with more or less of crimson-brown. — Minn, to Tex., etc.; common in cultivation; often escaping to roadsides, etc., eastw.

  • Rose Milkweed (Asclepias incarnata)

    Also called Swamp Milkweed because of its preference for damp areas, but this is an adaptable plant, and this little colony was growing in a patch of sunlight along a hillside woodland path in Scott Township. It is sometimes cultivated in gardens for its showy rose-colored flowers, which grow up on top where you can see them, rather than half-hidden like the flowers of Common Milkweed. The plant was blooming in early July.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    ASCLEPIAS [Tourn.] L. MILKWEED. SILKWEED
    Calyx persistent; divisions small, reflexed. Corolla deeply 5-parted; divisions valvate in bud, deciduous. Crown of 5 hooded bodies seated on the tube of stamens, each containing an incurved horn. Stamens 5, inserted on the base of the corolla; filaments united into a tube which incloses the pistil; anthers adherent to the stigma, each with 2 vertical cells, tipped with a membranaeeons appendage, each cell containing a flattened pear-shaped and waxy pollen-mass; the two contiguous pollen-masses of adjacent anthers, forming pairs which hang by a slender prolongation of their summits from 5 cloven glands tbat grow on the angles of the stigma (extricated from the cells by insects, and directing copious pollen-tubes into the point where the stigma joins the apex of the style). Ovaries 2, tapering into very short styles; the large depressed 5-angled fleshy stigmatic disk common to the two. Follicles 2, one of them often abortive, soft, ovoid or lanceolate. Seeds anatropous, flat, margined, bearing a tuft of long silky hairs (coma) at the hilum, downwardly imbricated all over the large placenta, which separates from the suture at maturity. Embryo large, with broad foliaceous cotyledons in thin albumen. —Perennial herbs; peduncles terminal or lateral and between the usually opposite petioles, bearing simple many-flowered umbels, in summer. (The Greek name of Aesculapius, to whom the genus is dedicated.)

    A. incarnata L. (SWAMP M.) Smooth or nearly so ; the stem 5-10 dm. high, very leafy, with two downy lines above and on the branches of the peduncles; leaves oblong-lanceolate, acute, or pointed, obtuse, obscurely heart-shaped or narrowed at base; flowers rose-purple (rarely whitish); hoods scarcely equaling the slender needle-pointed horn. —Swamps, N. B., westw. and south w. July, Aug.