Flora Pittsburghensis

Author: Father Pitt

  • Redbud (Cercis canadensis)

    A common tree in the woods around Pittsburgh, and even more common in front yards, where it is a prized ornamental. The tree doesn’t get very tall, but in early spring it covers itself with magenta flowers that light up the forest. If you look at them closely, you can see that each flower is a perfect little pea blossom (although Gray calls it “imperfectly papilionaceous”), showing that this is an arboreal relative of our common beans or sweet peas.

    This tree was beginning to bloom in late March in Bird Park, Mount Lebanon.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    CÉRCIS L. REDBUD. JUDAS TREE. Calyx 6 toothed. Corolla imperfectly papilionaceous; standard smaller than tbe wings and inclosed by them in the bud; the keel petals larger and not united. Stamens 10, distinct, declined. Pod oblong, flat, many-seeded, the upper suture with a winged margin. Embryo straight.—Trees, with rounded heart-shaped simple leaves, caducous stipules, and red-purple flowers in umbel-like clusters along the branches of the last or preceding years, appearing before the leaves, acid to the taste. (The ancient name of the oriental Judas Tree.)

    C. canadensis L (REDBUD.) Leaves pointed; pods nearly sessile above the calyx.—Rich soil, N. Y.  and N. J. to Fla., w. to s. Ont., e. Neb., and Tex.—A small ornamental tree, often cultivated.

  • Dutchman’s Breeches (Dicentra cucullaria)

    These charming relatives of the Bleeding-Heart like a damp wooded hillside, more often a gentle slope than a steep incline. The flowers really do  look like old-fashioned pairs of breeches hung upside-down to dry. “Pretty, but odd” is Gray’s description. These plants were growing in Bird Park in Mount Lebanon, where they were blooming in late March (in a year when spring came very early).

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    DICÉNTRA Berah.Petals slightly cohering into a heart-shaped or 2-spurred corolla, either deciduous or withering-persistent. Stigma 2-crested and sometimes 2-horned. Filaments slightly united into two sets. Pod 10-20-seeded. Seeds crested. — Low stemless perennials (as to our wild species) with ternately compound and dissected leaves, and racemose nodding flowers. Pedicels 2-bracted. (Name from dis, twice, and kentron, a spur; —accidentally printed Diclytra in the first instance, which by an erroneous conjecture was changed afterwards into Dielytra.) Bikukulla Adans. Bicuculla Millsp.

    * Raceme simple, few-flowered.

    D. Cucullària (L.) Bernh. (Dutchman’s Breeches.) Scape and slender-petioled leaves from a sort of granulate bulb; lobes of leaves linear; corolla with 2 divergent spurs longer than the pedicel; crest of the inner petals minute. (Bicuculla Millsp.) — Rich woods, N. S. to L. Huron and Minn., s. to N. C. and Mo. — A very delicate plant, sending up in early spring, from the cluster of grain-like tubers crowded together in the form of a scaly bulb, the finely cut leaves and the slender scape, bearing 4-10 pretty, but odd, white flowers tipped with cream-color.

  • 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.