Flora Pittsburghensis

Author: Father Pitt

  • Staghorn Sumac (Rhus typhina)

    An aggressively weedy but beautiful tree; its large leaves have a tropical look, and in the fall they display the most riotously vivid reds and oranges. The little greenish flowers don’t attract much attention, but the beautiful fruit clusters can range from deep mahogany to vivid rose.

    Sumacs belong to the same family that gives us Poison Ivy, but also the tropical cashews and mangoes. For the sake of a mango we can forgive the family anything.

    This tree was growing at the edge of a field in Seven Fields, where it was showing off its staghorns in late July.

    Gray describes the genus and the species, which he places in the Sumac section of the genus Rhus:

    RHÚS L. SUMACH. Calyx small, 5-parted. Petals 5. Stamens 6, inserted under the edge or between the lobes of a flattened disk in the bottom of the calyx. Fruit small and indéhiscent, a sort of dry drupe. — Leaves usually compound. Flowers greenish-white or yellowish. (The old Greek and Latin name.)

    § 1. SUMAC DC. (in part). Flowers polygamous, in a terminal thyreoid panicle; fruit globular, symmetrical, clothed with acid crimson hairs; ttou smooth; leaves odd-pinnate. (Not poisonous.)

    R. typhina L. (STAGHORN S.) Shrub or tree, 1-10 m. high, with orange-colored wood; branches and stalks densely velvety-hairy; leaflets 11-31, pale beneath, oblong-lanceolate, pointed, serrate. (Ii. hirta Sud worth.) — Dry or gravelly soil, e. Que. to Ont., s. to Ga., Ind., and Ia. June, July. — Apparently hybridizes with the next species. Forma Laciniata (Wood) Kehder. Leaflets and bracts more or less deeply and laciniately toothed. — A frequent form, at least in some cases pathological and with inflorescence transformed in part into contorted bracts (the Dalisca hirta of L.). Forma Dissecta Rehder. Leaves bipinnatifld to bipinnate. — An occasional form, now in cultivation.

  • Teasel (Dipsacus fullonum)

    Teasels grow everywhere along roadsides; they can be annoyingly invasive, but—like thistles—extraordinarily beautiful if you take the time to admire the form and structure. The name comes from the use to which they were put: fullers used the dried flower heads to tease the fibers on fabrics. Some people still use them for carding wool today.

    The spread of this species has been rapid: Gray calls it “rather rare,” which it certainly is not in our area. This was one of a patch blooming in the middle of July near the railroad viaduct at the back end of the South Side flats. Gray describes the genus and the species (which he names as D. sylvestris):

    DÍPSACUS [Tourn.] L. TEASEL. Involucre many-leaved, longer than the chaffy leafy-tipped bracts among the densely capitate flowers; each flower with a 4-leaved calyx-like involucel investing the ovary and fruit (achene). Calyx-tube adherent to the ovary, the limb cup-shaped, without a pappus. Corolla nearly regular, 4-cleft. Stamens 4, inserted on the corolla. Style slender.—Stout and coarse biennials, hairy or prickly, with large ovoid-ellipsoid heads. (Name from dipsen, to thirst, probably because the united cup-shaped bases of the leaves in some species hold water. )

    D. sylvestris Huds. (WILD Т.) Prickly; leaves lance-oblong, toothed and often prickly on the margin; leaves of the involucre slender, ascending, longer than the head; bracts (chaff) tapering into a long flexible awn with a straight point. —Roadsides, rather rare. (Nat. from Eu.)

  • Butter-and-Eggs (Linaria vulgaris)

    A bumblebee stuffs its head into one of the little snapdragon flowers of Butter-and-Eggs; the plant was growing beside a sidewalk in Beechview, where it was blooming in late June.

    Butter-and-Eggs is very common in the city, and along roadsides in the suburbs. It can sprout almost anywhere; it blooms for a long time; and it seems impervious to abuse. It’s one of our most beautiful weeds, and if it were at all rarer it would be a treasured garden flower.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    LINÀRIA [Toum.] Hill. TOADFLAX. Calyx 5-parted. Corolla spurred at base on the lower side (in abnormal specimens sometimes regularly 5-spurred). Capsule thin, opening below the summit by 1 or more pores or chinks. Seeds many. —Herbs, with at least all the upper leaves alternate (in ours), flowering in summer. (Name from Linum, the Flax, which some species resemble in their foliage.)

    Erect or ascending, with narrow entire leaves.

    Flowers yellow.

    L. vulgaris Hill. (RAMSTED, BUTTER AND EGGS.) Glabrous, erect, 1.3 m. or less high; leaves pale, linear or nearly so, extremely numerous, subaltérnate; raceme dense; corolla 2-3 cm. long or more, including the slender subulate spur; seeds winged. — Fields and roadsides, throughout our range. (Nat from Eu.)

  • Common Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca)

    This distinctively odd-looking plant is a common sight along the road or at the edges of fields; this one grew at the edge of a field near Cranberry, where it was blooming in late June. The plants stand straight and tall; the flowers form umbels in almost perfect spheres. From a distance their color resembles the color that used to be called “flesh” in children’s crayon boxes, although some plants—like this one—bear flowers closer to white. The strong scent is irresistible to butterflies.

    Milkweeds and their allies were traditionally placed in the Milkweed family, Asclepiaceae; but modern botanists make that family a subfamily (Asclepiadoideae) of the Dogbane family, Apocynaceae. The species name syriaca comes from a pre-Linnaean botanist who confused this species with one from the Near East.

    Another picture is here.

    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 that 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. syriaca L. (COMMON M. or SILKWEED.) Stem tall and stout, finely soft-pubescent; leaves lance-oblong to broadly oval, 1-2 dm. long, pale, minutely downy beneath, as well as the peduncles, etc.; corolla-lobes dull purple to white, 6-9 mm. long; hoods rather longer than the anthers, ovate, obtuse, with a tooth each side of the short stout claw-like horn. (A. Cornuti Dene.) Rich ground, N. B. to Sask., and southw. June-Aug. Intermediates, perhaps of hybrid origin, occur between this and some of the related species.

  • Fleabane (Erigeron strigosus)

    Also called “Daisy Fleabane,” “Fleabane Daisy,” “Plains Fleabane,” “Prairie Fleabane,” and probably many other names. Pittsburghers usually call them “little daisies.” Old herbal legend has it that dried plants repel fleas. Fleabane is very common around here; if it were not, it would be treasured as a garden ornamental. It blooms for a good bit of the summer; these were blooming in late June in a clearing in the woods in Scott Township.

    The seventh edition of Gray lists this as Erigeron ramosus, though the sixth had listed it as E. strigosus.

    ERIGERON L. FLEABANE. Heads many-flowered, radiate, mostly flat or hemispherical; the narrow rays very numerous, pistillate. Involucral bracts narrow, equal, and little imbricated, never coriaceous, neither foliaceous nor green-tipped. Receptacle flat or convex, naked. Achenes flattened, usually pubescent and 2-nerved; pappus a single row of capillary bristles, with minuter ones intermixed, or with a distinct short outer pappus of little bristles or chaffy scales. Herbs, with entire or toothed and generally sessile leaves, and solitary or corymbed naked-pedunculate heads. Disk yellow; rays white, pink, or purple. (The ancient name presumably of a Senecio, from er, spring, and geron, an old man, suggested by the hoariness of some vernal species.)

    E. ramosus (Walt.) BSP. (DAISY F.) Stem panicled-corymbose at the summit, roughish like the leaves with minute appressed hairs, or almost smooth; leaves entire or nearly so, the upper lanceolate, scattered, the lowest oblong or spatulate, tapering into a slender petiole; rays white, twice the length of the minutely hairy involucre. (E. strigosus Muhl.) Fields, etc., common. June-Oct. Stem smaller and more simple than the preceding [E. annuus], with smaller heads but longer rays. Var. DISCOIDEUS (Robbins) BSP., with the rays minute, scarcely exceeding the involucre, occurs in s. N. E. and N. Y.