Flora Pittsburghensis

Author: Father Pitt

  • Showy Tick-Trefoil (Desmodium canadense)

    Tick-trefoils are mild annoyances to hikers and walkers, but this one is such a beautiful flower that we can easily forgive it. Like all the other tick-trefoils, it has transformed the ordinary legume of the pea family into a fabulously efficient instrument of dispersal. The pod is divided into individual segments that separate easily, and each of them is coated with sticky adhesive hairs. As you pass by the plant, several of those segments stick to your clothes and ride off with you, at least until you notice them. It may be quite a distance: since the seedpods are sticky rather than prickly, you tend not to notice them until you see them.

    Other tick-trefoils have pretty but inconspicuous little flowers; this one, however, has larger flowers in a dense and showy raceme. This plant was growing in a hillside clearing in Scott Township, where it was blooming in late July.

    Flowers. Pink-purple, in dense branching raceme; the standard slightly paler.

    Leaves. Dense on the stem; three leaflets arranged pinnately; lanceolate, entire; rough, especially beneath; on short petioles.

    Stem. Somewhat sparse hairs; tough and inflexible.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    DESMÒDIUM Desv. TICK TREFOIL.

    Calyx usually 2-lipped. Standard obovate; wings adherent to the straight or straightish and usually truncate keel, by means of a little transverse appendage on each side of the latter. Stamens diadelphous, 9 and 1, or monadelphous below. Pod flat, deeply lobed on the lower margin, separating into flat reticulated joints (mostly roughened with minute hooked hairs). — Perennial herbs, with pinnately 3-foliolate (rarely 1-foliolate) leaves, gtipellate. Flowers in axillary or terminal racemes, often panicled, and 2 or 8 from each bract, purple ol purplish, often turning green in withering. Stipules and bracts scale-like, often striate. (Name from desmos, a bond or chain, from the connected jointe of the pods.) Meibomia Adans.

    § 3. Pod slightly if at all stalked in the calyx; racemes panicled.

    Stipules small and inconspicuous, mostly deciduous; pods of few rounitsl or obliquely oval or sometimes roundish-rhomboidal joints 3-6 mm. long.

    Stems erect; bracts before flowering conspicuous; racemes densely flowered.

    16. D. canadénse (L.) DC. Stem hairy, 6-15 dm. high; leaflets oblonq-lanceolate or ovate-lanceolate, obtuse, with numerous straigbtish veins, much longer than the petiole, 3.7-7.5 сш. long; flowers showy, larger than in any of our other species, 8-12 mm. long. (Meibomia Ktze.) — Open woods and banks of streams, N.B. to N.C., L. Winnipeg, Kan., and Okla.

    –

    In How to Know the Wild Flowers (1920), Mrs. Dana gives us this description:

    TICK-TREFOIL.

    Desmodium Canadense. Pulse Family.

    Stem.—Hairy; three to six feet high. Leaves.—Divided into three somewhat oblong leaflets. Flowers.—Papilionaceous; dull purplish-pink; growing in densely flowered racemes. Pod.—Flat ; deeply lobed on the lower margin; from one to three inches long; roughened with minute hooked hairs by means of which it adheres to animals and clothing.

    Great masses of color are made by these flowers in the bogs and rich woods of midsummer. They are effective when seen in the distance, but rather disappointing on closer examination, and will hardly bear gathering or transportation. They are by far the largest and most showy of the genus….

    Many of us who do not know these plants by name have uttered various imprecations against their roughened pods. Thoreau writes: ” Though you were running for your life, they would have time to catch and cling to your clothes….These almost invisible nets, as it were, are spread for us, and whole coveys of desmodium and bidens seeds steal transportation out of us. I have found myself often covered, as it were, with an imbricated coat of the brown desmodium seeds or a bristling chevaux-de-frise of beggar-ticks, and had to spend a quarter of an hour or more picking them off in some convenient spot; and so they get just what they wanted—deposited in another place.”

    –

    In her Nature’s Garden (1900), Neltje Blanchan meditates on the ability of such plants as this to disperse themselves far and wide, and gives us the fascinating details of this species’ pollination:

    Canadian or Showy Tick-trefoil

    (Meibomia Canadensis) Pea family
    (Desmodium Canadense of Gray)

    Flowers—Pinkish or bluish purple, butterfly-shaped, about 1/2-in. long, borne in dense, terminal, elongated racemes. Stem: Erect, hairy, leafy, 2 to 8 ft. high. Leaves: Compounded of 3 oblong leaflets, the central one largest; upper leaves nearly seated on stem; bracts, conspicuous before flowering, early falling off. Fruit: A flat pod, about 1 in. long, jointed, and covered with minute hooked bristles, the lower edge of pod scalloped; almost seated in calyx. Preferred Habitat—Thickets, woods, river banks, bogs. Flowering Season—July—September. Distribution—New Brunswick to Northwest Territory, south to North Carolina, westward to Indian Territory and Dakota.

    As one travels hundreds or even thousands of miles in a comfortable railway carriage and sees the same flowers growing throughout the length and breadth of the area, one cannot but wonder how ever the plants manage to make the journey. We know some creep along the ground, or under it, a tortoise pace, but a winning one; that some send their offspring flying away from home, like dandelions and thistles; and many others with wings and darts are blown by the wind. Berries have their seeds dropped afar by birds. Aquatic plants and those that grow beside running water travel by river and flood. European species reach our shores among the ballast. Darwin raised over sixty wild plants from seed carried in a pellet of mud taken from the leg of a partridge. So on and so on. The imagination delights to picture these floral vagabonds, each with its own clever method of getting a fresh start in the world. But by none of these methods just mentioned do the tick-trefoils spread abroad. Theirs is indeed a by hook or by crook system. The scalloped, jointed pod, where the seeds lie concealed, has minute crooked bristles, which catch in the clothing of man or beast, so that every herd of sheep, every dog, every man, woman, or child who passes through a patch of trefoils gives them a lift. After a walk through the woods and lanes of late summer and autumn, one’s clothes reveal scores of tramps that have stolen a ride in the hope of being picked off and dropped amid better conditions in which to rear a family.

    Only the largest bees can easily “explode” the showy ticktrefoil. A humblebee alights upon a flower, thrusts his head under the base of the standard petal, and forces apart the wing petnls with his legs, in order to dislodge them from the standard, his motion causes the keel, also connected with the standard, to snap down violently, thus releasing the column within and sending upward an explosion of pollen on the under surface of the bee. Here we see the wing petals acting as triggers to discharge the flower. Depress them and up flies the fertilizing dust—once. The little gun will not “go off” twice. No nectar rewards the visitor, which usually is a pollen-collecting bee. The highly intelligent and important humblebee has tne advantage over his smaller kin in being able to discharge the pollen from both large and smaller flowers.

  • Thin-Leaved Sunflower (Helianthus decapetalus)

    A more delicate sort of sunflower. This one was growing at the edge of a hillside clearing in Scott Township.

    Flower Heads. The disk is smallish and golden yellow. The matching golden rays are long and narrow; there were eight of them on each of the flower heads on this plant, but (as the specific name implies) there are more often ten on this species.

    Leaves. Thin, smooth; ovate, pointed; toothed; upper leaves nearly sessile; lower on winged petioles.

    Stem. Smooth and tough, green with a few red spots.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    HELIÁNTHUS L. Sunflower. Heads many-flowered; rays several or many, neutral. Involucre Imbricated, herbaceous or foliaceous. Receptacle flat or convex; the persistent chaff embracing the 4-sided and laterally compressed smooth achenes, which are neither winged nor margined. Pappus very deciduous, of 2 thin chafly scales on the principal angles, and sometimes 2 or more small intermediate scales. — Coarse and stout herbs, with solitary or corymbcd heads, and yellow rays; flowering toward autumn. (Named from helios, the sun, and anthos, a flower.)

    §2. Perennials; receptacle convex or at length low-conical; lower leaves usually opposite.

    Involucre looser, the bracts more acuminate or elongated or foliaceous.

    Leaves all or most of them opposite, 3-nerved.

    Leaves longer-petiolate, thinnish or sofl, coarsely serrate, commonly broad; bracts loose, hirsute-ciliate.

    H. decapétalus L. Stem branching, 0.5-1.5 m. high, smooth below; leaves smooth or roughish, ovate, pointed, abraptly contracted into margined petioles; bracts lanceolate-linear, elongated, loosely spreading, sometimes foliaceous, the outer longer than the disk; rays about 10 (H. scrvphulariifolius Britton?) — Copses and low banks of streams, centr. Me. and w. Que. to Minn., Mo., and southw.

  • Blue Vervain (Verbena hastata)

    Also called Swamp Vervain, but it certainly does not require a swamp. It seems to be happy in open fields and construction sites, wherever land has been cleared and left alone for a year or so. This one was growing in a fallow field by a back road near Export, where it was blooming in the middle of July.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    VERBENA [Tourn.] L. VERVAIN. Calyx 5-toothed, one of the teeth often shorter than the others. Corolla tubular, often curved, salver-form; the border somewhat unequally 5-cleft. Stamens included, the upper pair occasionally without anthers. Style slender; stigma mostly 2-lobed. — Flowers sessile, in single or often panicled spikes, bracted, produced all summer. (The Latin name for any sacred herb; derivation obscure.) — The species present numerous spontaneous hybrids.

    § 1. Anthers not appendaged; flowers small, in slender spikes.

    Spikes thicker or densely flowered; the fruits crowded, mostly overlapping one another; bracts inconspicuous, not exceeding the flowers; perennial.

    V. hastàta L. (blue V.) Tall (0.5-2 m. high); leaves lanceolate or oblong-lanceolate, taper-pointed, cut-serrate, petioled, the lower often lobed and sometimes halberd-shaped at base; spikes linear, erect, corymbed or panicled; flowers violet-blue (rarely pink or white). —Damp grounds, etc.

    –

    In How to Know the Wild Flowers (1909), Mrs. Dana gives us this description, along with some lore that applies more properly to the European Vervain (V. officinalis):

    BLUE VERVAIN. SIMPLER’S JOY.

    Verbena hastata. Vervain Family.

    Four to six feet high. Leaves.—Opposite; somewhat lance-shaped; the lower often lobed and sometimes halberd-shaped at base. Flowers.—Purple; small; in slender erect spikes. Calyx.—Five-toothed. Corolla.— Tubular, somewhat unequally five-cleft. Stamens.—Four; in pairs. Pistil.—One.

    Along the roadsides in midsummer we notice these slender purple spikes, the appearance of which would be vastly improved if the tiny blossoms would only consent to open simultaneously.

    In earlier times the vervain was beset with classic associations. It was claimed as the plant which Virgil and other poets mention as being used for altar-decorations and for the garlands of sacrificial beasts. It was believed to be the herba saeraof the ancients, until it was understood that the generic title Verbena was a word which was applied to branches of any description which were used in religious rites. It certainly seems, however, to have been applied to some special plant in the time of Pliny, for he writes that no plant was more honored among the Romans than the sacred Verbena. In more modern times as well the vervain has been regarded as an ” herb of grace,” and has been gathered with various ceremonies and with the invocation of a blessing, which began as follows:

    ” Hallowed be thou, Vervain,
    As thou growest on the ground,
    For in the Mount of Calvary
    There thou wast first found.”

    It was then supposed to be endued with especial virtue, and was worn on the person to avert disaster.

    The time-honored title of simpler’s joy arose from the remuneration which this popular plant brought to the “simplers”—as the gatherers of medicinal herbs were entitled.

    –

    In his Field Book of American Wild Flowers (1912), F.Schuyler Mathews seems to appreciate the aesthetic quality of this species more than Mrs. Dana does, though as an artist with a very precise notion of colors he objects to the description of the flowers as “blue”:

    One of the handsomest yet commonest members of the genus. The stem erect, stout, four-sided and grooved, roughish. The short-stemmed leaves lance-shaped or oblong lance-shaped, acutely incised with double teeth, and with a rough surface; the lower leaves are more or less three-lobed. The flower-spikes are numerous and branch upward like the arms of a candelabra; the flowers bloom from the foot of the cluster upward, a few at a time, leaving behind a long line of purpletinged calyx; the tiny blossoms are deep purple or violet—either one hue or the other. The flowers never approach blue or any hue allied to it, so the common name is misleading. Verbena hastata is a special favorite of the bumblebee, and it is also closely attended by the honeybee and the bees of the genus Halictus. The smaller butterflies are also occasional visitors, among them the white Pieris protodice. 3-7 feet high. In fields everywhere. Rare in central N. H.

  • Cardinal Flower (Lobelia cardinalis)

    By far our most striking Lobelia. The brilliant red of this spectacular native flower has made it a favorite in the perennial garden. In the wild, it’s most at home in damp areas with at least partial shade; here it was growing in a moist thicket in Schenley Park, where it was blooming in late July.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    LOBELIA [Plumier] L. Calyx 5-cleft, with a short tube. Corolla with a straight tube split down on the (apparently) upper side, somewhat 2-lipped; the upper lip of 2 rather erect lobes, the lower lip spreading and 3-cleft. Two of the anthers in our species bearded at the top. Pod 2-celled, many-seeded, opening at the top. — Flowers axillary or chiefly in bracted racemes ; in summer and early autumn. (Dedicated to Matthias de l’Obel, an early Flemish herbalist.)

    • Flowers deep red, large; stem simple.

    L. cardinàlis L. (CARDINAL-FLOWER.) Tall (0.6-1.3 m. high), perennial by offsets, smoothish; leaves oblong-lanceolate, slightly toothed; raceme elongated, rather 1-sided, the pedicels much shorter than the leaf-like bracts; the large corolla intensely red, rarely rose-color or white. — Low grounds, s. N. B. to Ont., and southw. — Hybrids with the next species [L. siphilitica] occur.

    –

    In Our Common Wild Flowers of Spring and Autumn (1906), Alice M. Dowd gives us a bit of the lore of this favorite flower:

    THE CARDINAL-FLOWER

    ” The cardinal-flower whose heart-red bloom
    Glows like a living coal upon the green
    Of the midsummer meadows.”

    —Richard Watson Gilder.

    Not even in the brilliant leaves of the October woods is there anything to match the color of the cardinal-flower. In moist ground along the streams the vivid red of its clustered flowers appears in July and remains until October. “It comes in with the heat and goes out with the frost.”

    The smooth stems grow from two to four feet high and have dark green, lance-shaped leaves, the upper ones without any petioles. From leaf-like bracts along the upper part of the stalk the flowers grow on short pedicels in a somewhat one-sided raceme. Out of the five-cleft calyx-cup rises the red tube of the corolla. Three petals, partly united beyond the tube, form a spreading lijp on the lower side of the flower.

    A slit down to the very base of the corolla separates the two upper petals. In this slit a slender tube of united stamens rises high, and curves slightly downward at its tip, where the dark ring of anthers, bending toward the lower petals, makes it look like the extinguished torch that has kindled the flaming corolla.

    Through the tube of united anthers the stigma pushes its way, with lips tightly closed until it has grown out of reach of the stamens.

    The corolla-tube is too long for insects. Even the bumblebee finds this flower-well too deep for him to draw nectar easily. The favored guest here is the humming-bird. Like the columbine and the painted cup, the cardinal-flower wears the color that humming-birds prefer. Scarlet flowers and hummingbirds belong chiefly to America. Humming-birds are found only on the American continent and in the West Indies.

    Scarlet flowers are rare in Europe and Asia, but, with their bird-friends, they are especially abundant in the West Indies, Mexico, and tropical South America.

    The cardinal-flower is a native of North America. An English botanist, writing in 1630, mentions it, and says he had its root from France. It was sent to France from Canada by some of the early French settlers, and it is quite probable that it received its name in France from its resemblance in color to the cap and cloak of the cardinals in the Roman church. It takes kindly to cultivation, and perhaps it is destined to survive only as a garden flower when it has been lost to field and meadow.

    It is sometimes called red lobelia, for it is a true lobelia, though all of its sisters are blue. Most of the lobelias, great and small, continue to blossom through September. The most common species is called Indian tobacco. It is generally found in dry, open fields or by the roadside. It has small, light blue flowers, and large, round, inflated seed-boxes joined to the calyx.

    Its relationship to the cardinal-flower is evident in the split corolla, the tube of stamens, and the three-cleft upper lip. It is poisonous to taste and is used in medicine.

    –

    In Wild Flowers Every Child Should Know (1914), Frederic William Stack worries, as many other writers did, about the future of this marvelous beauty, which was being picked into oblivion by thoughtless flower-gatherers:

    The Cardinal Flower is one of the most striking and attractive of our showy flowers. It possesses the most gorgeous, glowing red colouring imaginable, and because of its unsurpassing vividness and brilliancy, its beauty is its undoing. It is a target for every • ruthless, clasping hand that can reach it, and for this reason it is rapidly becoming exterminated. In intensity of colouring it is the Scarlet Tanager of the wild flowers. The usually single, rather large, slightly angular, smoothish stalk is leafy and hollow, and grows from two to four and a half feet high, from perennial off-shoots. The thin, smooth, or slightly hairy leaves are oblong to lance-shaped. They are irregularly toothed, and the upper ones clasp the stalk. The colour is dark green. The numerous, deep cardinal flowers are gathered in a loose and often onesided terminal spike. The tube-like corolla, which is an inch long, is split down the upper side, and has five narrow, pointed, flaring, velvety lobes. These lobes are bent at right angles, the three central ones set together, and partly separated from the other two; which stand somewhat erect or recurved, and at right angles with the central one, and opposite each other. The five stamens are united in a tube around the style, and stand out, far beyond the throat of the flower, with a prominent, curving tip. The green calyx has five long, slender parts. Occasionally the flowers are pinkish or white. The Cardinal Flower is found in very moist situations, commonly on the banks of streams and ditches from July to September, from Florida, Texas, and Kansas, well into Canada.

    –

    Asa B Strong, in his American Flora (1851), gives us the supposed meaning of the plant in the “language of flowers”:

    CARDINAL-FLOWER. Your beauty is heightened by contrast. A beautiful flower, growing in swamps, among rushes and brambles. When first seen it elicits emotions of surprise and pleasure.

    –

  • Wild Potato Vine (Ipomoea pandurata)

    A spectacular wild morning glory closely related to the sweet potato. It grows a similar starchy root that was an important food source for American Indians. Like many other members of the family Convolvulaceae, it really loves a chain-link fence, and here we see it growing on one in Beechview, where it was blooming in late July.

    This species is somewhat unusual here compared to the far more common Bindweeds and Morning Glories. In Pennsylvania, it seems to grow south of a line drawn horizontally right across the center of the state, except that it has also been found near Erie.

    Gray describes the genus and the species, which he places in the Euipomoea or Ipomoea-proper section of the genus:

    IPOMOÈA L. MORNING GLORY. Calyx not bracteate at base, but the outer sepals commonly larger. Corolla salver-form or funnel-form to nearly campanulate; the limb entire or slightly lobed. Capsule globular, 4-6 (by abortion fewer)-seeded, 2-4-valved. (Nаmе, according to Linnaeus, from ips, a Bindweed, and homoios, like; but ips is a worm.)

    § 2. EUIPOMOÈA Gray. Corolla funnel-form or nearly campanulate, contorted in the bud; stamens and style not exserted.

    • • Stigma 2-lobed or entire; cells 2, each 2-seeded; sepals broader, imbricated; leaves cordate, acuminate.

    I. panduràta (L.) G. F. W. Mey. (WILD POTATO-VINE, MAN-OF-THE-EARTH.) Perennial, smooth or nearly so when old, trailing or sometimes twining; leaves occasionally contracted at the sides so as to be fiddle-shaped; peduncles longer than the petioles, 1-5-flowered; sepals smooth, ovate-oblong, very obtuse; corolla open-funnel-form, 4.5-8 cm. long, white, with purple in the tube. — Dry ground, Ct. to Ont., southw. and southwestw. June-Sept.— Stems long and stout, from a huge root, which often weighs 4-8 (-11) kg.