Flora Pittsburghensis

Author: Father Pitt

  • Long-Leaved Starwort (Stellaria longifolia)

    Also called Long-Leaved Stitchwort, this is a remarkably delicate little plant whose ethereally insubstantial stems and leaves make it seem as though the starry little flowers are floating in the air. It likes an overgrown meadow; this one was growing among clovers and cinquefoils in a meadow near Cranberry, where it was blooming in the middle of June.

    A good description from Mathews’ Field  Book of North American Wild Flowers:

    A tall very slender species with many branches, the stem with rough angles, and the light green leaves small and lance-shaped. The tiny flowers like white stars, with five white petals so deeply cleft that they appear as ten, sepals nearly equalling the petals in length. 10-20 inches high. In wet grassy places everywhere.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    STELLARIA 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-many-seeded. 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. in part, not Wahlenb.

    S. longifolia Muhl. Stem erect, weak, often with rough angles (2-5 dm. high); leaves linear, acutish at both ends, spreading; cymes scaly-bracted, at length lateral, peduncled, many-flowered, the slender pedicels spreading or deflexed; fruit pale straw-colored; seeds smooth. (Alsine Britton.)—Grassy places, Nfd. to Md., and westw. June, July. (Eu.)


  • Alsike Clover (Trifolium hybridum)

    Red Clover (T. pratense) is more common and very similar, and grows in most of the same places. The best way to tell the difference is by the leaves, which in Red Clover usually (but not always) show a chevron pattern but are unmarked in Alsike Clover; and by the color of the flowers, which in Alsike Clover is less magenta and more pale rosy pink, with young white flowers in the center of the head. In fact, it does look like something halfway between Red Clover and White Clover (T. repens), which may account for the specific name hybridus for a plant that is not a hybrid.

    This plant grew in a meadow near Cranberry, where it was blooming in the middle of June.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    TRIFOLIUM [Tourn.] L. CLOVER. TREFOIL

    Calyx persistent, 5-cleft, the teeth usually bristle-form. Corolla mostly withering or persistent; the claws of all the petals, or of all except the oblong or ovate standard, more or less united below with the stamen-tube; keel short and obtuse. Tenth stamen more or less separate. Pods small and membranous, often included in the calyx, 1-6-seeded, indehiscent, or opening by one of the sutures. Tufted or diffuse herbs. Leaves mostly palmately (sometimes pinnately) 3-foliolate; leaflets usually toothed. Stipules united with the petiole. Flowers in heads or spikes. (Name from tres, three, and folium, a leaf.)

    T. HYBRIDUM L. (ALSIKE C.) Resembling T. repens, but the stems erect or ascending, not rooting at the nodes; leaflets ovate, rounded at apex; flowers rose-tinted. Generally common. (Introd. from Eu.)

  • St. John’s Wort (Hypericum perforatum)

    These cheerful flowers love to grow in the poorest soil; this plant grew on an eroded clay bank near Cranberry, where it was blooming in the middle of June. The thick wad of stamens in the middle of the flower is characteristic of St. John’s Worts, most of which also have bright yellow flowers.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    HYPERICUM [Tourn.] L. ST. JOHN’S-WORT
    Sepals 5, usually subequal. Petals 5, oblique, convolute in the bud (except in 6). Stamens frequently united or clustered in 3-5 parcels; no interposed glands. Pod 1-celled or 3-5-celled. Seeds usually cylindrical. Herbs or shrubs, with cymose yellow, flesh-colored, or purplish flowers. (An ancient Greek name of obscure meaning.)

    H. perforatum L. (COMMONS.) Stem much branched and corymbed, somewhat 2-edged, producing runners from the base; leaves elliptic- or linear-oblong, with pellucid dots; petals deep yellow, black-dotted along the margin, twice the length of the lanceolate acute sepals; flowers numerous, in open leafy cymes. Fields, etc. June-Sept. A pernicious weed, difficult to extirpate; juice very acrid. (Nat. from Eu.)

  • Everlasting Pea (Lathyrus latifolius)

    Everlasting Pea is a vigorous vine that can take over whole hillsides. It compensates us for the space it takes with a glorious array of flowers in shades from white through deep magenta, often (as here) with stripes or bicolor patterns.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    LATHYRUS [Tourn.] L. VETCHLING. EVERLASTING PEA

    Style dilated and flattish (not grooved) above, hairy along the inner side (next the free stamen). Sheath of the filaments scarcely oblique at the apex. Otherwise nearly as in Vicia. Our species perennial and mostly smooth plants. (Lathyros, a leguminous plant of Theophrastus.)

    L. latifolius L. (EVERLASTING or PERENNIAL PEA.) Tall perennial with broadly winged stems; leaves and stipules coriaceous and veiny; petioles mostly winged; the 2 elliptic to lanceolate leaflets 0.5-1 dm. long; peduncles stiff, many-flowered; flowers showy, pink, purple, or white. Frequently cultivated, and escaping to roadsides and thickets, Ct. to 1). C. (Introd. from Eu.)

    Another picture is here.

  • Indian Strawberry (Duchesnea indica)

    This little creeper, found in shady lawns everywhere, bears bland, tasteless fruit that looks like wild strawberries, but it’s easily distinguished by its yellow flowers. Children like to tell each other that the fruit is poisonous and then dare each other to eat it. It’s perfectly edible, but not really worth eating. It is nevertheless much valued by herbalists, who suppose it to have useful medicinal properties.

    The word “Indian” in the common name of a North American plant often means “not really.” Indian Tobacco is a lobelia; Indian Bean or Indian Stogie is the Catalpa tree. So it comes as a surprise that this plant, which seems to fit perfectly into that pattern, is actually an Asian import, named not for the aboriginal Americans but for India.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    DUCHESNEA Sin. INDIAN STRAWBERRY
    Calyx 5-parted, the lobes alternating with much larger foliaceous spreading 3-toothed appendages. Petals 5, yellow. Receptacle in fruit spongy but not juicy. Flowers otherwise as in Fragaria. Perennial herb with leafy runners and 3-foliolate leaves similar to those of the true strawberries. (Dedicated to Antoine Nicolas Duchesne, an early monographer of Fragaria.)

    D. indica (Andr.) Focke. Fruit red, insipid. (Fragaria Andr.) Waste ground, grassy places, etc., s. N. Y. and e. Pa. to Fla., Ark., and Mo. (Introd. from Eurasia.)