Flora Pittsburghensis

Author: Father Pitt

  • Yellow Coneflower (Ratibida pinnata)

    Also called Gray-Headed Coneflower or Pinnate Coneflower. This is a rare plant in Pennsylvania, though not farther west, and certainly not rare in this hillside clearing in Scott Township, where these flowers were blooming in late July. The flower heads are distinctive: a thimble-shaped cone, starting greenish-gray and becoming brown as the disc florets bloom, with long drooping yellow rays  that flutter in the breeze. The leaves are finely divided.

    Gray places this species in the genus Lepachys. This is a curious example of the rule of priority in botanical nomenclature. The famous (and famously difficult) botanist, archaeologist, ethnographer, historian, journalist, explorer, philologist, unlocker of the secrets of the Maya, and proto-evolutionist C. S. Rafinesque described the genus Ratibida in 1818; a year later, he described the same genus in a different publication as Lepachys. Thus he has the peculiar distinction of having beaten himself to the naming of his own genus.

    LÉPACHYS Raf. Heads many-flowered; the rays few, neutral. Involucral bracts few and small, spreading. Receptacle columnar; the chaff truncate, thickened and bearded at the tip, partly embracing the flattened and margined achenes. Pappus none or of 2 teeth. — Perennial herbs, with alternate pinnately divided leaves; the grooved stems or branches naked above, bearing single generally showy heads. Rays yellow or party-colored, drooping; disk grayish. (Name from lepis, a scale, and pachos, thick, from the thickened tips of the chaff.)

    L. pinnàta (Vent.) T. & G. Hoary with minute appressed hairs, slender, 0.6-1.5 m. high, branching; leaflets 3-7, lanceolate, acute ; disk ellipsoid, much shorter than the large (6 cm. long) and drooping light-yellow rays. (RatibidaBarnhart.) — Dry soil, w, N, Y, to Minn., Neb., and southw.; also locally adventive eastw. June, July. — The receptacle exhales a pleasant anísate odor when bruised.

  • Common Plantain (Plantago major)

    Insignificant and ubiquitous, this common weed is nevertheless elegantly constructed, as a close view of the flower spike shows us.  The plant lifts a number of green obelisks into the air from a rosette of spoon-shaped leaves, and dozens or hundreds of tiny white flowers burst forth  along each obelisk. The show is over quickly, leaving nothing but a weedy green stem, but it’s worth getting out a magnifying glass while the flowers are in bloom.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    PLANTÀGO [Tourn.] L. PLANTAIN. RIBWORT. Calyx of 4 imbricated persistent sepals, mostly with dry membranaceous margins. Corolla salver-form or rotate, withering on the pod, the border 4-parted. Stamens 4, or rarely 2, in all or some flowers with long and weak exserted filaments, and fugacious 2-celled anthers. Ovary 2 (or in no. 6 [P. decipiens] falsely 3-4)-celled, with 1-several ovules in each cell. Style and long hairy stigma single, filiform. Capsule 2-celled, 2-several-seeded, opening transversely, во that the top falls off like a lid and the loose partition (which bears the peltate seeds) falls away. Embryo straight, in fleshy albumen. — Leaves ribbed. Flowers whitish, small, in a bracted spike or head, raised on a naked scape. (The Latin name.)

    P. major L. (common P.) Smooth or rather hairy, sometimes roughish; leaves thick and leathery, 0.6-3 dm. long, the blade from broad-elliptic to cordateovate, undulate or more or less toothed, the broad petiole channeled; scapes 1.6-0 dm. high, commonly curved-ascending; spike dense, obtuse, becoming 1-4 dm. long; sepals round-ovate or obovate; capsule ovoid, circumscissile near the middle, 8-18-seeded; seeds angled, reticulated. — Waysides and near dwellings, exceedingly common. Fig. 002.—Sometimes with leafy-bracted scapes or with paniculate-branched inflorescences. (Cosmopolitan.)

  • Soapwort (Saponaria officinalis)

    Also called Bouncing Bet, this cheerful pink  came over as a garden flower, but is now thoroughly established along roadsides and at the edge of the woods; this plant was growing against a tombstone in an overgrown cemetery in Beechview, where it was blooming in the middle of July. The flowers are very pale pink verging on white; the double forms Gray mentions seldom or never occur in the wild plants seen around Pittsburgh. The name “Soapwort” reminds us that a lathery soap can be made from the plant; it is, however, poisonous.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    SAPONARIA L. Calyx narrowly ovoid or subcylindric, 5-toothed, obscurely nerved, naked. Stamens 10. Styles 2. Pod 1-celled, or incompletely 2-4-celled at base, 4-toothed at the apex. — Coarse annuals or perennials, with large flowers. (Name from sapo, soap, the mucilaginous juice forming a lather with water.)

    S. officinalis L. (SOAPWORT, BOUNCING BET.) Flowers in corymbed clusters; calyx terete; petals crowned with an appendage at the top of the claw; leaves oval-lanceolate. — Roadsides, etc. July-Sept. — A stout perennial, with large rose-colored flowers, commonly double.  (Adv. from Eu.)

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    In How to Know the Wild Flowers (1909), Mrs. Dana gives us this description of the plant:

    BOUNCING BET. SOAPWORT.

    Saponaria officinalis. Pink Family.

    Stem.—Rather stout; swollen at the joints. Leaves.—Oval; opposite. Flowers.—Pink or white; clustered. Calyx.—Of five united sepals. Corolla.—Of five pinkish, long-clawed petals (frequently the flowers are double). Stamens.—Ten. Pistil.—One, with two styles.

    A cheery pretty plant is this with large, rose-tinged flowers which are especially effective when double.

    Bouncing Bet is of a sociable turn and is seldom found far from civilization, delighting in the proximity of farm-houses and their belongings, in the shape of children, chickens, and cattle. She comes to us from England, and her “feminine comeliness and bounce” suggest to Mr. Burroughs a Yorkshire housemaid. The generic name is from sapo—soap—and refers to the lather which the juice forms with water, and which is said to have been used as a substitute for soap.

  • Indian Hemp (Apocynum cannabinum)

    A tidy plant easily mistaken for a small shrub, especially when it grows a the edge of the woods with the rest of the undergrowth. It belongs to the same family that gives us our garden periwinkles. The red stem and smooth, elliptical leaves give the plant an elegant appearance, and the little flowers look as though they were made from the finest porcelain. The plant is poisonous, however; the name “dogbane” attaches itself to the whole family for good reason. This plant was growing by a tombstone in an overgrown cemetery in Beechview, where it was blooming in the middle of July.

    The distinctive long seedpods look a bit like string beans, as we see on another plant that grew by the edge of the woods in the same cemetery.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    APÓCYNUM [Tourn.] L. DOGBANE. INDIAN HEMP. Calyx-lobes acute. Corolla bell-shaped, bearing 5 triangular appendages below the throat opposite the lobes. Stamens on the very base of the corolla; filaments shorter than the arrow-shaped convergent anthers, which slightly adhere to the stigma. Style none; stigma large, ovoid, slightly 2-lobed. Fruit of 2 long and slender follicles. Seeds with a tuft of long silky down at the apex. — Perennial herbs, with upright branching stems, opposite mucronatepointcd leaves, a tough fibrous bark, and small and pale cymose flowers on short pedicels. (Ancient name of the Dogbane, composed of apo, from, and kyon, a dog.)

    * * Corolla greenish to greenish-white, tubular, pentagonal, 3-4.5 mm. long, the lobes ascending; cymes terminal, of mostly ascending flowers.

    A. cannábinum L. (INDIAN HEMP.) Glabrous, 2-24 dm. high, the stems and branches ascending (but on gravel beaches, etc., depressed and wide-spreading), leaves mostly ascending, usually pale green, ovate-oblong to lanceolate, glabrous or sparingly pubescent beneath, those of the chief axis narrowed at base to distinct petioles (2-7 mm. long), those of the branches often subsessüe: central cyme flowering first; flowers erect; calyx glabrous, its lobes about equaling the corolla, tube. — Gravelly or sandy soil, mostly near streams; on beaches becoming dwarfed and diffuse, with smaller and narrower leaves (A. album Greene). June-Aug.

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    In Wild Flowers East of the Rockies (1910), Chester Albert Reed does not share our opinion of the elegance of this plant; but he does give us a good description and some of the history of it:

    INDIAN HEMP (Apocynum cannabinum) is a rather unattractive species with a smooth branching stem, rising from vertical roots to heights of 1 to 4 feet. The ovate-pointed leaves are lusterless, have very short stems and are closely crowded on the stalk oppositely to one another.

    The small, five-parted, greenish-white flowers grow in terminal clusters. A tiny drop of nectar, secreted at the bottom of each small, shallow cup, furnishes food for quantities of insects, including a great many crawling ones that are of no value to the plant. The name of Indian Hemp has its origin because Indians formerly used the tough fibres as a substitute for hemp in their basket work. We find this species very abundant in dry fields and thickets throughout our range; it flowers from June to August.

  • Butterfly-Weed (Asclepias tuberosa)

    One of our brightest and most beloved wild flowers, and one of the very few bright orange flowers to decorate our roadsides. Butterfly-weed blooms at about the same time as the Daylily (Hemerocallis fulva), and if possible out-oranges it along our highways and byways. This is a favorite plant of the Monarch butterfly, itself bright orange to match its favorite flower. Rarely some plants will produce flowers in red or yellow, and breeders have produced a variety of domesticated colors in that range. But nothing matches the vivid orange of the wild version. It prefers a dry fallow field or a grassy bank in full sun. This plant grew in an open field near Export; it was a relatively late bloomer, flowering in the middle of July.

    Another English name, Pleurisy-Root, refers to an old use of the plant in folk medicine.

    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 membranaceous 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.)

    § 1. Anther-wings broadest and usually angulate-truncate and salient at base; horn conspicuous.

    • Flowers orange-color; leaves mostly scattered; juice not milky.

    A. tuberosa L. (BUTTERFLY-WEED, PLEURISY-ROOT.) Roughish-hairy, 3-9 dm. high; stems ascending or decumbent, very leafy, branching at tie summit, and bearing umbels in a terminal corymb, or scattered in racemes along the branches; leaves from linear to oblong-ovate, sessile or slightly petioled; divisions of the corolla oblong, greenish-orange; hoods narrowly oblong, bright orange, scarcely longer than the nearly erect and slender awl-shaped horns; pods hoary, erect on deflexed pedicels. (Including A. decumbens L.) — Dry fields and banks, N. H. to Ont., Minn., southw. and southwestw. June-Aug.

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    In Wild Flowers East of the Rockies (1910), Chester Albert Reed gives us a good description of this species:

    BUTTERFLY-WEED; PLEURISY-ROOT; ORANGE MILK-WEED (Asclepias tuberosa) is the most brilliantly colored species of the genus. Even those accustomed to the sight of this plant cannot suppress the feeling of admiration that stirs them as they suddenly behold the vivid, orange flashes greeting them as they cross waste or dry fields.

    The stem of butterfly-weed is usually erect, from 1 to 3 feet high; it is rather rough and has but little of the milky juices so common to the other species. The leaves are pointed-oblong, very short-stemmed or seated oppositely. The beautiful orange flowers grow in flat-topped clusters or umbels, at the summit of the plant. It is found from Mass, to Minn, and southwards, most abundant in the Southern States. Its roots are used medicinally.

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