Flora Pittsburghensis

Author: Father Pitt

  • Lemon Balm (Melissa officinalis)

    Sometimes called just “balm,” as it was in older times; we moderns like to multiply syllables. A delightful lemon-flavored mint often planted in herb gardens, from which it immediately begins plotting its escape. Unlike Spearmint, which spreads by runners, Lemon Balm seeds itself everywhere, and the little seeds can easily wash downhill a considerable distance from the planting site. Once you have lemon balm, you have it forever, and in the most unexpected places. It also pops up in vacant lots and other unmowed areas. When Gray says “sparingly escaped from gardens,” it shows us that he never tried growing the stuff.

    The lemon scent and fuzzy stem and leaves are characteristic. Little white flowers appear in rows of bracts, and bes love them; in fact, the generic name means “bee” in Greek. This plant grew spontaneously at the edge of a yard in Beechview, where it was blooming in early July.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    MELÍSSA [Tourn.] L. Balm

    Calyx with the upper lip flattened and 3-toothed, the lower 2-cleft. Corolla with a recurved-ascending tube. Stamens 4, curved and conniving under the upper lip. Otherwise nearly as Satureja. — Clusters few-flowered, loose, onesided, with few and mostly ovate bracts resembling the leaves. (Name from Melissa, a bee; the flowers yielding abundance of honey.)

    M. officinalis L. (COMMON В.) Upright, branching, perennial, pubescent; leaves broadly ovate, crenate-toothed, lemon-scented ; corolla nearly white. — Sparingly escaped from gardens. (Introd. from Eu.)

  • Love-in-a-Mist (Nigella damascena)

    This popular garden flower often escapes, and this one was blooming in early July from a crack in the sidewalk in Allegheny West. It’s known by a large number of common names, among them Persian Jewels and Rattlebox. The latter name refers to the seed pods, which grow to balls about an inch in diameter that rattle when the seeds ripen and dry.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    NIGÉLLA [Tourn.] L. FENNEL FLOWER. Sepals 6, regular, petaloid. Petals small, ungeniculate, the blade bifid. Pistils 6, partly united into a compound ovary, so as to form a several-celled capsule. — An Old World genus, with blackish aromatic seeds, noteworthy in the family in having a somewhat compound ovary. (Name a diminutive of niger, black, from the color of the seeds.)

    1. H. Damascèna L. (LOVE-IN-A-MIST.) Flower bluish, overtopped by a finely divided leafy involucre.—Sometimes cultivated, and occasionally spontaneous around gardens. (Introd. from Eurasia.)

  • Indian Tobacco (Lobelia inflata)

    This is by far our most common lobelia, a close relative both of the little blue lobelias that dangle from our hanging baskets and the stately Cardinal Flowers that adorn our perennial gardens. It likes an open woodland or the shady margin of a meadow, but it will also spring up in the middle of a sunny lawn given half a chance. The flowers are pale blue, often almost white. The plant in this picture was blooming in early July along a wooded trail in Scott Township.

    The name “Indian Tobacco” comes from the fact that certain Indian tribes smoked the stuff, in which practice they were imitated by some of the English colonists. All accounts say the taste and stench are at least as foul as those of real tobacco. It is, as Gray points out, poisonous, and regrettably still “a noted quack medicine” today.

    Lobelias are placed in their own family Lobeliaceae by Gray, but most modern botanists place them in the family Campanulaceae, the Bellflower Family, often as a subfamily called Lobelioideae.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    LOBELIA [Plumier] L. Calyx 6-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 blue, or blue variegated with white.

    +- +- Flowers smaller (corolla-tube not more than 4-8 mm. long).

    ++ ++ Stem leafy, often paniculately branched; flowers loosely racemose; sinuses of calyx not appendaged; annual or biennial.

    =  = Leaves ovate or oblong, obtusely toothed; pod inflated, wholly inferior.

    L. inflàta L. (INDIAN TOBACCO.) Stems paniculately much branched from an annual root, pubescent with spreading hairs, 3-8 dm. high; leaves gradually diminishing into leaf-like bracts, which exceed the lower short-pediceled flowers; calyx-tube ovoid; corolla only 3-4 mm. long. — Dry open fields and thickets. — Plant poisonous and a noted quack medicine.

  • Star Chickweed (Stellaria pubera)

    A chickweed with ambitions to be known as a wild flower rather than a mere weed. To that end it grows in the woods (rather than in your lawn) and produces flowers many times the size of the ones on the tiny chickweeds that grow in yards and gardens. Although spring is its primary blooming season, it can bloom again from later growth, often with smaller flowers than in the spring. This plant was one of a small colony growing along a woodland trail in Scott, where it was blooming in early July.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    STELLÀRIA 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-manyseeded. 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 L. in part, not Wahlenb.

    S. púbera Michx. (GREAT С.) Root perennial; leaves elliptic-oblong, ciliolate, 1.5-5 cm. long, sessile or the lowest somewhat petiolate; petals longer than the calyx; stamens 10. (Alsine Britton.) — Shaded rocks, N. J. and Pa. to Ind. and southw. May. — The petals are cleft sometimes half their length, sometimes nearly to the base. Late shoots produce much larger leaves and often reduced flowers.

  • Wild Bergamot (Monarda fistulosa)

    A native plant so popular in gardens that it may as easily be a garden escape as a properly wild plant. This large colony was growing in a hillside clearing in Scott Township where the ground had been recently disturbed; the flowers were blooming in early July.

    MONÁRDA L. HORSE MINT. Calyx 15-nerved, usually hairy in the throat. Corolla elongated, with a slightly expanded throat; lips linear or oblong, somewhat equal, the upper erect, entire or slightly notched, the lower spreading, 3-lobed at the apex, its lateral lobes ovate and obtuse, the middle one narrower and slightly notched. Stamens elongated, ascending, inserted in the throat of the corolla. — Odorous erect herbs, with entire or toothed leaves, and large attractive flowers in a few verticels closely surrounded by bracts. (Dedicated to Nicolás Monardes, author of many tracts upon medicinal and other useful plants, especially those of the New World, in the latter half of the 16th century.)

    * Stamens and style exserted beyond the linear straight acute upper lip of the corolla; heads solitary and terminal or sometimes 2 or 3; leaves acutely more or less serrate; perennials.

    + Leaves petioled; calyx-teeth scarcely longer than the width of the tube.

    ++ Glabrous or villous.

    = Calyx smooth or smoothish in the throat.

    M. fistulosa L. (WILD BERGAMOT.) Branches more or less villous or hirsute, 0.5-1.5 m. high; leaves ovate-lanceolate, pubescent especially beneath, the uppermost and outer bracts somewhat colored (whitish or purplish); calyz slightly curved, very hairy in the throat; corolla 2.5-1 cm. long, lilac or pink, the upper lip very hairy. — Dry soil, N. E. to Col. and Tex.; often cultivated and mostly introd. northeastw. Var. Rubra Gray. Stem smooth; corolla bright crimson or rose-red; habit of no. 1, but upper lip of corolla villous-bearded on the back at tip ; throat of calyx with the outer bristly hairs widely spreading. (M. media Willd.)—Me. to Ont. and Tenn.; mostly introd. northw. July, Aug.