Flora Pittsburghensis

Author: Father Pitt

  • Yellow Sweet Clover (Melilotus officinalis)

    Hard to tell from White Sweet Clover (M. alba) until they both bloom. When they do bloom, the yellow species reveals sloppier habits; the flower spikes are more ragged than the ones of M. alba, with withering flowers retained for a long time. Nevertheless, the delightful scent is enough to make us forget the slight slovenliness of the presentation. Yellow Sweet Clover grows plentifully along roadsides, and is often one of the first plants to colonize a recently disturbed site; this plant was growing in a park in Beechview where the earth had just been replaced after the building of a new playground. It was blooming in the middle of July.

    Gray describes the genus and the species (and has anyone in history other than Asa Gray ever used the English word “melilot”?)

    MELILÒTUS [Tourn.] Hill. MELILOT. SWEET CLOVER. Flowers much as in Trifolium, but in spike-like racemes, small. Corolla deciduous, free from the stamen-tube. Pod ovoid, coriaceous, wrinkled, longer than the calyx, scarcely dehiscent, 1-2-seeded. — Annual or biennial herbs, fragrant in drying, with pinnately 3-foliolate leaves. (Name from meli, honey, and lotos, some leguminous plant.)

    M. officinalis (L.) Lam. (YELLOW M.) Upright, usually tall; leaflets obovate-oblong, obtuse, closely serrate; petals yellow, of nearly equal length. 6-9 mm. long; pod 2.5-3.5 mm. long, glabrous or glabrate, prominently cross-ribbed. — Waste or cultivated ground, common. (Nat. from Eu.)

  • Purple-Leaved Willow-Herb (Epilobium coloratum)

    The genus Epilobium includes some spectacular flowers, like Fireweed (E. angustifolium). It also includes these little weeds that you pass right by without noticing. They’re worth a look, though: up close the flowers are beautiful, and the plants often have purple stems or even purple leaves (in spite of the English name, purple leaves are by no means guaranteed) that add to the decorative effect. They like moist areas, and seem to have a special affinity in the city for damp sidewalks. The plant at right grew in the angle between a stone retaining wall and the sidewalk along a street in Beechview. The one below grew directly out of a crack in that same wall.

    There are several similar species of Epilobium that have insignificant flowers like these, but this is the only one reported by Porter’s Flora of Pennsylvania and Shafer’s Preliminary List of the Vascular Flora of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, as occurring in Allegheny County. “At best,” says Mathews (Field Book of American Wild Flowers), “the Epilobiums are a difficult genus to separate distinctly, and are not a little puzzling to the botanist.”

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    EPILÒBIUM L. WILLOW-HERB. Calyx-tube scarcely or not at all prolonged beyond the ovary; limb 4-cleft or -divided. Petals 4, violet, magenta, pink, or white. Capsule slender, many-seeded. Seeds with a tuft of long hairs at the end. — Mostly perennial herbs with nearly sessile leaves. (Name from epi, on, and lobion, a little pod.)

    E. coloràtum Muhl. Stem erect, not stoloniferous (often developing in late autumn sessile or subsessile basal rosettes), 3-9 dm. high, usually muchbranched, glabrous below, canescent at least in lines above with incurved hairs; leaves elongate-lanceolate, 6-16 cm. long, 1-2 cm. broad, distinctly short-petioled, closely and irregularly serrulate; flowers abundant on the divergent branches; petals pink, 3-5 mm. long; pedicels short; seed 1.6 mm. long, abruptly rounded at tip, minutely papillate; mature coma cinnamon-colored. — Low ground, Me. to Neb., and southw. July-Sept.

    In The Species of Epilobium Occurring North of Mexico, William Trelease gives a fuller description, and points out the difficulty even botanists have in sorting out closely related species of Epilobium:

    E. coloratum, Muhl. — Glabrate below, the rather numerous panicled branches canescent with incurved hairs at least along the decurrent lines, and more or less glandular towards the end; leaves 50 to 150 mm. long, lanceolate to oblong-lanceolate, acute, deeply and irregularly serrulate, mostly gradually narrowed to conspicuous slender petioles, glabrous except the uppermost, dull, thin, rugose-veiny; flowers very numerous, more or less nodding; petals 3 to 5 mm. long, rosy; fruiting peduncles slender, mostly short; seeds obconical-fusiform, beakless, strongly papillate, .3 x 1.5 mm.; coma at length cinnamon-colored, at least at base. — Willd. Enum. i. (1809), 411; Haussknecht, Monogr. 258; Barbey & Cuisin, pl. 9.—Wet ground and meadows, Canada to South Carolina, west to Wisconsin, Nebraska, and Missouri. — Specimens examined from Ontario, Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, South Carolina (Ravenel), West Virginia, Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, and Wisconsin.

    This species, the general type of which is reproduced in a number of others which here follow it essentially in the order of their leaf and habit resemblance, differs from all of its congeners in the degree of serration of its leaves and especially in its elongated seeds destitute of the usual apical beak, and from all with which it is likely to be confounded, in the nearly cinnamon-colored ripe coma (which, however, is white in immature capsules that have dehisced while drying). It is apparently everywhere associated with E. adenocaulon, which begins to flower and fruit about a fortnight earlier, and differs in its very shortstalked leaves, rounded at base and less sharply toothed, and in its shorter seeds abruptly contracted and hyaline-beaked above, and with pure white coma. West American specimens which have been called E. coloratum belong, for the most part, to forms of adenocaulon.

  • Motherwort (Leonurus cardiaca)

    Easily distinguished from anything similar by the foamy appearance of the flowers, which have puffy tufts of hair on their upper lips. “Motherwort” is so named because it was used by herbalists for what have traditionally been called “female difficulties.” This plant was part of a large stand at the edge of a dense thicket in Beechview, whre it was blooming in the middle of July.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    LEONÙRUS L. MOTHERWORT. Calyx 5-nerved, with 5 nearly equal teeth. Upper lip of the corolla oblong and entire, somewhat arched; the lower spreading, 3-lobed, its middle lobe larger, narrowly oblong-obovate, entire, the lateral ones oblong. — Upright herbs, with cut-lobed leaves, and close whorls of flowers in their axils; in summer. (Name from leon, a lion, and oura, tail, i.e. Lion’s-tail.)

    L. cardìaca L. (COMMON M.) Tall perennial; leaves long-petioled, tbe lower rounded, palmately lobed, the floral wedge-shaped at base, subentire or 3-clefl, the lobes lanceolate; upper lip of the pale purple corolla bearded. — Waste places, around dwellings. (Nat. from Eu.)

  • Lance-Leaved Coreopsis (Coreopsis lanceolata)


    Its native range is farther west, but Lance-Leaved Coreopsis is frequently cultivated and has established itself here. This plant was part of a small colony blooming in early July in a recently disturbed hillside clearing in Scott Township, along with a much larger colony of Coreopsis tinctoria, another Midwestern import. The four points at the end of each ray are distinctive.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    COLEOPSIS L. TICKSEED. Heads many-flowered, radiate; rays mostly 8, neutral, rarely wanting. Involucre double; each series of about 8 bracts, the outer foliaceous and somewhat spreading; the inner broader and appressed, nearly membranaceous. Receptacle flat, with membranaceous chaff deciduous with the fruit. Achenes flat, obcompressed (i.e. flattened parallel with the bracts of the involucre), often winged, not narrowed at the top, 2-toothed or 2-awned, or sometimes naked at the summit; the awns not barbed downwardly. — Herbs, generally with opposite leaves and yellow or party-colored (rarely purple) rays. Too near the last section of Bidens, but generally well distinguished as a genus. (Name from koris, a bug, and opsis, appearance; from the form of the achene.)

    §2. Style-tips abruptly cuspidate, hispid; involucres nearly equal; achenes roundish, winged, incurved, often papillose and with a callus inside at base and apex; pappus 2 small teeth or none; rays mostly yellow andpalmately lobed; perennials, with long-pedunculate heads; lower leaves petiolate.

    * Wings of achene broad, thin, spreading.

    3. С. lanceolàta L. Smooth or hairy, 3-6 din. high, tufted, branched only at the base ; leaves all entire (the lower rarely with a pair of small lateral lobes), lanceolate, the lowest oblanceolate or spatulate; outer bracts ovate-lanceolate. — Rich or damp soil, Ont. and Mich, to Va., Mo., and southw.; also cultivated on account of its showy heads, and sometimes escaping eastw. May-July.

  • White Vervain (Verbena urticifolia)

    A relative of our garden Verbenas, but bearing little superficial resemblance to them. This is a delicate plant, tall,with long flower spikes, the tiny white flowers encircling the spike in a loose but narrow band, with buds above and developing seeds below. This plant was growing at the edge of the woods in Scott Township, where it was blooming in early July.

    Gray’s note “(Trop. Am.)” is a little baffling; no other authority regards this as anything other than a native species.

    Gray describes the genus and the species, which he spells urticaefolia:

    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 6-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 filiform, with flowers or at least fruit scattered, naked, the inconspicuous bracts shorter than the calyx.

    V. urticaefòlia L. (WHITE V.) Perennial, from minutely pubescent to almost glabrous, rather tall (0.5-1.6 m. high); leaves oval or oblong-ovate, acute, coarsely serrate, petioled; spikes at length much elongated, loosely panicled; flowers very small, white. — Thickets, roadsides, and waste ground. (Trop. Am.)