Hard to distinguish from Tall Ironweed, with which it apparently hybridizes. The height is a clue, but conditions can make Tall Ironweed as short as New York Ironweed. This specimen was found in an old cemetery in Beechview. Gray puts Pittsburgh out of the range of New York Ironweed, but most other authorities agree in placing it here. The distinction between Vernonia altissima and Vernonia noveboracensis is sketchy enough, however, that all our ironweeds may be races of the same species. In any event, the Tall Ironweed seems to be our most common.

The vivid purple of the ironweeds makes them one of our most spectacular native flowers, and enlightened gardeners are beginning to adopt them as ornamentals.

Gray describes the genus and the species:

VERNONIA Schreb. IRONWEED
Heads discoid, 16-many-flowered, in corymbose cymes; flowers perfect; involucre shorter than the flowers, of much imbricated bracts. Achenes cylindrical, ribbed; pappus double, the outer of minute scale-like bristles, the inner of copious capillary bristles. Perennial herbs, with leafy steins, alternate acuminate or very acute serrate leaves and mostly purple (rarely white) flowers. (Named for William Vernon, an early English botanist, who traveled in North America. )

V. noveboracensis Willd. Rather tall (1-2 m.); leaves long-lanceolate to lance-oblong, more or less pubescent beneath, gradually narrowed but not at all acuminate toward the base; cyme open; heads mostly 30-40-flowered; involucre purplish (or in white-flowered individuals green), campanulate; the bracts ovate or lance-ovate, with loosely ascending or recurved-spreading filiform tips; pappus purple or purplish. Low ground near the coast, Mass, to Va. and Miss.; reported from Pelee I., L. Erie (Macoun).

The distinctive sky-blue flowers make Chicory unmistakable. Varieties of Chicory are used as salad greens and as a coffee substitute or additive. It grows along roadsides, and seems especially happy in a crack in the asphalt at the edge of a parking lot. This plant grew beside an alley in the South Side flats.

Gray describes the genus and the single species in our area:

CICHÓRIUM [Tourn.] L. SUCCORY or CHICORY

Heads several-flowered. Involucre double, herbaceous, the inner of 8-10, the outer of 5 short and spreading bracts. Achenes striate; pappus of numerous small chaffy scales, forming a short crown. Branching perennials, with deep roots; the sessile heads 2 or 3 together, axillary and terminal, or solitary on short thickened branches. Flowers bright blue, varying to purple or pink (rarely white), showy. (Altered from the Arabian name of the plant.)

1. C. INTYBUS L. (COMMON C., BLUE SAILORS.) Stem-leaves oblong or lanceolate, partly clasping, the lowest runicate, those of the rigid flowering branches minute. (Including var. divaricatum of Am. auth., probably not of DC.) Roadsides and fields, Nfd. to Minn., and southw. July-Oct. (Nat. from Eu.)

A close relative of the garden Bachelor’s Button (Centaurea cyanus), this is a European import found especially along railroad tracks; this one was by a disused siding in Oakmont. The color is variable from purple through white.

From Gray’s Manual: C. MACULOSA Lam. Pubescent or glabrate, with ascending rather wiry branches; involucre ovoid-cainpanulate, in fruit becoming open-campanulate; the outer and middle ovate bracts with rather firm points and with 5-7 pairs of cilia at the dark tip; innermost bracts elongate, entire or lacerate; corollas whitish, rose-pink, or purplish, the marginal falsely radiate. Waste places, roadsides, etc., N. E. to N. J.
(Adv. from Eu.)

Now Symphyotrichum lateriflorum. Calico Asters are quite variable. “Consists of many races,” say Britton & Brown of this species, “differing in leaf-form, inflorescence and pubescence.” In other words, asters thumb their noses at the notion of a “species.” Some Calico Asters have their flowers so densely packed that you can’t see the leaves, as with this example from an overgrown bank in Beechview. Compare it to this other Calico Aster, from one block away in the same neighborhood.

From Gray’s Manual: A. lateriflorus (L.) Britton. More or less pubescent, much branched ; leaves lanceolate or oblong-lanceolate, tapering or pointed at each end, sharply serrate in the middle; bracts of the involucre linear, acute or rather obtuse, imbricated in 3-4 rows. (A. diffusus Ait.) Thickets, fields, etc., very common from N. S. to Ont., and southw. Aug.-Oct. Extensively variable ; leaves larger than in either of the two preceding ; the involucre intermediate between them, as to the form of the bracts. Rays mostly short, white or pale bluish-purple.

These are the tiny and slightly sloppy-looking aster flowers that peek out from hedges and pop up in cracks of sidewalks in September and October. The buds of the disk florets are bright yellow, but they turn deep brownish purple as they open. Both colors are usually present at the same time, giving the plant its calico pattern.

From Gray’s Manual: A. lateriflorus (L.) Britton. More or less pubescent, much branched ; leaves lanceolate or oblong-lanceolate, tapering or pointed at each end, sharply serrate in the middle; bracts of the involucre linear, acute or rather obtuse, imbricated in 3-4 rows. (A. diffusus Ait.) Thickets, fields, etc., very common from N. S. to Ont., and southw. Aug.-Oct. Extensively variable ; leaves larger than in either of the two preceding ; the involucre intermediate between them, as to the form of the bracts. Rays mostly short, white or pale bluish-purple.