Category: Compositae

  • Panicled Aster (Aster paniculatus)

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    Also known as Tall White Aster. A spectacularly beautiful plant, growing to eight feet and covered with starry white flowers. These plants grew along a corrugated steel fence near a railroad track in Oakmont.

    From Gray’s Manual of Botany: A. paniculatus Lain. Stem smoothish, 0.5-2. 5m. high, much branched; the branches and scattered heads (about 2 cm. broad) loosely paniculate; leaves elongate-oblong to narrowly lanceolate, pointed, somewhat serrate or entire; the cauline 0.5-1.5 dm. long, about 1 cm. wide; involucre 8 mm. long; its bracts narrowly linear, with attenuate green tips, or the outermost wholly green; rays white or purplish, G-8 mm. long. Wet meadows, thickets, etc., throughout. Aug. -Oct.

    (Gray also notes that this aster is hard to distinguish from several other species. The chief identifying characteristic of these specimens was their spectacular height, at least seven feet. This identification is our best guess.)

  • Late Thoroughwort (Eupatorium serotinum)

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    We wind up the thoroughwort season with this late entry, whose dusty off-white puffs of raggedy flowers decorate roadsides and railroad rights-of-way in September and October. A close view reveals the inividual flowers that make up each head. This specimen grew through a crack in a disused parking lot in Oakmont.

    From Gray’s Manual of Botany: Eupatorium serotinum Michx. Stem pulverulent-pubescent, bushy-branched, 1-2 m. high ; leaves ovate-lanceolate, tapering to a point, triple-nerved and veiny, coarsely serrate, 0.5-1.5 dm. long ; involucre very pubescent. Alluvial ground, Md. to Minn., e. Kan., and south w.

  • Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale)

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    No matter how much suburbanites hate dandelions in their lawns, anyone with any aesthetic sense must grudgingly admit that the common dandelion is one of our most perfectly beautiful flowers.

  • Green-Headed Coneflower (Rudbeckia laciniata)

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    Favors wet areas; these plants were spotted on the edge of a marshy pond in a small park in the Allegheny valley.