A charming flower, often cultivated. It likes a moist and somewhat shady location; these plants were blooming in Bird Park in Mount Lebanon at the beginning of September.
The genus Conoclinium was formerly included in Eupatorium, but was separated when Eupatorium was forced to sell off its superfluous species at fire-sale prices.
It is very difficult for a cheap digital camera to capture the delicate blue color of these flowers. The noticeable difference in color between the two pictures is mostly a figment of the camera’s imagination.
Gray describes the genus Eupatorium, the section Conoclinium (now regarded as a separate genus), and the species:
EUPATÒRIUM [Tourn.] L. THOROUGHWORT. Heads discoid, 3-many-flowered; flowers perfect. Involucre cylindrical or bell-shaped, of more than 4 bracts. Receptacle flat or conical, naked. Corolla 6-toothed. Achenes 6-angled; pappus a single row of slender capillary barely roughish bristles. —Erect perennial herbs, often sprinkled with hitter resinous dots, with generally corymbose heads of white, bluish, or purple blossoms, appearing near the close of summer. (Dedicated to Eupator Mithridates, who is said to have used a species of the genus in medicine.)
E. coelestìnum L. (MIST-FLOWER.) Somewhat pubescent, 0.5-1 m. high; leaves opposite, petiolate, triangular-ovate and slightly heart-shaped, coarsely and bluntly toothed; heads many-fiowered, in compact cymes; flowers blue or violet. — Rich soil, N. J. to Mich., Kan., and southw.
This is the most universally beloved of all wild flowers, the focus of countless childhood traditions and the very image of “flower” in the popular imagination. It may be derided as a pernicious weed by agricultural and environmental authorities, but the ordinary citizen will never be persuaded to hate it. The first of the flowers above was blooming in early June at the edge of a gravel lot in Scott Township; the second was blooming in late May on a sunny bank in Mount Lebanon.
Daisies like these were formerly kept in the genus Chrysanthemum, but have been removed by bored botanists to the genus Leucanthemum “because they are not aromatic and their leaves lack grayish-white hairs,” according to the Wikipedia article on the genus. (The genus “Leucanthemum” was apparently named by Lamarck, whose discredited theory of inheritance of acquired characteristics still haunts high-school biology classes.) Because of this new sorting of the genera, we leave Gray and give the description of the genus and species from the Flora of North America at efloras.org:
Perennials, (10–)40–130(–200+) cm (rhizomatous, roots usually red-tipped). Stems usually 1, erect, simple or branched, glabrous or hairy (hairs basifixed). Leaves mostly basal or basal and cauline; petiolate or sessile; blades obovate to lanceolate or linear, often 1[–2+]-pinnately lobed or toothed, ultimate margins dentate or entire, faces glabrous or sparsely hairy. Heads usually radiate, rarely discoid, borne singly or in 2s or 3s. Involucres hemispheric or broader, 12–35+ mm diam. Phyllaries persistent, 35–60+ in 3–4+ series, distinct, ovate or lance-ovate to oblanceolate, unequal, margins and apices (colorless or pale to dark brown) scarious (tips not notably dilated; abaxial faces glabrous or sparsely hairy). Receptacles convex, epaleate. Ray florets usually 13–34+, rarely 0, pistillate, fertile; corollas white (drying pinkish), laminae ovate to linear. Disc florets 120–200+, bisexual, fertile; corollas yellow, tubes ± cylindric (proximally swollen, becoming spongy in fruit), throats campanulate, lobes 5, deltate (without resin sacs). Cypselae ± columnar to obovoid, ribs ± 10, faces glabrous (pericarps with myxogenic cells on ribs and resin sacs between ribs; embryo sac development monosporic); pappi 0 (wall tissue of ray cypselae sometimes produced as coronas or auricles on some cypselae). x = 9.
Species 20–40+ (3 in the flora): introduced; mostly temperate Europe (some widely cultivated and sparingly adventive).
The three leucanthemums recognized here are weakly distinct and are sometimes included (with a dozen or more others) in a single, polymorphic Leucanthemum vulgare.
SELECTED REFERENCE
Vogt, R. 1991. Die Gattung Leucanthemum (Compositae–Anthemideae) auf der Iberischen Halbinsel. Ruizia 10: 1–261.
Chrysanthemum leucanthemum Linnaeus, Sp. Pl. 2: 888. 1753; C. leucanthemum var. pinnatifidum Lecoq & Lamotte
Perennials, 10–30(–100+) cm. Stems simple or distally branched. Basal leaves: petioles 10–30(–120) mm, expanding into obovate to spatulate blades 12–35(–50+) × 8–20(–30) mm, margins usually pinnately lobed (lobes 3–7+) and/or irregularly toothed. Cauline leaves petiolate or sessile; blades oblanceolate or spatulate to lanceolate or linear, 30–80+ × 2–15+ mm, margins of mid-stem leaves usually irregularly toothed proximally and distally.Involucres 12–20+ mm diam. Phyllaries (the larger) 2–3 mm wide. Ray florets usually 13–34+, rarely 0; laminae 12–20(–35+) mm. Ray cypselae 1.5–2.5 mm, apices usually coronate or auriculate. 2n = 18, 36, 54, 72, 90.
Some botanists (e.g., W. J. Cody 1996) have treated Leucanthemum ircutianum de Candolle, with blades of mid and distal cauline leaves oblong to oblong-lanceolate and not ± pinnate at bases, as distinct from L. vulgare.
A garden favorite that sometimes makes itself at home here, especially in the city. This plant was blooming on a bank in Beechview in early June. Feverfew is named for its supposed fever-reducing effects, though modern science has looked for those effects and failed to find them. The cheery flowers are like generous clusters of small daisies.
Botanists often place this species in the genus Tanacetum with the Tansies, but it is most familiar under the name Chrysanthemum, which is where Gray puts it:
CHRYSANTHEMUM [Tourn.] L. OX-EYE DAISY. Heads many-flowered; rays numerous, fertile. Scales of the broad and flat involucre imbricated, with scarious margins. Receptacle flat or convex, naked. Disk-corollas with a flattened tube. Achenes of disk and ray similar, striate. — Annual or perennial herbs, with toothed, pinnatifid, or divided leaves, and single or corymbed heads. Rays white or yellow (rarely wanting); disk yellow. (Old Greek name, Chrysanthemon, i.e. golden flower.)
C. parthènium (L.) Bernh. (FEVERFEW.) Tall, branched, leafy; leaves bipinnately divided, the divisions ovate, cut; rays white. — Escaped from gardens, and naturalized in some places. (Introd. from Eu.)
Golden Ragworts are attractive flowers, a bit like a yellow aster, that bloom in the middle spring, just after the tulips in your garden. The heart-shaped basal leaves and the pinnately lobed (rather fern-like) stem leaves are distinctive. They like a somewhat shady location; these were blooming in early May beside a wooded country lane west of Cranberry.
Gray (with help from J. M. Greenman) describes the genus and the species:
SENECIO [Tourn.] L. GROUNDSEL. RAGWORT. SQUAW-WEED. Revised Bt J. M. Greenman. Heads many-flowered; rays pistillate or none; involucre cylindrical to bellshaped, simple or with a few bractlets at the base, the bracts erect-connivent. Receptacle flat, naked. Pappus of numerous very soft and capillary bristles.— Ours herbs, with alternate leaves and solitary or eorymbed heads. Flowers chiefly yellow. (Name from senex, an old man, alluding to the hoariness of many species, or to the white hairs of the pappus.)
S. aureus L. (GOLDEN R. ) Stems erect from rather slender rootstocks, 3-8 dm. high, at first often lightly floccose-tomentose, soon glabrate; lower leaves long-petioled, ovate-rotund to slightly oblong, 1.5-8 cm. long, two thirds as broad, crenate-dentate; stem-leaves lyrate to laciniate-pinnatifid; the uppermost sessile, amplexicaul, often bract-like; inflorescence cymose-corymbose; heads radiate; rays yellow; achenes glabrous. — In wet meadows, moist thickets, and swamps, Nfd., s. to Va., w. to Wisc., Mo., and Ark. May-Aug.
As the specific name vulgaris implies, there is nothing unusual about Groundsel; but even for this opportunistic bloomer, there is something unusual about seeing flowers and ripe seeds in early February. Groundsel can take advantage of a very brief break in the weather to bloom, and the warm winter this year has given it the chance to burst into bloom all over.
Gray describes the genus and the species—but we should not take what he says about the blooming season too seriously.
SENECIO [Tourn.] L. Groundsel. Ragwort. Squaw-weed. Heads many-flowered; rays pistillate or none; involucre cylindrical to bellshaped, simple or with a few bractlets at the base, the bracts erect-connivent. Receptacle flat, naked. Pappus of numerous very soft and capillary bristles.— Ours herbs, with alternate leaves and solitary or corymbed heads. Flowers chiefly yellow. (Name from senex, an old man, alluding to the hoariness of many species, or to the white hairs of the pappus.)
Annuals (rarely becoming biennial); stems leafy to the Inflorescence; heads medium-sized, 1 сш. or less high during anthesis.
S. vulgàris L. (Common Groundsel.) Low annual, 1-6 dm. high. corymbosely branched, glabrate, leafy to the inflorescence; leaves pinnatifid and toothed, 1-8 cm. long, 0.6-3 cm. broad; calyculate bracts (bracteoles) of the involucre distinctly black-tipped; rays none; achenes hirtellous. — Waste grounds, common. July-Sept. (Nat. from Eu.)
A charming flower, often cultivated. It likes a moist and somewhat shady location; these plants were blooming in Bird Park in Mount Lebanon at the beginning of September.
