Chapter 16
In dry, shady places the Large, or Broad-leaved Aster (_A. macrophyllus_), so called from its three or four conspicuous, heart-shaped leaves on long petioles, in a clump next the ground, may be more easily identified by these than by the pale lavender or violet flower-heads of about sixteen rays each which crown its reddish angular stem in August and September. The disk turns reddish brown.
Much more branched and bushy is the Common Blue, Branching, Wood, or Heart-leaved Aster (_A. cordifolius_), whose generous masses of small, pale lavender flower-heads look like a mist hanging from one to five feet above the earth in and about the woods and shady roadsides from September even to December in favored places.
By no means tardy, the Late Purple Aster, so-called, or Purple Daisy (_A. patens_), begins to display its purplish-blue, daisy-like flower-heads early in August, and farther north may be found in dry, exposed places only until October. Rarely the solitary flowers, that are an inch across or more, are a deep, rich violet. The twenty to thirty rays which surround the disk, curling inward to dry, expose the vase-shaped, green, shingled cups that terminate each little branch. The thick, somewhat rigid, oblong leaves, tapering at the tip, broaden at the base to clasp the rough, slender stalk. Range similar to the next species.
Certainly from Massachusetts, northern New York, and Minnesota southward to the Gulf of Mexico one may expect to find the New England Aster or Starwort (_A. novae-angliae_), one of the most striking and widely distributed of the tribe, in spite of its local name. It is not unknown in Canada. The branching clusters of violet or magenta-purple flower-heads, from one to two inches across--composites containing as many as forty to fifty purple ray florets around a multitude of perfect five-lobed, tubular, yellow disk florets in a sticky cup--shine out with royal splendor above the swamps, moist fields, and roadsides from August to October. The stout, bristle-hairy stem bears a quantity of alternate lance-shaped leaves lobed at the base where they clasp it.
In even wetter ground we find the Red-stalked, Purple-stemmed, or Early Purple Aster, Cocash, Swanweed, or Meadow Scabish (_A. puniceus_) blooming as early as July or as late as November. Its stout, rigid stem, bristling with rigid hairs, may reach a height of eight feet to display the branching clusters of pale violet or lavender flowers. The long, blade-like leaves, usually very rough above and hairy along the midrib beneath, are seated on the stem.
The lovely Smooth or Blue Aster (_A. laevis_), whose sky-blue or violet flower-heads, about one inch broad, are common through September and October in dry soil and open woods, has strongly clasping, oblong, tapering leaves, rough margined, but rarely with a saw-tooth, toward the top of the stem, while those low down on it gradually narrow into clasping wings.
In dry, sandy soil, mostly near the coast, from Massachusetts to Delaware, grows one of the loveliest of all this beautiful clan, the Low, Showy, or Seaside Purple Aster (_A. spectabilis_). The stiff, usually unbranched stem does its best in attaining a height of two feet. Above, the leaves are blade-like or narrowly oblong, seated on the stem, whereas the tapering, oval basal leaves are furnished with long footstems, as is customary with most asters. The handsome, bright, violet-purple flower-heads, measuring about an inch and a half across, have from fifteen to thirty rays, or only about half as many as the familiar New England aster. Season: August to November.
White Asters or Starworts
In dry, open woodlands, thickets, and roadsides, from August to October, we find the dainty White Wood Aster (_A. divaricatus_)--_A. corymbosus_ of Gray--its brittle zig-zag stem two feet high or less, branching at the top, and repeatedly forked where loose clusters of flower-heads spread in a broad, rather flat corymb. Only a few white rays--usually from six to nine--surround the yellow disk, whose florets soon turn brown. Range from Canada southward to Tennessee.
The bushy little White Heath Aster (_A. ericoides_) every one must know, possibly, as Michaelmas Daisy, Farewell Summer, White Rosemary, or Frost-weed; for none is commoner in dry soil, throughout the eastern United States at least. Its smooth, much-branched stem rarely reaches three feet in height, usually it is not more than a foot tall, and its very numerous flower-heads, white or pink tinged, barely half an inch across, appear in such profusion from September even to December as to transform it into a feathery mass of bloom.
Growing like branching wands of golden-rod, the Dense-flowered, White-wreathed, or Starry Aster (_A. multiflorus_) bears its minute flower-heads crowded close along the branches, where many small, stiff leaves, like miniature pine needles, follow them. Each flower measures only about a quarter of an inch across. From Maine to Georgia and Texas westward to Arizona and British Columbia the common bushy plant lifts its rather erect, curving, feathery branches perhaps only a foot, sometimes above a man’s head, from August till November, in such dry, open, sterile ground as the white Heath Aster also chooses.
Golden Aster
_Chrysopsis mariana_
_Flower-heads_--Composite, yellow, 1 in. wide or less, a few corymbed flowers on glandular stalks; each composed of perfect tubular disk florets surrounded by pistillate ray florets; the involucre campanulate, its narrow bracts overlapping in several series. _Stem:_ Stout, silky, hairy when young, nearly smooth later, 1 to 2-1/2 ft. tall. _Leaves:_ Alternate, oblong to spatulate, entire.
_Preferred Habitat_--Dry soil, or sandy, not far inland.
_Flowering Season_--August-September.
_Distribution_--Long Island and Pennsylvania to the Gulf states.
Whoever comes upon clumps of these handsome flowers by the dusty roadside cannot but be impressed with the appropriateness of their generic name (_Chrysos_ = gold; _opsis_ = aspect). Farther westward, north and south, it is the Hairy Golden Aster (_C. villosa_), a pale, hoary-haired plant with similar flowers borne at midsummer, that is the common species.
Daisy Fleabane; Sweet Scabious
_Erigeron annuus_
_Flower-heads_--Numerous, daisy-like, about 1/2 in. across; from 40 to 70 long, fine, white rays (or purple or pink tinged), arranged around yellow disk florets in a rough, hemispheric cup whose bracts overlap. _Stem:_ Erect, 1 to 4 ft. high, branching above, with spreading, rough hairs. _Leaves:_ Thin, lower ones ovate, coarsely toothed, petioled; upper ones sessile, becoming smaller, lance-shaped.
_Preferred Habitat_--Fields, waste land, roadsides.
_Flowering Season_--May-November.
_Distribution_--Nova Scotia to Virginia, westward to Missouri.
At a glance one knows this flower to be akin to Robin’s plantain, the asters and daisy. A smaller, more delicate species, with mostly entire leaves and appressed hairs (_E. ramosus_)--_E. strigosum_ of Gray--has a similar range and season of bloom. Both soon grow hoary-headed after they have been fertilized by countless insects crawling over them (_Erigeron_ = early old). That either of these plants, or the pinkish, small-flowered, strong-scented Salt-marsh Fleabane (_Pluchea camphorata_), drive away fleas, is believed only by those who have not used them dried, reduced to powder, and sprinkled in kennels, from which, however, they have been known to drive away dogs.
Robin’s, or Poor Robin’s, or Robert’s Plantain; Blue Spring Daisy; Daisy-leaved Fleabane
_Erigeron pulchellus_
_Flower-heads_--Composite, daisy-like, 1 to 1-1/2 in. across; the outer circle of about 50 pale bluish-violet ray florets; the disk florets greenish yellow. _Stem:_ Simple, erect, hairy, juicy, flexible, from 10 in. to 2 ft. high, producing runners and offsets from base. _Leaves:_ Spatulate, in a flat tuft about the root; stem leaves narrow, more acute, seated, or partly clasping.
_Preferred Habitat_--Moist ground, hills, banks, grassy fields.
_Flowering Season_--April-June.
_Distribution_--United States and Canada, east of the Mississippi.
Like an aster blooming long before its season, Robin’s Plantain wears a finely cut lavender fringe around a yellow disk of minute florets; but one of the first, not the last, in the long procession of composites has appeared when we see gay companies of these flowers nodding their heads above the grass in the spring breezes as if they were village gossips.
Pearly, or Large-flowered, Everlasting; Immortelle, Silver Leaf; Moonshine; Cottonweed; None-so-pretty
_Anaphalis margaritacea_
_Flower-heads_--Numerous pearly-white scales of the involucre holding tubular florets only; borne in broad, rather flat, compound corymbs at the summit. _Stem:_ Cottony, 1 to 3 ft. high, leafy to the top. _Leaves:_ Upper ones small, narrow, linear; lower ones broader, lance-shaped, rolled backward, more or less woolly beneath.
_Preferred Habitat_--Dry fields, hillsides, open woods, uplands.
_Flowering Season_--July-September.
_Distribution_--North Carolina, Kansas, and California, far north.
When the small, white, overlapping scales of an everlasting’s oblong involucre expand stiff and straight, each pert little flower-head resembles nothing so much as a miniature pond lily, only what would be a lily’s yellow stamens are in this case the true flowers, which become brown in drying. It will be noticed that these tiny florets, so well protected in the centre, are of two different kinds, separated on distinct heads: the female florets with a tubular, five-cleft corolla, a two-cleft style, and a copious pappus of hairy bristles; the staminate, or male, florets more slender, the anthers tailed at the base. Self-fertilization being, of course, impossible under such an arrangement, the florets are absolutely dependent upon little winged pollen carriers, whose sweet reward is well protected for them from pilfering ants by the cottony substance on the wiry stem, a device successfully employed by thistles also.
An imaginary blossom that never fades has been the dream of poets from Milton’s day; but seeing one, who loves it? Our amaranth has the aspect of an artificial flower--stiff, dry, soulless, quite in keeping with the decorations on the average farmhouse mantelpiece. Here it forms the most uncheering of winter bouquets, or a wreath about flowers made from the lifeless hair of some dear departed.
Elecampane; Horseheal; Yellow Starwort
_Inula Helenium_
_Flower-heads_--Large, yellow, solitary or a few, 2 to 4 in. across, on long, stout peduncles; the scaly green involucre nearly 1 in. high, holding disk florets surrounded by a fringe of long, very narrow, 3-toothed ray florets. _Stem:_ Usually unbranched, 2 to 6 ft. high, hairy above. _Leaves:_ Alternate, large, broadly oblong, pointed, saw-edged, rough above, woolly beneath; some with heart-shaped, clasping bases.
_Preferred Habitat_--Roadsides, fields, fence-rows, damp pastures.
_Flowering Season_--July-September.
_Distribution_--Nova Scotia to the Carolinas, and westward to Minnesota and Missouri.
The elecampane has not always led a vagabond existence. Once it had its passage paid across the Atlantic, because special virtue was attributed to its thick, mucilaginous roots as a horse medicine. For more than two thousand years it has been employed by home doctors in Europe and Asia; and at first Old World immigrants thought they could not live here without the plant on their farms. Once given a chance to naturalize itself, no composite is slow in seizing it. The vigorous elecampane, rearing its fringy, yellow disks above lichen-covered stone walls in New England, the Virginia rail fence, and the rank weedy growth along barbed-wire barriers farther west, now bids fair to cross the continent.
Black-eyed Susan; Yellow or Ox-eye Daisy; Nigger-head; Golden Jerusalem; Purple Cone-flower
_Rudbeckia hirta_
_Flower-heads_--From 10 to 20 orange-yellow neutral rays around a conical, dark purplish-brown disk of florets containing both stamens and pistil. _Stem:_ 1 to 3 ft. tall, hairy, rough, usually unbranched, often tufted. _Leaves:_ Oblong to lance-shaped, thick, sparingly notched, rough.
_Preferred Habitat_--Open sunny places; dry fields.
_Flowering Season_--May-September.
_Distribution_--Ontario and the Northwest Territory south to Colorado and the Gulf states.
So very many weeds having come to our Eastern shores from Europe, and marched farther and farther west year by year, it is but fair that black-eyed Susan, a native of Western clover fields, should travel toward the Atlantic in bundles of hay whenever she gets the chance, to repay Eastern farmers in their own coin. Do these gorgeous heads know that all our showy rudbeckias--some with orange red at the base of their ray florets--have become prime favorites of late years in European gardens, so offering them still another chance to overrun the Old World, to which so much American hay is shipped? Thrifty farmers may decry the importation into their mowing lots, but there is a glory to the cone-flower beside which the glitter of a gold coin fades into paltry nothingness. Having been instructed in the decorative usefulness of all this genus by European landscape gardeners, we Americans now importune the Department of Agriculture for seeds through members of Congress, even Representatives of States that have passed stringent laws against the dissemination of “weeds.” Inasmuch as each black-eyed Susan puts into daily operation the business methods of the white daisy, methods which have become a sort of creed for the entire composite horde to live by, it is plain that she may defy both farmers and legislators. Bees, wasps, flies butterflies, and beetles could not be kept away from an entertainer so generous; for while the nectar in the deep, tubular brown florets may be drained only by long, slender tongues, pollen is accessible to all. Any one who has had a jar of these yellow daisies standing on a polished table indoors, and tried to keep its surface free from a ring of golden dust around the flowers, knows how abundant their pollen is. The black-eyed Susan, like the English sparrow, has come to stay--let farmers and law-makers do what they will.
Tall or Giant Sunflower
_Helianthus giganteus_
_Flower-heads_--Several, on long, rough-hairy peduncles; 1-1/2 to 2-1/4 in. broad; 10 to 20 pale yellow neutral rays around a yellowish disk whose florets are perfect, fertile. _Stem:_ 3 to 12 ft. tall, bristly-hairy, usually branching above, often reddish; from a perennial, fleshy root. _Leaves:_ Rough, firm, lance-shaped, saw-toothed, sessile.
_Preferred Habitat_--Low ground, wet meadows, swamps.
_Flowering Season_--August-October.
_Distribution_--Maine to Nebraska and the Northwest Territory, south to the Gulf of Mexico.
To how many sun-shaped golden disks with outflashing rays might not the generic name of this clan (_helios_ = the sun, _anthos_ = a flower) be as fittingly applied: from midsummer till frost the earth seems given up to floral counterparts of his worshipful majesty. If, as we are told, one ninth of all flowering plants in the world belong to the composite order, of which more than sixteen hundred species are found in North America north of Mexico, surely more than half this number are made up after the daisy pattern, the most successful arrangement known, and the majority of these are wholly or partly yellow. Most conspicuous of the horde are the sunflowers, albeit they never reach in the wild state the gigantic dimensions and weight that cultivated, dark-brown centred varieties produced from the common sunflower have attained. For many years the origin of the latter flower, which suddenly shone forth in European gardens with unwonted splendor, was in doubt. Only lately it was learned that when Champlain and Segur visited the Indians on Lake Huron’s eastern shores about three centuries ago, they saw them cultivating this plant, which must have been brought by them from its native prairies beyond the Mississippi--a plant whose stalks furnished them with a textile fibre, its leaves fodder, its flowers a yellow dye, and its seeds, most valuable of all, food and hair-oil! Early settlers in Canada were not slow in sending home to Europe so decorative and useful an acquisition. Swine, poultry, and parrots were fed on its rich seeds. Its flowers, even under Indian cultivation, had already reached abnormal size. Of the sixty varied and interesting species of wild sunflowers known to scientists, all are North American.
Moore’s pretty statement,
“As the sunflower turns on her god when he sets The same look which she turn’d when he rose,”
lacks only truth to make it fact. The flower does not travel daily on its stalk from east to west. Often the top of the stem turns sharply toward the light to give the leaves better exposure, but the presence or absence of a terminal flower affects its action not at all.
Sneeze weed; Swamp Sunflower
_Helenium autumnale_
_Flower-heads_--Bright yellow, 1 to 2 in. across, numerous, borne on long peduncles in corymb-like clusters; the rays 3 to 5 cleft, and drooping around the yellow or yellowish-brown disk. _Stem:_ 2 to 6 ft. tall, branched above. _Leaves:_ Alternate, firm, lance-shaped to oblong, toothed, seated on stem or the bases slightly decurrent; bitter.
_Preferred Habitat_--Swamps, wet ground, banks of streams.
_Flowering Season_--August-October.
_Distribution_--Quebec to the Northwest Territory; southward to Florida and Arizona.
Most cows know enough to respect the bitter leaves’ desire to be let alone; but many a pail of milk has been spoiled by a mouthful of _Helenium_ among the herbage. Whoever cares to learn from experience why this was called sneezeweed, must take a whiff of snuff made of the dried and powdered leaves.
Yarrow; Milfoil; Old Man’s Pepper; Nosebleed
_Achillea Millefolium_
_Flower-heads_--Grayish-white, rarely pinkish, in a hard, close, flat-topped, compound cluster. Ray florets 4 to 6, pistillate, fertile; disk florets yellow, afterward brown, perfect, fertile. _Stem:_ Erect, from horizontal root-stalk, 1 to 2 ft. high, leafy, sometimes hairy. _Leaves:_ Very finely dissected (_Millefolium_ = thousand leaf), narrowly oblong in outline.
_Preferred Habitat_--Waste land, dry fields, banks, roadsides.
_Flowering Season_--June-November.
_Distribution_--Naturalized from Europe and Asia throughout North America.
Everywhere this commonest of common weeds confronts us; the compact, dusty-looking clusters appearing not by waysides only, around the world, but in the mythology, folk-lore, medicine, and literature of many peoples. Chiron, the centaur, who taught its virtues to Achilles that he might make an ointment to heal his Myrmidons wounded in the siege of Troy, named the plant for this favorite pupil, giving his own to the beautiful Blue Cornflower (_Centaurea Cyanus_). As a love-charm; as an herb-tea brewed by crones to cure divers ailments, from loss of hair to the ague; as an inducement to nosebleed for the relief of congestive headache; as an ingredient of an especially intoxicating beer made by the Swedes, it is mentioned in old books. Nowadays we are satisfied merely to admire the feathery masses of lace-like foliage formed by young plants, to whiff the wholesome, nutty, autumnal odor of its flowers, or to wonder at the marvellous scheme it employs to overrun the earth.
Dog’s or Foetid Camomile: Mayweed; Pig-sty Daisy; Dillweed; Dog-fennel
_Anthemis Cotula (Maruta Cotula)_
_Flower-heads_--Like smaller daisies, about 1 in. broad; 10 to 18 white, notched, neutral ray florets around a convex or conical yellow disk, whose florets are fertile, containing both stamens and pistil, their tubular corollas 5-cleft. _Stem:_ Smooth, much branched, 1 to 2 ft. high, leafy, with unpleasant odor and acrid taste. _Leaves:_ Very finely dissected into slender segments.
_Preferred Habitat_--Roadsides, dry waste land, sandy fields.
_Flowering Season_--June-November.
_Distribution_--Throughout North America, except in circumpolar regions.
“Naturalized from Europe, and widely distributed as a weed in Asia, Africa, and Australasia” (Britton and Brown’s “Flora”). Little wonder the camomile encompasses the earth, for it imitates the triumphant daisy, putting into practice those business methods of the modern department store, by which the composite horde have become the most successful strugglers for survival.
Dog, used as a prefix by several of the plant’s folk-names, implies contempt for its worthlessness. It is quite another species, the Garden Camomile (_A. nobilis_), which furnishes the apothecary with those flowers which, when steeped into a bitter, aromatic tea, have been supposed for generations to make a superior tonic and blood purifier.
Common Daisy; White-weed; White or Ox-eye Daisy; Marguerite; Love-me, Love-me-not
_Chrysanthemum Leucanthemum_
_Flower-heads_--Disk florets yellow, tubular, 4 or 5 toothed, containing stamens and pistil; surrounded by white ray florets, which are pistillate, fertile. _Stem:_ Smooth, rarely branched, 1 to 3 ft. high. _Leaves:_ Mostly oblong in outline, coarsely toothed and divided.
_Preferred Habitat_--Meadows, pastures, roadsides, waste land.
_Flowering Season_--May-November.
_Distribution_--Throughout the United States and Canada; not so common in the South and West.
Myriads and myriads of daisies, whitening our fields as if a belated blizzard had covered them with a snowy mantle in June, fill the farmer with dismay, the flower-lover with rapture. When vacation days have come; when chains and white-capped old women are to be made of daisies by happy children turned out of schoolrooms into meadows; when pretty maids, like Goethe’s Marguerite, tell their fortunes by the daisy “petals”; when music bubbles up in a cascade of ecstasy from the throats of bobolinks nesting among the daisies, timothy, and clover; when the blue sky arches over the fairest scenes the year can show, and all the world is full of sunshine and happy promises of fruition, must we Americans always go to English literature for a song to fit our joyous mood?
“When daisies pied, and violets blue, And lady-smocks all silver white, And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue, Do paint the meadows with delight--”
sang Shakespeare. His lovely suggestion of an English spring recalls no familiar picture to American minds. No more does Burns’s.
“Wee, modest, crimson-tippit flower.”
Shakespeare, Burns, Chaucer, Wordsworth, and all the British poets who have written familiar lines about the daisy, extolled a quite different flower from ours--_Bellis perennis_, the little pink and white blossom that hugs English turf as if it loved it--the true day’s-eye, for it closes at nightfall and opens with the dawn.