North America, from South-West Illinois and Missouri to 
Louisiana. The Kew plant was communicated by Professor 
Sargent from the Harvard University (U.S.) Botanical 
Garden in 1878. It is perfectly hardy at Kew, and grows 
much taller than any native specimens that I have seen, 
but the heads are more scattered. It flowers throughout 
October. 
Descr. A tall, branching, erect, herbaceous perennial, 
attaining five feet in cultivation, with stems as thick as a 
swan’s quill, puberulous, terete, striate, leafy all the way 
up, and terminating in a profusion of panicled racemes of 
secund small heads. Leaves three to four inches long, 
shortly petioled, elliptic, acute at both ends, sharply serrate, 
three-nerved from a considerable way above the base, 
puberulous on both surfaces, bright green ; upper gradually 
smaller, more ovate, entire or serrulate, uppermost (amongst 
the heads) small, one-third to one-half of an inch long, 
variable, elliptic oblong or ovate, obtuse or acute, quite 
entire. Heads one-third of an inch long, few-flowered; 
involucre cylindric, of erect linear-oblong nearly glabrous 
green bracts. ay-flowers five or six, deeply three-toothed ; 
disk-flowers rather more numerous. Achenes puberulous; 
pappus scanty.—J. D. H. : 
Fig. 1, Ray-flower; 2, disk-flower; 3, hairs of pappus; 4, style-arms of ray- 
flower; 5, stamens of disk- flower ; 6, stigma of ditto :—all enlarged. 
