DAISY FLEABANE 



Travelling across country in summer, one often 

 sees entire fields covered with a white mist of flowers. 

 The plant that produces this snowy mist may be one 

 of three: the Ox-Eye Daisy, the Daisy Fleabane, or 

 the Wild Carrot. If the flower is of the Daisy type, 

 but large with yellow centre and long white rays, it 

 is the Ox-Eye Daisy. If it is still the Daisy type but 

 small, with small yellow disk and many 

 short, narrow, white or pinkish rays, it 

 is the Fleabane. If the flower is neither 

 of these, but a symmetric flat-topped 

 cluster, three inches across, made up of 

 tiny white flowers arranged in wheels, 

 it is the Wild Carrot. In our climate 

 it must be one of the three, there are 

 no others. 



The Daisy Fleabane when in full 

 possession of the field rises gaunt and 

 stiff on a simple, erect stalk, which 

 branches at the top into a loose, long- 

 stemmed cluster of small Aster-like flowers. In the 

 Middle West these flowers are at their height of beauty 

 in July, but in the uplands of New England they are 

 beautiful and abundant in August, and often strike 

 hands and meet the real Aster in September. 



The flower-head of the Daisy Fleabane can be 

 very easily distinguished from an Aster. The rays, 

 white or pink, vary in number from fifty to eighty, 

 and are so narrow that they look like fringe; the 

 florets of the central disk bloom in circles from circum- 

 ference to centre, and when all have opened the rays 

 collapse. The Daisy Fleabane makes most of the 

 family show in July but there may be, and probably 



239 



Daisy Fleabane. 

 Erigeron dnnuus 



