COMPOSITE FAMILY 



late, fertile. Disk-florets densely packed on a conical 

 torus pinkish at base, but purple-brown at tips. Anthers 

 and stigmas are also brown, but the pollen is brilliant 

 orange and abundant. Bracts of involucre are long, 

 narrow, and hairy. No pappus. 



Pollinated by flies, bees, and butterflies. 



Black-Eyed Susan is oftener found growing in 

 clumps over the fence in the meadow than by the 

 roadside; the superb color of its flower-heads calls 

 from afar. In blossoming the ray-florets spread 

 out first, then the disk-florets around the base of the 

 floral cone open and push out their yellow pollen 

 through and over the brown tube of the anthers, and 

 day by day the blossoming circle creeps upward until 

 it reaches the top, then when the last honey-call to 

 bee and butterfly has been given, the rays, their work 

 completed, weaken and collapse and the end has come. 



There is no pappus and consequently no balloon 

 attachment, the seeds must scatter as they can. 

 They are often found in western hay shipped east, 

 for the plant is native to western sunny fields and 

 has wandered eastward by way of commerce. 



Later in the season the Tall Rudbeckia, Rudheckia 

 lacinidta, appears. It is no lover of hot, sunny fields, 

 as is Black-Eyed Susan, but dwells in moist thickets 

 such as border swamps and streams. This is a smooth, 

 branching plant, varying from three to ten feet high, 

 its great lower leaves on long petioles have from three 

 to seven, variously lobed and toothed, divisions, while 

 the stem leaves are irregularly three to five-parted. 

 The many showy flower-heads measure from two 

 to four inches across, have eight to ten large, bright 

 yellow ray-florets, drooping a little around a dull 



248 



