Addisonia 43 



(Plate 102) 



SOLIDAGO SQUARROSA 

 Ragged Goldenrod 



Southeastern Canada and eastern United States. 

 Family Carduac^ae; Thistle Family 



Solidago squarrosa Muhl. Cat. 76. 1813. 



Solidago confertiflora Nutt. Jour. Acad. Phila. 7: 102. 1834. 



A perennial plant with a radiculose stout rootstock. The stem is 

 erect, five feet tall or less, pale or more often tinged with red or 

 purple, finely and often copiously pubescent, glabrate and terete or 

 nearly so below, permanently pubescent and ridged above, simple 

 below the inflorescence, or individually or exceptionally branched. 

 The leaves are alternate, and rather conspicuous. The blades are 

 various, thickish, deep green above, paler and finely lined beneath, 

 finely pubescent on the principal veins, especially beneath, and 

 ciliate; those of the basal and lower cauline leaves obovate, oval, 

 elliptic, or ovate, narrowed into petiole-like bases, with stouter 

 midribs of equal length or shorter, coarsely, often doubly or ir- 

 regularly, serrate; those of the upper cauline leaves much smaller 

 than those of the lower, oblanceolate, elliptic, or lanceolate, mostly 

 acute or short-acuminate, shallowly toothed or entire, narrowed into 

 short petiole-like bases or sessile; those of the inflorescence (bracts 

 subtending the panicle-branches) much reduced. The heads are 

 few or several together, on short ascending approximate or distant 

 branches which form a terminal elongate thyrsus. The involucres 

 are campanulate, about a third of an inch long. The bracts of the 

 involucre are in several series, decidedly imbricate; the outer ones 

 are ovate to lanceolate, acute or obtuse ; the inner narrowly elliptic 

 to linear-elhptic, or slightly broadened upward, or nearly linear, 

 obtuse; all with spreading or recurved green tips, ciliolate, the ex- 

 posed parts more or less pubescent. The ray-flowers are conspicu- 

 ous, nine to sixteen in number, with yellow elliptic ligules a sixth of 

 an inch long or more. The disk-flowers are numerous, with yellow 

 5-lobed corollas about one fourth of an inch long divided into a 

 cylindric tube, a larger narrowly funnelform throat and the lobes; 

 the lobes are ovate or ovate-lanceolate, thick-margined. The 

 anthers are whitish, united in a ring, with lanceolate tips, each sac 

 acuminate at the base. The filaments are slender-filiform, as long 

 as the anthers or longer. The hypanthium is glabrous, longitudi- 

 nally striate. The style is filiform, glabrous. The stigmas are 

 subulate or lanceolate-subulate. The achene is ribbed, glabrous, 

 narrowed at the base, more or less contracted at the apex. The 

 pappus consists of numerous white or nearly white bristles several 

 times as long as the achene. 



