AddisoniA 23 



(Plate 132) 



EUPATORIUM MACULATUM 

 Spotted Joe-pye Weed 



Native oj northeastern North America 

 Family Carduaceae; Thistle Family 



Eupatorium maculatum L. Cent. PI. 1: 27. 1755. 

 Eupatorium purpureum maculatum Dad. Fl. Cest. 453. 1837. 



A stout erect leafy perennial two to six feet high. The stem is 

 solid, terete, strongly purplish tinged, and more or less sulcate; 

 it is thickly spotted with dark purple linear markings, and is 

 glandular-pulverulent below and glandular-pubescent in the in- 

 florescence. The leaves below the inflorescence are in whorls of 

 three or four and there are a very considerable number of these 

 whorls ; the leaves are ovate or ovate-lanceolate, three to nine inches 

 long and two to three inches wide ; they are sharply doubly serrate, 

 acute or acuminate at the apex and tapering at the base to the 

 rather short petiole; they are thickish, with very prominent veins 

 on both sides, smooth or nearly so above, and glandular and more 

 or less pubescent beneath. The heads of flowers are very numerous 

 in a terminal more or less elongate cyme and are on short slender 

 pedicels. The involucres are oblong-cylindric, and about four or 

 five lines long; the scales are imbricate in four or five rows, and 

 strongly tinged with reddish purple; they are narrowly oblong, 

 obtuse, thin, and slenderly few-nerved; each involucre contains 

 some six to eight similar Howers, the upper portions of which some- 

 what exceed the involucre. The pappus is white, not very copious 

 and sparingly barbed upwards under a microscope. The corollas 

 are purplish tinged and the lobes are erect or but little spreading 

 and are somewhat shorter than the anthers. The styles are purple, 

 elongate and very slender. The achenes are very slender, one 

 quarter to one third of an inch long, angular, resinous-dotted, and 

 tapering at the base to a sharp point. 



The joe-pye weeds with their very numerous purple flowers occur 

 in great abundance in the northeastern part of North America. 

 Around New York they furnish a very considerable share of the 

 brighter coloring of our swamps and woods in late summer and 

 autumn. The species here illustrated is the most conspicuous one 

 of all, not only on account of its bright red-purple heads, but also 

 because it grows in such wonderful luxuriance in the open swamps. 

 It is a conspicuous plant in the vegetation of the north meadow 

 in the New York Botanical Garden; it was from a specimen obtained 



