Addisonia 45 



(Plate 215) 

 HELICHRYSUM BRACTEATUM 



Strawflower 



Native of Australia 

 Family CarduacSae Thistls Family 



Xeranthemmn bradeatum Andr. Bot. Repos. pi. 375. 1804. 

 Helichrysum bracteatwn Willd. Enum. Hort. Berol. 869. 1809. 



Of the many everlasting flowers or immortelles of horticulture, 

 some natural, others artificial, the most important, to the gardener 

 at least, belong to the thistle family. Various genera have contrib- 

 uted straw-like blooms, among them Helipterum, Ammohium, and 

 Xeranthemum; but Helichrysum, especially the present species, is 

 the best for our gardens. Here we have good-sized blooms with 

 some half-dozen rows of shiny, vari-colored, bracts making up the 

 greater part of the flower-head, and of such lasting quality as to 

 keep well if cut and kept dry. 



This now common annual was introduced from Western Australia 

 into European gardens about 1799. It is of vigorous growth, 

 branching habit, and long blooming- period; produces seed freely; is 

 free-flowering, with a wide range of coloring; and is adapted to the 

 hot summers of our climate. Our illustration is from plants in the 

 flower borders of the New York Botanical Garden, where they 

 bloom each year from seed. 



The strawflower in an annual herb growing to a height of nearly 

 four feet, with leafy, glabrous or slightly hairy stems, branching 

 towards their summits. The linear to lanceolate leaves are up to 

 seven inches long, alternate, and sessile, or tending to clasp the stem. 

 The flower-heads are terminal and are made up of two kinds of 

 flowers in a yellow disk surrounded by many involucral bracts; the 

 outer flowers are pistillate, the inner ones in addition to the pistils 

 have stamens inserted near the base of the five-lobed corolla. The 

 broad chaff'y involucral bracts, which are the most conspicuous 

 feature of the flower-head, are in several series, the outer ones short 

 and triangular, the middle longer and oval, the inner narrower and 

 sharp-pointed; erect during the flowering period, they become re- 

 flexed as the fruiting stage is reached. The achenes are smooth, 

 cyUndric, curved, and bear at their summits about twenty to thirty 

 plumy bristles. 



Kenneth R. Boynton. 



Explanation op Plate. Fig. 1. — Flowering stem. Fig. 2. — Disk-flowers 

 X 2. Fig. 3.— Fruit, X 2. 



