Minnesota Plant Life. 



403 



The sow-thistles have small, yellow dandelion-like flower- 

 heads, arranged in panicles or in flat-topped clusters. The 

 pappus, as in thistles, stands in a tuft on the top of the nutlet. 

 The meadow salsify has flowers and fruits very much like those 



of the dandelion, but the leaves are 

 all more grass-like in appearance. 

 The autimin dandelion has a few 

 leaves clustered about the base of a 

 rather slender, erect stem, at the end 

 of which a dandelion-like flower is 

 borne. The fruit is slender and the 

 pappus-bristles are brownish in color 

 and on close observation are 

 seen to be like little feathers. 

 The dwarf dandelion has gen- 

 erally two kinds of pappus 

 bristles, an outer row of short 

 brown scale-like bristles and 

 ^.an inner row of slender, erect, 

 stiff, barbed bristles. The 

 hawk's-beards, with flowers 

 decidedly similar to those of the dan- 

 delion, have a copious pappus of slen- 

 der bristles, arising in a spreading tuft 

 from the top of a many-furrowed fruit. 

 The closely related hawkweeds can 

 scarcely be distinguished by any but 

 very minute characters. The wild 

 lettuces look much like some of the 

 hawkweeds, but the flowers are more 

 often blue than yellow. The prickly 

 Fig. 196. Wild lettuce, a compass- lettuce, a compass-phiut , may be dis- 



plant; the fruits stand in heads, _ . 1 • 1 



and each fruit is provided with tinguishcd frOm the SOW-tllistle, whicll 



Atkinson"*"^ ^ ''"^^ ^'^ ^ "^^"^ Jt souiewhat resembles, by the dande- 

 lion-like fruits, with the pappus ele- 

 vated above the tip of the nutlet on a slender prolongation of 

 the calyx. Its leaves are prickly, and those on the stem may 

 twist so that their edges point up and down. The whole plant 

 is generally flattened by the twisting of its leaves, and the ends 



