ERIGERON. 
of them carrying a single fine flower of pure pale-yellow, broad and 
short in the ray. 
E. macranthus is a leafy thing from 2 to 3 feet high, with heads of 
blossoms not so large as its boastful name would import, but remark- 
ably abounding in the number of their lilac rays. This is also known as 
E. salicinus and E. platypnyllus, an embarras du choix for a plant so 
little pre-eminent in beauty. 
E. melanocephalus may be found in moist places and parks. of 
Colorado and Wyoming—sending up from its clumped clusters of 
elliptic-oblong narrow leaves several stems of some 2 to 6 inches in 
height, each terminated by one large and ample violet blossom about 
an inch and a half wide. The plant may always be known by the 
dense black wool in which the cup of the flower-head is wrapped. 
E. “mesa grande speciosus’’ is usually advertised as an Aster; 
under this congeries of names lurks a very obscure but handsome 
Erigeron, with leafy stems of 3 feet high, and abundant sprays of large 
violet Asters from June to August—a beauty of much brilliancy and 
value for bed or border. 
E. mucronatus= Vittadenia triloba, q.v. 
E. philadelphicus has no value—a running species with the usual 
leafy stems that so often spoil the effect of the bloom in Erigeron ; 
and here the pinkish flowers are smallish into the bargain, and poor- 
rayed as so many of the European Erigerons. ; 
E. pinnatisectus, however, is a beautiful high-alpme. The leaves 
of the basal tuft are slashed into nine or ten lobes, which in turn are 
sometimes themselves more or less cloven again into quite a ferny 
and plumed effect. These tufts are grey, downy at first, tending to 
grow more smooth; and the stems are few, 4 to 8 inches high, each 
stem carrying a single large violet-purple Marguerite about an inch 
and a half across. 
E. poliospermum forms a crowded matted tuft of hairy fringed 
leaves about 2 inches long (especially hairy on their stalks), crowded 
upon the crowns, from which are sent up a large number of practically 
leafless stems of 2 inches or half a foot, each carrying a single portly 
purple flower. 
E. pulchellus has the whole aspect and habit and flower of Aster 
alpinus, but here the flower-stems are not bare, but set with a few 
leaves that do not however continue near the flower-head. Moreover, 
the stems, though usually one-flowered, can enlarge their capacities 
to the production of three, or even as many as nine—wide suns 
of pale purple, with about fifteen rays to the bloom. The plant 
throws offsets, and its hairy (sometimes stickyish) leaves are 
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