COMPOSITE. (COMPOSITE FAMILY.) 229 



•59. AXTENNABIA, Gaertn. Everlasting. 



Heads man /-flowered, dioecious or nearly so ; the flowers all tubular : pistil- 

 late corollas very slender. Scales of the involucre dry and scarious, white or col- 

 ored, imbricated. Receptacle convex or flat, not chaffy. Pappus a single row 

 of bristles, which in the fertile flowers are capillary, and in the sterile thickened 

 and club-shaped or barbellatc at the summit. — Perennial white-woolly herbs, 

 with entire leaves and coiymbed (rarely single) heads. Corolla yellowish. 

 (So named from the resemblance of the sterile pappus to the antennoz of many 

 insects.) 



1. A. margaritacea, R. Brown. (Pearly Everlasting.) Stem 

 erect (1°- 2° high), corymbose at the summit, with many heads, leafy; leaves 

 linear-lanceolate, taper-pointed, sessile ; fertile heads often with a few imperfect 

 staminate flowers in the centre ; scales of the pearly-white involucre obtuse or 

 rounded. — Dry hills and woods ; common northward. Aug. 



2. A. plaatag^Biifdlia, Hook. (Plantain-leaved Everlasting.) 



Spreading by offsets and runners, low (4' -10' high) ; leaves silky-woolly when 

 young, at length green above and hoary beneath ; those of the simple and scape- 

 like flowering stems small, lanceolate, appressed ; the radical obovatc or oval- 

 spatulate, pctioled, ample. 3-nerved ; heads in a small crowded corymb ; scales 

 of the (mostly white) involucre obtuse in the sterile, and acutish and narrower 

 in the fertile plant. — Var. monocephala has a single larger head. (Phila- 

 delphia, Mr. Lea.) — Sterile knolls and banks, common. March -May. 



60. FILAGO, Tourn. Cotton-Rose. 



Heads many-flowered ; the flowers all tubular, the central ones perfect, but 

 often infertile ; the others pistillate, very slender and thread-form. Scales of the 

 involucre few and woolly. Receptacle elongated or top-shaped, naked at the 

 summit, but chaffy at the margins or toward the base ; the chaff resembling the 

 proper involucral scales, each covering a single pistillate flower. — Pappus of the 

 central flowers capillary, of the outer ones chiefly none. — Annual, low, branch- 

 ing woolly herbs, with entire leaves and small heads in capitate clusters. (Name 

 (rom fllitm, a thread, in allusion to the cottony hairs of these plants.) 



1. F. Germanica, L. (Herba Impia.) Stem erect, short, clothed with 

 lanceolate and upright crowded leaves, producing a capitate cluster of woolly 

 heads, from which rise one or more branches, each terminated by a similar head, 

 and so on : — hence the common name applied to it by the old botanists, as if 

 the offspring were undutifully exalting themselves above the parent. — Dry 

 fields, New York to Virginia. July- Oct. (Nat. from Eu.) 



61. ERECHTHITES, Raf. Fireweed. 



Heads many-flowered ; the flowers all tubular and fertile ; tho marginal pia 

 tillate, with a slender corolla. Scales of the cylindrical involucre in a single 

 row, linear, acute, with a few small bractlets at the base. Receptacle naked. 

 Achenia oblong, tapering at the end. Pappus copious, of very fine and white 



