352 Field, Forest, and Wayside Flowers 



the unbotanical public the most familiar is the 

 daisy. Its yellow centre or disk is an assemblage 

 of little trumpet-shaped blossoms, set as close 

 together as possible. In a ring around this disk 

 we see what botanists call the ''ray-flowers," and 

 what non-botanists call the " white leaves" of the 

 daisy. On close examination these will be found 

 to be tiny florets with a pistil apiece, but with no 

 stamens, and with their white corollas split open 

 all down one side. So the daisy, which looks like 

 one flower, is really a close mass of very tiny blos- 

 soms. The cockle-bur, ragweed, sneezeweed, bur- 

 dock, and sow-thistle are all Compositae. So are 

 the groundsel and the bur-marigold. So is that 

 enemy to the western farmer and darling of the 

 patriotic Scot, the thistle. 



Each of the minute flower-clusters which are 

 massed together in a tuft of golden-rod is made 

 up after the daisy pattern, and proves, on exam- 

 ination, to be a head of disk-flowers surrounded 

 by an aureole of ray-flowers. Asters are clearly 

 seen to be arranged on the daisy plan. So is the 

 brown and yellow "cone-flower" or "black-eyed 

 Susan," and so are the sun-shaped things with 

 names beginning with " heli " which run riot over 

 the August landscape, as if earth had grown enam- 



