ERICxERON BELLIDIFOLIUM. 

 POOR ROBIN'S PLANTAIN. 



NATURAL ORDER, COMPOSIT/E. 



Erigeron BELLIDIFOLIUM, Muhlenberg. — Rays crowded and rather conspicuous; purplish. 

 Plant hoary-villous; stem simple and few-leaved; leaves spatulate and lance-oblong; heads 

 large, few, corymbose ; rays broadish. Perennial; stoloniferous. Stem nine to eighteen 

 inches high. Radical leaves one to three inches long, spatulate and obovate, contracted to 

 a margined petiole; stem leaves sub-serrate; the upper ones entire or denticulate, some- 

 what clasping. Heads of flowers two to three, or five (rarely seven or nine) in a loose 

 terminal corymb, — the lower peduncles axillary, long and flaccid; rays pale bluish-purple; 

 achenes smooth. (Darlington's Flora Cestrica. See also Gray's Flora of the Northern 

 United States, Chapman's Flora of the Southern United States, and Wood's Class- Book of 

 Botany. ) 



R. DARLINGTON, from whose work we have taken our 

 description, the drawnigs being made from a Pennsyl- 

 vania plant growing near to where he wrote, gives " Flea-bane" as 

 one of the common names of the genus, and so do most of our 

 Botanical Text-books ; while some authors speak of our plant as 

 the " Daisy-leaved " and "Early-flowering" Flea-bane. The plant, 

 however, has very little relation to the true Flea-bane; and in 

 examining the reasons for the appellation, we learn a valuable 

 lesson as to the making and perpetuation of errors, when the 

 care to be strictly accurate which we endeavor to exercise in 

 preparing " The Native Flowers and Ferns " is not taken. 

 Green tells us that the name of Blue Flea-bane was unfortu- 

 nately given to the Erigcroii acre by " some English botanists, 

 which thus tends to conf6und it with Conyza." And of Conyza 

 sqitamosa the old herbalists say, "the juice of the whole plant 

 cures the itch, by external application, and the very smell of 

 the herb is said to destroy fleas." Both of these are luiropean 



