White and Greenish 



Dog's or Fetid Camomile; Mayweed; Pig-sty 

 Daisy; Dillweed ; Dog-fennel 



{Anthemis Cotula) Thistle family 



(Maruta Cotula of Gray) 



Flower-heads — Like smaller daisies, about i in. broad; 10 to 18 

 white, notched, neutral ray florets around a convex or 

 conical yellow disk, whose florets are fertile, containing both 

 stamens and pistil, their tubular corollas 5-cleft. Stein: 

 Smooth, much branched, 1 to 2 ft. high, leafy, with un- 

 pleasant odor and acrid taste. Leaves : Very finely dissected 

 into slender segments. 



Preferred Habitat — Roadsides, dry waste land, sandy fields. 



Flowering Season — J u n e — N o v e m be r. 



Distribution — Throughout North America, except in circum polar 

 regions. 



" Naturalized from Europe, and widely distributed as a weed 

 in Asia, Africa, and Australasia" (Britton and Brown's "Flora"). 

 Little wonder the camomile encompasses the earth, for it imitates 

 the triumphant daisy, putting into practice those business methods 

 of the modern department store, by which the composite horde 

 have become the most successful strugglers for survival. 



The unpleasant odor given forth by this bushy little plant 

 repels bees and other highly organized insects; not so flies, 

 which, far from objecting to a fetid smell, are rather attracted by 

 it. They visit the camomile in such numbers as to be the chief 

 fertilizers. As the development of bloom proceeds toward the 

 centre, the disk becomes conical, to present the newly opened 

 florets, where a fly alighting on it must receive pollen, to be trans- 

 ferred as he crawls and flies to another head. After fertilization 

 the white rays droop. Dog, used as a prefix by several of the 

 plant's folk names, implies contempt for its worthlessness. It is 

 quite another species, the Garden Camomile {A. nobilis), which 

 furnishes the apothecary with those flowers which, when steeped 

 into a bitter aromatic tea, have been supposed for generations to 

 make a superior tonic and blood purifier. 



Not so common a plant here, but almost as widespread as 

 the preceding species, is the similar, but not fetid, Corn or Field 

 Camomile {A. arvensis), a pest to European farmers. Both are 

 closely related to the garden Feverfew, Featherfew, or Pellitory 

 {Chrysanthemum Parthenium), which escapes from cultivation 

 whenever it can into waste fields and roadsides. 



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