WILD FLOWERS OF NEW YORK 287 



flowers. The showiness gained by massing the small flowers together 

 serves as an added attraction to insects. 



The Compositae contain many cultivated plants, including ornamental 

 species. The Asters, Chrysanthemums, Pyrethrams, Gaillardias, Helen- 

 iums, Helianthus (Sunflowers), Rudbeckias (Coneflowers), Dahlias and 

 many others are some of the common and highly ornamental species. 



Beach Clotbur 



Xanthium echinatum Murray 



Plate 2i3b 



An annual, coarse, rough herb of seashores and river beaches, with 

 rough, purplish or blotched stems, i to 2 feet high. Leaves alternate, 

 tough, coarse, very rough with scattered, short, papillose hairs and obscurely 

 toothed and more or less lobed. Inflorescence rather small, consisting of 

 heads of greenish discoid flowers, the staminate ones clustered in heads at 

 the ends of the branches, the pistillate or fertile flowers axillary in the upper 

 leaves. Flowers of the staminate heads with tubular corollas; the pistillate 

 heads consisting of an ovoid or oblong closed involucre covered with hooked 

 spines, with no corolla or pappus. Fruit a prickly bur, usually several 

 clustered in the axils of the leaves, ovoid to oval, one-half to two- thirds of 

 an inch long and one-third to one-half of an inch thick, covered with hooked 

 prickles, and densely hairy with reddish hairs, the summit of the bur bearing 

 two stout, hispid, incurving clawlike beaks, the interior of the bur two- 

 celled, each cavity containing one obovoid or oblong achene. 



On sea beaches, lake and river shores, and occasionally in waste 

 ground, Nova Scotia to North Carolina, west to Minnesota and North 

 Dakota. In New York found mainly in sandy soil and on beaches of 

 Long Island and Staten Island, the Great Lakes and a few inland localities. 

 Flowers appear in July and August and the bur is ripe in September or 

 October. 



The Common Cocklebur or Clotbur (Xanthium canadense 

 Miller) is a common weed almost everywhere. It resembles the one illus- 



