Yellow to Orange Flowers 357 



GOLDEN RAGWORT 



Senecio Balsamita. Composite Family 



Perennial, often tufted. Stems: slender, woolly at the base and in the 

 axils of the lower leaves. Leaves: basal ones slender-petioled, oblong, 

 very obtuse, crenate; stem-leaves pinnatifid, sessile, small. Flowers: in 

 corymbose many-flowered heads of both tubular and ray-flowers. 



This is a very common plant in the mountains. It has 

 bright yellow flowers, which when in seed resemble small 

 thistles. The rich loose clusters of the Golden Ragwort 

 grow to an average height of eighteen inches. The basal 

 leaves have long stalks and are rounded or oblong, with 

 scalloped edges, while the stem-leaves are long, narrow, and 

 slender, and very deeply cut. The name Senecio is from 

 senex, " an old man," and refers to the hoary-headed ap- 

 pearance of the plant when in seed, which is supposed to re- 

 semble the silky while hair of the patriarch. 



Different species of Ragworts are quite numerous at high 

 altitudes. They all have yellow flowers of various hues, 

 shading from primrose to amber and orange ; but the Golden 

 Ragwort is the most abundant of them all. It is principally 

 by their widely diverse foliage that the Senecios must be 

 distinguished. 



So bright and gay are these flowers, and all their fellows 

 of golden mean, that we are compelled to wonder what 

 caused Wordsworth, gentlest of poets and truest of Nature 

 lovers, to write : 



"111 befall the yellow flowers, 

 Children of the flaring hours." 



What would the meadows be without the Dandelions, the 

 Sunflowers, the Golden-rods, and the Arnicas? The land 

 would lose much of its charm in Autumn did not these bril- 



