Wild Flowers East of the Rockies 377 



BEGGAR-TICKS; STICK-TIGHT (Bidens frondosa) 



is a plant familiar, to their sorrow, to all who roam 

 the woods and fields during Fall. Who has not had 

 the pleasant task of sitting down and, one by one, re- 

 moving the little two-hooked, black seeds that hang 

 so closely to clothing. These little hooked seedpods 

 are not designed for the adornment of the plant, nor 

 for the purpose of annoying human beings, but serve 

 a very important purpose, just like the plumed seeds 

 of the milkweed, but they travel in a different man- 

 ner. Of course they were originally designed to be 

 carried from place to place on the hairy coats of our 

 wild animals but man often serves their purpose even 

 better than beasts. 



Beggar-ticks, in appearance, is an uninteresting 

 weed common everywhere in moist ground or along 

 roadsides. The stem is very branching and is from 

 1 to 8 feet tall. The leaves are compounded of three 

 to five, sharply toothed, lance-shaped leaflets. The 

 flower heads are composed of tubular brownish-yellow 

 florets, sometimes with no surrounding rays and again 

 with a few, tiny, short ones. 



LARGER BUR-MARIGOLD; BROOK SUNFLOW- 

 ER (Bidens laevis) is a very attractive species while 

 it is in flower, but later, after the little seeds have 

 formed, it has the same disagreeable traits common 

 to all the members of the genus; the seeds have the 

 same two little teeth (bidens) and stick just as close- 

 ly as those of their more homely relatives. The flow- 

 ers of this species are 1 to 2 in. across, having 8 or 

 10 large, yellow, neutral rays surrounding the dull- 

 colored disc florets. The stem is slender and branch- 

 ing, the leaves lance-shaped and toothed. Common in 

 swamps and along brooks. 



