COMPOSITAE (COMPOSITE FAMILY) 



501 



COLTSFOOT 



Tussilago Fdrfara, L. 



Other English names: Coughwort, Ginger Root, Clay weed, Dove- 

 dock, Horsehoof, Foalfoot. 



Introduced. Perennial. Propagates by seeds and by rootstocks. 



Time of bloom : Early April to June. 



Seed-time: May to July. 



Range: Nova Scotia to Minnesota, southward to Pennsylvania 'and 

 Ohio. 



Habitat : Moist clay soil ; thin pastures, alluvial banks, along 

 brooks and roadsides. 



Scapes slender, springing from thick succulent rootstocks and 

 appearing before the leaves, at first but a few inches high, bearing 

 reddish scales that are slightly white- 

 woolly, and holding erect a single flower- 

 head about an inch broad, golden yellow ; 

 the flowers have the odor of honey and 

 the pollen furnishes bees with early prov- 

 ender. Ray-florets in several rows, 

 pistillate and fertile; disk-florets perfect 

 but sterile, the corolla tubular and five- 

 cleft ; after a head has been fertilized the 

 stalk rapidly elongates to a foot or more 

 in height, and the head is so bowed that 

 it is protected from rain by the bell- 

 shaped involucre until the achenes have 

 formed, when it is again erected and 

 opens out a ball of downy pappus, whiter 

 and more floss-like than that of the dan- 

 delion. Near the end of the flowering 

 season the leaves appear, rising from the 

 rootstocks, nearly round, heart-shaped at 

 base, slightly lobed and toothed, thick, 

 smooth, and dark green above but white- 

 woolly underneath, with petioles about as long as the blades ; 

 they continue to grow all summer, becoming often six or eight 

 inches broad. (Fig. 348.) 



FIG. 348. Coltsfoot 

 (Tussilago Far far a). X i. 



