COMPOSITE. (COMPOSITE FAMILY.) 269 



59. ANTENNARIA, Gartn. EVERLASTING. 



Heads many-flowered, dioecious or nearly so ; the flowers all tubular : pistil- 

 late corollas very slender. Scales of the involucre dry and scarious, white or 

 colored, imbricated. Receptacle convex or flat, not chaffy. Pappus a single 

 row of bristles, in the fertile flowers capillary, and in the sterile thickened and 

 club-shaped or barbellate at the summit. Perennial white-woolly herbs, with 

 entire leaves and corymbed (rarely single) heads. Corolla yellowish. (Name 

 from the resemblance of the sterile pappus to the antennce of certain insects.) 



1. A. margaritacea, R. Brown. (PEARLY EVERLASTING. Stem erect 

 (l-2 high), corymbose at the summit, with many heads, leafy ; leaves linear- 

 lanceolate, taper-pointed, sessile ; fertile heads often with a few imperfect stami- 

 nate flowers in the centre ; scales of the pearly-white involucre obtuse or rounded. 

 Dry hills and woods ; common northward. Aug. 



2. A. plantaginif61ia, Hook. (PLANTAIN-LEAVED EVERLASTING.) 

 Spreading by 'offsets and runners, low (4' -10' high) ; leaves silky-woolly when 

 young, at length green above and hoary beneath ; those of the simple and scape- 

 like flowering stems small, lanceolate, appressed ; the radical obovate or oval- 

 spatulate, petioled, ample, 3-nerved ; heads in a small crowded corymb ; scales 

 of the (mostly white) involucre obtuse in the sterile, and acutish and narrower 

 in the fertile plant. Var. MONOCEPHALA is an occasional state, with a single 

 larger head. Sterile knolls and banks : common. March- May. 



60. FIL A GO, Tourn. COTTON-ROSE. 



Heads many-flowered ; the flowers all tubular, the central ones perfect, but 

 often infertile ; the others pistillate, very slender and thread-form. Scales of 

 the involucre few and woolly. Receptacle elongated or top-shaped, naked at the 

 summit, but chaffy at the margins or toward the base ; the chaff resembling the 

 proper involucral scales, each covering a single pistillate flower. Pappus of 

 the central flowers capillary, of the outer ones mostly none. Annual, low, 

 branching woolly herbs, with entire leaves, and small heads in capitate clusters. 

 (Name fromJUum, a thread, in allusion to the cottony hairs of these plants.) 



1. F. GERMANICA, L. (HERBA IMPIA.) Stem erect, short, clothed with 

 lanceolate and upright crowded leaves, producing a capitate cluster of woolly 

 heads, from which rise one or more branches, each terminated by a similar 

 head, and so on : hence the common name applied to it by the old botanists, 

 as if the offspring were undutifully exalting themselves above the parent. 

 Dry fields, New York to Virginia. July - Oct. (Nat. from Eu. ) 



61. ERECHTHITES, Raf. . FIREWEED. 



Heads many-flowered ; the flowers all tubular and fertile ; the marginal pis- 

 tillate, with a slender corolla. Scales of the cylindrical involucre in a single 

 row, linear, acute, with a few small bractlets at the base. Receptacle naked. 

 Achenia oblong, tapering at the end. Pappus copious, of very fine and white 

 soft hairs. Erect and coarse annuals, of rank smell, with alternate simple 

 leaves, and paniculate-corymbed heads of whitish flowers. (The ancient name 

 of some species' of Groundsel, probably called after Erechiheus.) 



