530 THE THISTLE FAMILY. 



Style branches : long; thread-like; pubescent. Achenes : iQ\xx-2i\\^t^. Pappus : oi 

 linear scales. Leaves: alternate, or the lower ones opposite; lanceolate; entire; 

 rather rough. Stems : one to two feet, branched above; smooth. 



Hardly among the composites do we find sprays of florets more softly 

 dainty and sweet than these. The first of them that I ever saw grew near 

 Jacksonville in sandy ground bordering marshes where many small palms 

 were scattered like stepping stones. A number of small pink hibiscus were 

 blossoming near by, but the more constant companion of Polypteris was 

 Carphephorus corymbosus. From the way the plant's slender stem is 

 branched above, it was able to spread its flowers widely, and so through the 

 other denser clumps of pinkish lavender the Polypteris sprays pushed their 

 way, sometimes closing snugly about their rivals. The natives there seemed 

 neither to know nor to care about either of these showy plants. All their 

 attention was directed to the hound's-tongue, Trilissa odoratissima, which 

 also was then abundantly in bloom. 



FINE=LEAVED SNEEZEWEED. 



Helhiitwi tefi iiifblhim . 



FAMILY COLOUR ODOUR RANGE TIME OF BLOOM 



Thistle. Yeltozu. Scentless. Missouri and Florida to Virginia. August-October. 



Flmver-heads : numerous ; growing on slender peduncles in terminal corymbs 

 and composed of both tubular and radiate flowers. Rays : four to eight, fertile, 

 broadly wedge-shaped, squared, and three to four-toothed at their apices, drooping. 

 Disk: globose; high; the flowers perfect; with corollas four or five-toothed, 

 greenish yellow. Involucre: with few linear bracts, soon becoming reflexed. 

 Leaves: alternate; linear-filiform, sessile, pale green. Stem : six inches to two 

 feet high, much branched, slender, leafy, mostly glabrous. 



The little sneezeweeds, or false sunflowers, as those of this genus are 

 familiarly called, are readily known because they have their disk flowers 

 raised in rounded heads. In this they are somewhat like the Rudbeckias, 

 but even as though to show off this peculiarity their ray flowers have a 

 drooping habit. Among them all, and in the autumn they arc rather con- 

 spicuous, the fine-leaved sneezeweed is distinctive in its most abundant and 

 fine, needle-like foliage. The group of plants is among those known to be 

 poisonous to stock. Cows, in fact, have a fatal way of cultivating a taste 

 for them, much to the regret of those that drink the milk rendered very bitter 

 thereby. In a powdered form these plants are used in medicine for the 

 purpose of producing sneezing, a practice of which their common name is 

 an outcome. 



H. brevifbliuin, sneezeweed, an unusually pretty one of these plants, 

 grows in an erect, usually unbranched way and bears mostly terminal, sol- 

 itary flower-heads, quite large and showy. On the stem its lanceolate and 



