Yellow and Orange 



Orange or Tawny Hawkweed ; Golden Mouse- 

 ear Hawkweed; Devil's Paint-brush 



(Hieracium aurantiacum) Chicory family 



Flower-heads Reddish orange ; i in. across or less, the 5-toothed 

 rays overlapping in several series ; several heads on short 

 peduncles in a terminal cluster. Stem: Usually leafless, or 

 with i to 2 small sessile leaves ; 6 to 20 in. high, slender, 

 hairy, from a tuft of hairy, spatulate, or oblong leaves at the 

 base. 



Preferred Habitat Fields, woods, roadsides, dry places. 



Flowering Season June September. 



Distribution Pennsylvania and Middle States northward into 

 British Possessions. 



Peculiar reddish-orange disks, similar in shade to the butter- 

 fly weed's umbels, attract our eyes no less than those of the bees, 

 flies, and butterflies for whom such splendor was designed. After 

 cross-fertilization has been effected, chiefly through the agency of 

 the smaller bees, a single row of slender, brownish, persistent 

 bristles attached to the seeds transforms the head into the "devil's 

 paint-brush." Another popular title in England, from whence the 

 plant originally came, is Grimm the Collier. All the plants in this 

 genus take their name from hierax = a hawk, because people in 

 the old country once thought that birds of prey swooped earth- 

 ward to sharpen their eyesight with leaves of the hawkweed, 

 hawkbit, or speerhawk, as they are variously called. Transplanted 

 into the garden, the orange hawkweed forms a spreading mass of 

 unusual, splendid color. 







The Rattlesnake-weed, Early or Vein-leaf Hawkweed, Snake 

 or Poor Robin's Plantain (H. venosum), with flower-heads only 

 about half an inch across, sends up a smooth, slender stem, pan- 

 iculately branched above, to display the numerous dandelion- 

 yellow disks as early as May, although October is not too late to 

 find this generous bloomer in pine woodlands, dry thickets, and 

 sandy soil. Purplish-veined oval leaves, more or less hairy, that 

 spread in a tuft next the ground, are probably as efficacious in 

 curing snake bites as those of the rattlesnake plantain (see p. 168). 

 When a credulous generation believed that the Creator had indi- 

 cated with some sign on each plant the special use for which each 

 was intended, many leaves were found to have veinings suggest- 

 ing the marks on a snake's body ; therefore, by simple reasoning, 

 they must extract venom! (Illustration facing p. 317.) How de- 

 lightful is faith cure! 



Unlike the preceding, the Canada Hawkweed (H. Canadense), 



347 



