COMPOSITE FAMILY 



COMPOSITAE 



OXEYE DAISY. MARGUERITE 



Chrysanthemum Leucanthemum L. 



Perhaps no plant is more properly thought of as both wild 

 flower and weed than the Oxeye Daisy. This most beautiful field 

 plant is known from Newfoundland and eastern Quebec to New 



Jersey and thereafter more rarely toward 

 the southwest, and is often cultivated as a 

 garden flower, usually under the name 

 Marguerite. In some places it is justly 

 considered a most pernicious weed, for 

 where extremely abundant in hay fields 

 it seriously injures the quality of the hay. 

 It is perennial and when established may 

 spread rapidly. 



The stems are smooth, slightly 

 branched and 1-3 feet high. The obovate, 

 oblong or spatulate basal leaves, in a mat, 

 are long petioled and coarsely toothed or 

 lobed; the stem leaves are narrowly 

 oblong, mostly sessile and partly clasping, 

 1-3 inches long, and pinnately cut or 

 toothed though the uppermost are very 

 small and almost entire. 



The heads are few or solitary and 1-2 

 inches broad on long naked peduncles, 

 from June to August. The mostly smooth 

 bracts of the involucre are narrow and 

 marked by brown lines along the dry, 

 thin margins. There are 20-30 spreading 

 white ray flowers, slightly 2 or 3-toothed. 

 The disk flowers are bright yellow. Both 

 kinds of flowers produce akenes having 

 no pappus, and both are visited by many 

 kinds of bees and butterflies. 



The Costmary, or Mint Geranium, Chrysanthemuju Balsamita L. 

 var. tanacetoides Boiss., is a very fragrant-leaved immigrant peren- 

 nial which has no ray flowers. The toothed oblong leaves otten have 

 a pair of lateral lobes at the base, and contain the plant's aromatic 

 principle. The upper leaves are sessile. The Costmary blooms 

 through the summer, principally along roadsides near old dwellings, 

 and occasionally in colonies. 



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