Yellow and Orang^e 



Orange or Tawny Hawkweed ; Golden Mouse- 

 ear Hawkweed; Devil's Paint-brush 



{Hieracmm aurantiacum) Chicory family 



Flower-heads— KtMxsh 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 



D3S6. 



Preferred Habitat— V\t\d,%, woods, roadsides, dry places. 

 Flowering Season— ]\int — September. 



Distribution— Pennsyhfama. 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 (//. 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. How delightful is faith cure ! 



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



347 



