Yellow and Orange 



bees and wasps, butterflies, flies, and some beetles to the dingy 

 mass of tubular florets in the centre, in which nectar is concealed, 

 while pollen is exposed for the visitors to transfer as they crawl. 

 The rays simply make a show ; within the minute, insignificant 

 looking tubes is transacted the important business of life. 



Later in the season, when the bur-marigolds are transformed 

 into armories bristling with rusty, two-pronged, and finely-barbed 

 pitchforks {Bidens = two teeth), our real quarrel with the tribe 

 begins. The innocent passerby — man, woman, or child, woolly 

 sheep, cattle with switching tails, hairy dogs or foxes, indeed, 

 any creature within reach of the vicious grappling-hooks — must 

 transport them on his clothing ; for it is thus that these tramps 

 have planned to get away from the parent plant in the hope of 

 being picked off, and the seeds dropped in fresh colonizing 

 ground ; travelling in the disreputable company of their kinsmen 

 the beggar-ticks and Spanish needles, the burdock burs, cleavers, 

 agrimony, and tick-trefoils. 



Beggar-ticks, Stick-tight, Rayless Marigold, Beggar-lice, 

 Pitchforks, or Stick-seed {B. frondosd) sufficiently explains its 

 justly defamed character in its popular names. Numerous dull, 

 dark, tawny orange flower-heads without rays, or with insignifi- 

 ant ones scarcely to be detected, and surrounded by taller leaf- 

 like bracts, add little to the beauty of the moist fields and 

 roadsides where they rear themselves on long peduncles from 

 July to October. The smooth, erect, branched, and often red- 

 dish; stem may be anywhere from two to nine feet tall. Usually 

 the upper leaves are not divided, but the lower ones are pinnately 

 compounded of three to five divisions, the segments lance-shaped 

 or broader, and sharply toothed. As in all the bur-marigolds, 

 we find each floret's calyx converted into a barbed implement — 

 javelin, pitchfork, or halberd — for grappling the clothing of the 

 first innocent victim unwittingly acting as a colonizing agent. 



Sneezeweed ; Swamp Sunflower 



{Helenium autumnale) Thistle family 



Flower-heads — Bright yellow, I to 2 in. across, numerous, borne on 

 long peduncles in corymb-like clusters ; the rays ^ to 5 cleft, 

 and drooping around the yellow or yellowish-brown disk. 

 Stem: 2 to 6 ft. tall, branched above. Leaves: Alternate, 

 firm, lance-shaped to oblong, toothed, seated on stem or the 

 bases slightly decurrent ; bitter. 



Preferred Habitat — Swamps, wet ground, banks of streams. 



Flowering Season — August — October. 



361 



