ERIGERON BELLIDIPOLIUM, 
POOR ROBIN’S PLANTAIN. 
NATURAL ORDER, COMPOSITE. 
ERIGERON BELLIDIFOLIUM, Muhlenberg.—Rays crowded and rather conspicuous; purplish, 
Plant hoary-villous; stem simple and few-leaved ; leaves spatulate and lance-oblong; heads 
large, few, corymbose; rays broadish. Perennial; stoloniferous. Stem nine to eighteen 
inches high. Radical leaves one to three inches long, spatulate and obovate, contracted to 
amargined petiole; stem leaves sub-serrate; the upper ones entire or denticulate, some- 
what clasping. Heads of flowers two to three, or five (rarely seven. or nine) in a loose 
terminal corymb,—the lower peduncles axillary, long and flaccid; rays pale bluish-purple ; 
achenes smooth. (Darlington’s Flora Cestrica. See also Gray’s Flora of the Northern 
United States, Chapman’s Flora of the Southern United States, and Wood's Class- Book of 
Botany.) : 
R. DARLINGTON, from whose work we have taken our 
description, the drawings being made from a Pennsyl- 
vania plant growing near to where he wrote, gives “ Flea-bane” as 
one of the common names of the genus, and so do most of our 
Botanical Text-books; while some authors speak of our plant as 
the “ Daisy-leaved”’ and “Early-flowering” Flea-bane. The plant, 
however, has very little relation to the true Flea-bane; and in 
examining the reasons for the appellation, we learn a valuable 
lesson as to the making and perpetuation of errors, when the 
care to be strictly accurate which we endeavor to exercise in 
preparing “The Native Flowers and Ferns” is not taken. 
Green tells us that the name of Blue Flea-bane was unfortu- 
nately given to the £77geron acre by “some English botanists, 
which thus tends to confound it with Conyza.” And of Conyza 
sguamosa the old herbalists say, “the juice of the whole plant 
cures the itch, by external application, and the very smell of 
the herb is said to destroy fleas.” Both of these are European 
