GAILLARDIA 



The Mayweed of our roadsides and waste places is a Chamomile, 

 Anthemis cdtula. The flower-heads look like small, white daisies, 

 the leaves are finely cut and the plant is ill-smelling. It possesses 

 that wonderful ability to exist where it is not wanted which makes 

 it a weed, and it crowds close to the wheel tracks at the roadside 

 and takes possession of barnyards and neglected fields. The 

 flower-heads go to sleep at night, the rays turn backward and so 

 put the disk prominently forward, just why is not clear. 



The stem branches wonderfully, and in a favorable situation 

 does marvels. A single Mayweed plant growing alone upon the 

 summit of a low heap of clay, by actual measurement, attained a 

 hemisphere two feet in diameter and bore by actual count over six 

 hundred open flower-heads at one time. No plant by the garden 

 walk could compare that morning with the child of the waste land, 

 either in perfection of form or fulfilment of obligation. 



GAILLARDIA 



Gailldrdia crislata. Gailldrdia -pulcMlla. 



Gaillardia, named in honor of Gaillard de Merentonneau, a French 

 botanist. 



The garden race of Gaillardia are hybrids of two species: Gaillardia 

 cristata, a perennial form, and Gaillardia pulchella, an annual plant. 

 Both are native to the Western plains and prairies of North America, 

 from the Northwest Territories to Mexico. May to September. 



Stem. — Erect, one to two feet high, hairy. 



Leaves. — Gray-green, variable. ^ 



Flower-head. — Radiate^ terminal on long, slender peduncles, two to 

 three inches across. 



Rays. — Neutral, large; broad, yellow, or parti-colored; banded, show- 

 ing yellow, orange, brownish, crimson, purple, often with a metallic 

 lustre. There are garden forms in which the outer rays are tubular 

 and the disk -florets much enlarged. 



Disk-florets. — Yellow, often purple; their corollas slender tubes with 

 five teeth; teeth hairy. 



Involucre. — Two or more rows of loose, leafy bracts. 



Receptacle. — Convex or globose; fimbrillate. 



Akene. — Top-shaped, ribbed, very hairy, crowned with a pappus of 

 six or more long, thin, awned scales. 



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