THE TALL MIDSUMMER WEEDS. ]99 



low rays and its purple-brown " cone " are familiar 

 to us all. But few of the flowers are left by mid- 

 summer — they were in their prime in early July. 

 It is not a tall plant — rarely a few stems stand two 

 feet high. Our common garden sunflower {Helian- 

 ihus anmius) is a near relative of Rudbekia. An 

 alhed species often found on the roadsides of the 

 North and East is Helianthus giganteus, a small 

 flower with bright-yellow rays and a fairly good 

 yellow center ; this prefers the shaded 

 nooks and corners of fields and wood- 

 lands. Not far from the sunflower, " '^' 



^ 



perhaps in some moist spot near a 

 passing brook, we may find we have 

 come in contact with the troublesome 

 weed named beggar-ticks {Bidens fron- 

 dosa) ; wherever we have touched the 

 plant our clothing is covered with its ex- 

 ceedingly tenacious, two - pronged seed 

 vessels. The insignificant flowers are Beggar-ticks, 

 rayless, and rusty yellow in tone, and 

 the leaves have from three to five divisions. This 

 uncomfortable roadside weed is from two to six feet 

 high ; it blooms from June to October. 



Also in the wet ground there is every chance of 

 finding (at least as far North as Pennsylvania and 

 Connecticut) the budding stems of the tall sneeze- 



