COMPOSITE. (composite FAMILY.) 229 



59. ANTENNArIA, Gsertn. Eveelastino. 



Heads many-flowered, dioecious or nearly so ; the flowers all tubnlar : pistil- 

 late corollas very slender. Scales of the involucre dry and scarious, white or col- 

 ored, imbricated. Receptacle convex or flat, not chaffy. Pappus a single row 

 of bristles, which in the fertile flowers are capillary, and in the sterile thickened 

 and club-shaped or barbellate at the summit. — Perennial white-woolly herbs, 

 with entire leaves and corymbed {rarely single) heads. Corolla yellowish. 

 (So named from the resemblance of the sterile pappus to the antmruz of many 

 insects.) 



1. A. inargaritstcea, R. Brown. (Pbakly Everlasting.) Stem 

 ered (l°-2°high), corymbose at the summit, with many heads, leafy; leaves 

 linear-lanceolate, taper-pointed, sessile ; fertile heads often with u, few imperfect 

 staminate flowers in the centre ; scales of the pearly-white involucre obtuse or 

 rounded. — Dry hills and woods ; common northward. Aug. 



2. A. plautaglnifolia, Hook. (Flantain-leavbi) Eveblasting.) 

 Spreading by offsets and runners, low (4'- 10' high) ; leaves silky-woolly when 

 young, at length green above and hoary beneath ; those of the simple and scape- 

 like flowering stems small, lanceolate, appressed ; the radical obovate or oval- 

 spatnlate, petioled, ample, 3-nerved ; heads in a small crowded cotymb ; scales 

 of the (mostly white) involucre obtuse in the sterile, and acutish and narrower 

 in the fertile plant. — Var. monoo:6phala has a single larger head. (Phila^ 

 delphia, Mr. Lea. ) — Sterile knolls and banks, common. March - May. 



60. FILiAOO, Toum. Cotton-Rose. 



Heads many-flowered ; the flowers all tubular, the central ones perfect, but 

 often infertile ; the others pistillate, very slender and thread-foiTn. Scales of the 

 involucre few and woolly. Receptacle elongated or top-shaped, naked at the 

 summit, but chaffy at the margins or toward the base ; the chaff resembling the 

 proper in volucral scales, each covering a single pistillate flower. — Pappus of the 

 central flowers capillary, of the outer ones chiefly none. — Annual, low, branch- 

 ing woolly herbs, with entire leaves and small heads in capitate clusters. (Name 

 fvom Jilum, a thread, in allusion to the cottony hairs of these plants.) 



1. F. GermInioa, Ii. (Hekba Impia.) Stem erect, short, clothed with 

 lanceolate and upright crowded leaves, producing a capitate cluster of woolly 

 heads, from which rise one or more branches, each terminated by a similar head, 

 and so on ; — hence the common name applied to it by the old botanists, as if 

 the offspring were nndutifully exalting themselves above the parent. — Dry 

 fields, New York to Virginia. July- Oct. (Nat. from Eu.) 



61. ERECHTHITES, Raf. Fireweed. 



Heads many-flowered ; the flowers all tubular and fertile ; the marginal pis- 

 tillate, with a slender corolla. Scales of the cylindrical involucre in a singla 

 row,' linear, acute, with a few small bractlets at the base. Receptacle naked. 

 Achenia oblong, tapering at the end. Pappus copious, tif very fine and white 

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