352 Field, Forest, and Wayside Flowers 
the unbotanical public the most familiar is the 
daisy. Its yellow centre or disk is an assemblage 
of little trumpet-shaped blossoms, set as _ close 
together as possible. In a ring around this disk 
» 
we see what botanists call the ‘‘ray-flowers,’’ and 
bes 
what non-botanists call the ‘‘ white leaves’’ of the 
daisy. On close examination these will be found 
to be tiny florets with a pistil apiece, but with no 
stamens, and with their white corollas split open 
all down one side. So the daisy, which looks like 
one flower, is really a close mass of very tiny blos- 
soms. The cockle-bur, ragweed, sneezeweed, bur- 
dock, and sow-thistle are all Composite. So are 
the groundsel and the bur-marigold. So is that 
enemy to the western farmer and darling of the 
patriotic Scot, the thistle. 
Each of the minute flower-clusters which are 
massed together in a tuft of golden-rod is made 
up after the daisy pattern, and proves, on exam- 
ination, to be a head of disk-flowers surrounded 
by an aureole of ray-flowers. Asters are clearly 
seen to be arranged on the daisy plan. So is the 
“‘ 
brown and yellow ‘“‘ cone-flower’’ or ‘‘ black-eyed 
Susan,’’ and so are the sun-shaped things with 
” 
names beginning with ‘‘heli’’ which run riot over 
the August landscape, as if earth had grown enam- 
