COMPOSITAE (COMPOSITE FAMILY) 483 
toothed at tips, yellow, often shading 
into brown at their bases, sometimes 
entirely brown, occasionally lacking, 
hence the name nudiflorum. Seeds 
oblong, hairy, the pappus of five or 
more awned scales. (Fig. 335.) 
Means of control the same as for the 
autumn Sneezeweed. 
FINE-LEAVED SNEEZEWEED 
Helénium tenufolium, Nutt. 
Native. Annual. Propagates by seeds. 
Time of bloom: Early August to October. 
Seed-time: September to November. 
Range: Virginia to Kansas, southward 
to Florida and Texas. ” 
Habitat: Prairies ; moist meadows, road- 
sides, and waste places. 
This plant is rapidly extending its 
range, being locally established as far 
north as Massachusetts and Ohio; it is ye, 335, — Purple-headed 
considered quite as noxious as the larger, Sneezeweed (Helenium nudi- 
perennial species, several cases having 47”) Xz. 
been reported from the Gulf States where it has proved fatal to 
grazing horses and mules. Neat cattle do not seem to be so 
dangerously affected, but the weed is often the cause of bitter milk. 
The bitter, acrid properties are not dissipated by drying and 
therefore the young plants are very objectionable in meadows, 
being harvested with the hay and sharply “cutting” its quality. 
Stem eight to twenty inches tall, slender, smooth, much branched 
above, forming a bushy head. Leaves very numerous, smooth, 
linear, almost thread-like, sessile, often fascicled. Heads many, 
about an inch broad, with six to ten short, drooping, yellow rays, 
fanshaped, toothed at the tips, pistillate and fertile; disk yellow, 
globose, the florets perfect and fertile; bracts of the involucre 
linear, soon reflexed. Achenes angled and hairy, with a pappus 
of short, bristle-tipped scales. 
