YELLOW GROUP 



its winter nap and prophesy of coming spring. It is a native 

 of Europe, but has occupied our American soil as far as to 

 the Rocky Mountains. Its young leaves are eaten. In 

 fruit it forms a round head of evanescent seed, a flower 

 bubble, the soft, feathery pappus being raised on a long beak. 

 Many lawns are a mass of golden bloom with the dande- 

 lion. It not only comes early, finding warm, sunny corners 

 in April, but it blooms solitary and audacious long after its 

 true season is spent. The time for each blossom is short, 

 the involucre at first closing; later, after the pappus has 

 grown, opening, turning downward, leaving the seed wholly 

 exposed to the breeze. 



Field Sow Thistle 

 Sonchus arvensis. — Family, Composite. Color, yellow. Large 

 heads of bright yellow flowers in flat panicles are borne at the end 

 of leafy stems. Leaves, pinnatifid, sharply cut, with the segments 

 turning backward. The name thistle is misleading, for the plant 

 is smooth except the margins of the leaves and bracts of the in- 

 volucre, which are spiny. July to October. 



From a perennial rootstock, in fields and along roadsides, 

 also on gravelly shores, becoming common. From Nova 

 Scotia to New Jersey and westward to the Rocky Mountains. 



Wild Lettuce. Horse-weed 



Lactuca canadensis. — Family, Composite. Color, pale yellow. 

 Leaves long, deeply cut, wavy, some of them pinnatifid, those 

 above clasping the stem, lance-shaped, entire, those below quite 

 long, 6 or 8 inches. 



A tall plant, reaching the height of 8 or 9 feet. The cream- 

 colored flowers grow in a long, loose, leafy panicle. Com- 

 mon along roadsides, borders of damp thickets, New Eng- 

 land to Georgia westward to Arkansas. Not ungraceful. 

 The stem contains milky juice. 



Orange Hawkweed. Devil's Paint-brush. Grim the 



Collier 



Hierkcium aurantiacum. — Family, Composite. Color, orange, so 

 deep as to be called orange red. Sometimes the outer rays of 

 the head of flowers are red, those within orange. Stem, leafless. 

 Leaves, from the root, oblong or spatulate, entire. Whole plant 

 very hairy. Heads of many flowers arranged in corymbs. Rays 

 5-pointed, truncate at apex. 6 to 20 inches high. June and July. 



A pretty flower, common in Massachusetts and elsewhere, 

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