HARPER'S GUIDE TO WILD FLOWERS 



obtuse at apex, on short, margined petioles, i to 3 inches long. 

 Perennials by means of offshoots or runners sent up from the 

 root. Stem, slender, simple, 1 to 2 feet high. April to June. 



On hills, in orchards, pastures, dry fields; rather local, but 

 found from Maine to Minnesota and southward. A pretty- 

 name for this daisy-like composite is blue spring daisy, only 

 it is not blue, but distinctly violet in color. 



Burdock. Clotbur 



Arctium Lappa.. — Family, Composite. Color, purplish crim- 

 son. Leaves, on furrowed petioles, thin, broadly ovate, whitish 

 beneath, somewhat heart - shape at base, pointed at apex, the 

 lower sometimes 18 inches long. Heads of flowers, clustered or 

 single, bristly from the bracts of the involucre, which are long, 

 stiff, with little hooks at their tips, making a bur. Summer. 



Large, coarse, biennial herbs, of the nature of weeds, 

 branching, 4 to 9 feet high. In waste places. 



The writer recalls, in connection with this plant, an anxious 

 day when her small children were missing. After a prolonged 

 search they were found seated under a large burdock plant, 

 some distance from home, on a road leading into the woods, 

 making baskets and bird's nests by sticking together the 

 burdock flowers. 



Musk Thistle 



Carduus nutans. — Family, Composite. Color, purple. Much 

 like Cirsium, but with leaves running down the stem, and with 

 the winged stem spiny. Large heads, solitary, of the richly 

 colored flowers which when old droop. Leaves, 3 to 6 inches 

 long, lanceolate in shape, deeply pinnately cut, sharply pointed 

 at apex, the lobes very spiny. June to October. 



In pastures, waste places, and on ballast near seaports, 

 Pennsylvania and New Jersey, northward. 



Common or Bull Thistle. Plumed Thistle 



Cirsium lanceolatum. — Family, Composite. Color, purple or 

 crimson. Leaves, deeply cut, prickly, woolly, alternate, sessile 

 and running down on the stem. Flowers, in a round, close head, 

 large, surrounded by a prickly involucre. July to November. 



This is the common thistle, one of Europe's undesirable 

 exportations to our shores, the despair of every farmer once 

 it has made its appearance in his pastures. 



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