COMPOSITE. (COMPOSITE FAMILY.) 269 



59. ANTENNlSIA, Gasrtn. Everlasting. 



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

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

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

 row of bristles, in the fertile flowers capillary, and in the sterile thickened and 

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

 entire leaves and coiymbed (rarely single) heads. Corolla yellowish. (Name 

 from the resemblance of the sterile pappus to the antennae of certain insects.) 



- 1. A. margaritacea, R. Brown. (Pearly Everlasting. Stem erect 

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

 lanceolate, taper-pointed, sessile ; fertile heads often with a few imperfect stami- 

 nate flowers in the centre ; scales of the pearly-white involucre obtuse or rounded. 



— Dry hills and woods ; common northward. Aug. 



2. A. plantaginifdlia, Hook. (Plantain-leaved Everlasting.) 



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- 

 spatulate, petioled, ample, 3-nerved ; heads in a small crowded corymb ; scales 

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

 in the fertile plant. — Var. monocephala is an occasional state, with a single 

 larger head. — Sterile knolls and banks : common. March - May. 



60. FILAGO, Tourn. Cotton-Rose. 



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

 often infertile ; the others pistillate, very slender and thread-form. 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 involucral scales, each covering a single pistillate flower. — Pappus of 

 the central flowers capillary, of the outer ones mostly none. — Annual, low, 

 branching woolly herbs, with entire leaves, and small heads in capitate clusters. 

 (Name from Jilum, a thread, in allusion to the cottony hairs of these plants.) 



1. F. Germanica, L. (Herba 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 undutifully 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 single 

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

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

 soft hairs. — Erect and coarse annuals, of rank smell, with alternate simple 

 leaves, and paniculate-corymbed heads of whitish flowers. (The ancient name 

 ef some species of Groundsel, probably called after Erechtheus.) 



