At last Dr.Asa Gray brought forward the only sensible explanation: inasmuch as both surfaces of the rosin-weed leaf are essentially alike, there being very nearly as many stomata on the upper side as on the under, both surfaces are equally sensitive to sunlight; therefore the leaf twists on its petiole until both sides share it as equally as is possible.While the polarity of the prickly lettuce leaves is by no means so marked, Dr.Gray's theory about the rosin-weed may be applied to them as well.
ORANGE or TAWNY HAWKWEED; GOLDEN MOUSE-EAR HAWKWEED; DEVIL'SPAINT-BRUSH
(Hieracium aurantiacum) Chicory family Flower-beads - Reddish orange; 1 in.across or less, the 5-toothed rays overlapping in several series; several heads on short peduncles in a terminal cluster.Stem: Usually leafless, or with 1 to 2 small sessile leaves; 6 to 20 in.high, slender, hairy, from a tuft of hairy, spatulate, or oblong leaves at the base.
Preferred Habitat - Fields, woods, roadsides, dry places.
Flowering Season - June-September.
Distribution - Pennsylvania and Middle States northward into British Possessions.
Peculiar reddish-orange disks, similar in shade to the butterfly weed's umbels, attract our eyes no less than those of the bees, flies, and butterflies for whom such splendor was designed.After cross-fertilization has been effected, chiefly through the agency of the smaller bees, a single row of slender, brownish, persistent bristles attached to the seeds transforms the head into the "devil's paint-brush." Another popular title in England, from whence the plant originally came, is Grimm the Collier.All the plants in this genus take their name from hierax = a hawk, because people in the old country once thought that birds of prey swooped earthward to sharpen their eyesight with leaves of the hawkweed, hawkbit, or speerhawk, as they are variously called.
Transplanted into the garden, the orange hawkweed forms a spreading mass of unusual, splendid color.
The RATTLESNAKE-WEED, EARLY or VEIN-LEAF HAWKWEED, SNAKE or POORROBIN'S PLANTAIN (H.venosum), with flower-heads only about half an inch across, sends up a smooth, slender stem, paniculately branched above, to display the numerous dandelion-yellow disks as early as May, although October is not too late to find this generous bloomer in pine woodlands, dry thickets, and sandy soil.
Purplish-veined oval leaves, more or less hairy, that spread in a tuft next the ground, are probably as efficacious in curing snakebites as those of the rattlesnake plantain (q.v.).When a credulous generation believed that the Creator had indicated with some sign on each plant the special use for which each was intended, many leaves were found to have veinings suggesting the marks on a snake's body; therefore, by ****** reasoning, they must extract venom.How delightful is faith cure!
Unlike the preceding, the CANADA HAWKWEED (H.Canadense), lacks a basal tuft at flowering time, but its firm stem, that may be any height from one to five feet, is amply furnished with oblong to lance-shaped leaves seated on it, their midrib prominent, the margins sparingly but sharply toothed.In dry, open woods and thickets, and along shady roadsides, its loosely clustered heads of clear yellow, about one inch across, are displayed from July to September; and later the copious brown bristles remain for sparrows to peck at.
The ROUGH HAWKWEED (H.scabrum), with a stout, stiff stem crowned with a narrow branching cluster of small yellow flower-heads on dark bristly peduncles, also lacks a basal tuft at flowering time.Its hairy oblong leaves are seated on the rigid stem.In dry, open places, clearings, and woodlands from Nova Scotia to Georgia, and westward to Nebraska, it blooms from July to September.
More slender and sprightly is the HAIRY HAWKWEED (H.Gronovii), common in sterile soil from Massachusetts and Illinois to the Gulf States.The basal leaves and lower part of the stiff stem, especially, are hairy, not to allow too free transpiration of precious moisture.
GOLDEN ASTER
(Chrysopsis Mariana) Thistle family Plower-heads - Composite, yellow, 1 in.wide or less, a few corymbed flowers on glandular stalks; each composed of perfect tubular disk florets surrounded by pistillate ray florets the involucre campanulate, its narrow bracts overlapping in several series.Stem: Stout, silky-hairy when young, nearly smooth later, 1 to 2 1/2 ft.tall.Leaves: Alternate, oblong to spatulate, entire.
Preferred Habitat - Dry soil, or sandy, not far inland.
Flowering Season - August-September.
Distribution - Long Island and Pennsylvania to the Gulf States.
Whoever comes upon clumps of these handsome flowers by the dusty roadside cannot but be impressed with the appropriateness of their generic name (Chrysos = gold; opsis = aspect).Farther westward, north and south.it is the HAIRY GOLDEN ASTER (C.
villosa), a pale, hoary-haired plant with similar flowers borne at midsummer, that is the common species.
GOLDENRODS
(Solidago) Thistle family When these flowers transform whole acres into "fields of the cloth-of-gold," the slender wands swaying by every roadside, and purple asters add the final touch of imperial splendor to the autumn landscape, already glorious with gold and crimson, is any parterre of Nature's garden the world around more gorgeous than that portion of it we are pleased to call ours? Within its limits eighty-five species of goldenrod flourish, while a few have strayed into Mexico and South America, and only two or three belong to Europe, where many of ours are tenderly cultivated in gardens, as they should be here, had not Nature been so lavish.
To name all these species, or the asters, the sparrows, and the warblers at sight is a feat probably no one living can perform;nevertheless, certain of the commoner goldenrods have well-defined peculiarities that a little field practice soon fixes in the novice's mind.