Like the daisy, each small flower in a cluster, as symmetrically arranged as brain coral, is made up of a large number of minute but perfect florets, suited to attract insects by ****** a better show than each could do alone, and by offering them accessible feeding places close together, where they may feast with minimum loss of time.Simultaneous cross-fertilization of many florets must be effected by every visitor crawling over a cluster.The florets in each disk open in regular array toward the centers.At the expense of stamens, which are absent in the grayish-white ray florets, they have attained their development, another instance of "progress by loss" from the evolutionary standpoint.By prolonging its season of bloom to get relief from the fierce competition for insect visitors in midsummer; by increase through seeds, and runners too; by contenting itself with neglected corners of the earth, the yarrow gives us many valuable lessons on how to succeed.
DOG'S or FETID CAMOMILE; MAYWEED; PIG-STY DAISY; DILLWEED;DOG-FENNEL
(Anthemis Cotula; Maruta Cotula of Gray) Thistle family Flower-heads - Like smaller daisies, about 1 in.broad; 10 to 18white, notched, neutral ray florets around a convex or conical yellow disk, whose florets are fertile, containing both stamens and pistil, their tubular corollas 5-cleft.Stem: Smooth, much branched, 1 to 2 ft.high, leafy, with unpleasant odor and acrid taste.Leaves: Very finely dissected into slender segments.
Preferred Habitat - Roadsides, dry wasteland, sandy fields.
Flowering Season - June-November.
Distribution - Throughout North America, except in circumpolar regions.
"Naturalized from Europe, and widely distributed as a weed in Asia, Africa, and Australasia" (Britton and Brown's "Flora").
Little wonder the camomile encompasses the earth, for it imitates the triumphant daisy, putting into practice those business methods of the modern department store, by which the composite horde have become the most successful strugglers for survival.
The unpleasant odor given forth by this bushy little plant repels bees and other highly organized insects; not so flies, which, far from objecting to a fetid smell, are rather attracted by it.They visit the camomile in such numbers as to be the chief fertilizers.As the development of bloom proceeds toward the center, the disk becomes conical, to present the newly opened florets, where a fly alighting on it must receive pollen, to be transferred as he crawls and flies to another head.After fertilization the white rays droop.Dog, used as a prefix by several of the plant's folk names, implies contempt for its worthlessness.It is quite another species, the GARDEN CAMOMILE(A.nobilis) which furnishes the apothecary with those flowers which, when steeped into a bitter aromatic tea, have been supposed for generations to make a superior tonic and blood purifier.
Not so common a plant here, but almost as widespread as the preceding species, is the similar, but not fetid, CORN or FIELDCAMOMILE (A.arvensis), a pest to European farmers.Both are closely related to the garden FEVERFEW, FEATHERFEW, OR PELLITORY(Chrysanthemum Parthenium), which escapes from cultivation whenever it can into waste fields and roadsides.
COMMON DAISY; WHITE-WEED; WHITE OR OX-EYE DAISY; LOVE-ME, LOVE-ME-NOT(Chrysanthemum Leucanthemum) Thistle family Flower-heads - Disk florets yellow, tubular, 4 or 5 toothed, containing stamens and pistil; surrounded by white ray florets, which are pistillate, fertile.Stem: Smooth, rarely branched, to 3 ft.high.Leaves: Mostly oblong in outline, coarsely toothed and divided.
Preferred Habitat - Meadows, pastures, roadsides, wasteland.
Flowering Season - May-November.
Distribution - Throughout the United States and Canada; not so common in the South and West.