Part 32 (2/2)

Black-eyed Susan; Yellow or Ox-eye Daisy; n.i.g.g.e.r-head; Golden Jerusalem; Purple Cone-flower

_Rudbeckia hirta_

_Flower-heads_--From 10 to 20 orange-yellow neutral rays around a conical, dark purplish-brown disk of florets containing both stamens and pistil. _Stem:_ 1 to 3 ft. tall, hairy, rough, usually unbranched, often tufted. _Leaves:_ Oblong to lance-shaped, thick, sparingly notched, rough.

_Preferred Habitat_--Open sunny places; dry fields.

_Flowering Season_--May-September.

_Distribution_--Ontario and the Northwest Territory south to Colorado and the Gulf states.

So very many weeds having come to our Eastern sh.o.r.es from Europe, and marched farther and farther west year by year, it is but fair that black-eyed Susan, a native of Western clover fields, should travel toward the Atlantic in bundles of hay whenever she gets the chance, to repay Eastern farmers in their own coin. Do these gorgeous heads know that all our showy rudbeckias--some with orange red at the base of their ray florets--have become prime favorites of late years in European gardens, so offering them still another chance to overrun the Old World, to which so much American hay is s.h.i.+pped? Thrifty farmers may decry the importation into their mowing lots, but there is a glory to the cone-flower beside which the glitter of a gold coin fades into paltry nothingness. Having been instructed in the decorative usefulness of all this genus by European landscape gardeners, we Americans now importune the Department of Agriculture for seeds through members of Congress, even Representatives of States that have pa.s.sed stringent laws against the dissemination of ”weeds.” Inasmuch as each black-eyed Susan puts into daily operation the business methods of the white daisy, methods which have become a sort of creed for the entire composite horde to live by, it is plain that she may defy both farmers and legislators. Bees, wasps, flies b.u.t.terflies, and beetles could not be kept away from an entertainer so generous; for while the nectar in the deep, tubular brown florets may be drained only by long, slender tongues, pollen is accessible to all. Any one who has had a jar of these yellow daisies standing on a polished table indoors, and tried to keep its surface free from a ring of golden dust around the flowers, knows how abundant their pollen is. The black-eyed Susan, like the English sparrow, has come to stay--let farmers and law-makers do what they will.

Tall or Giant Sunflower

_Helianthus giganteus_

_Flower-heads_--Several, on long, rough-hairy peduncles; 1-1/2 to 2-1/4 in. broad; 10 to 20 pale yellow neutral rays around a yellowish disk whose florets are perfect, fertile. _Stem:_ 3 to 12 ft. tall, bristly-hairy, usually branching above, often reddish; from a perennial, fleshy root. _Leaves:_ Rough, firm, lance-shaped, saw-toothed, sessile.

_Preferred Habitat_--Low ground, wet meadows, swamps.

_Flowering Season_--August-October.

_Distribution_--Maine to Nebraska and the Northwest Territory, south to the Gulf of Mexico.

To how many sun-shaped golden disks with outflas.h.i.+ng rays might not the generic name of this clan (_helios_ = the sun, _anthos_ = a flower) be as fittingly applied: from midsummer till frost the earth seems given up to floral counterparts of his wors.h.i.+pful majesty. If, as we are told, one ninth of all flowering plants in the world belong to the composite order, of which more than sixteen hundred species are found in North America north of Mexico, surely more than half this number are made up after the daisy pattern, the most successful arrangement known, and the majority of these are wholly or partly yellow. Most conspicuous of the horde are the sunflowers, albeit they never reach in the wild state the gigantic dimensions and weight that cultivated, dark-brown centred varieties produced from the common sunflower have attained. For many years the origin of the latter flower, which suddenly shone forth in European gardens with unwonted splendor, was in doubt. Only lately it was learned that when Champlain and Segur visited the Indians on Lake Huron's eastern sh.o.r.es about three centuries ago, they saw them cultivating this plant, which must have been brought by them from its native prairies beyond the Mississippi--a plant whose stalks furnished them with a textile fibre, its leaves fodder, its flowers a yellow dye, and its seeds, most valuable of all, food and hair-oil! Early settlers in Canada were not slow in sending home to Europe so decorative and useful an acquisition. Swine, poultry, and parrots were fed on its rich seeds. Its flowers, even under Indian cultivation, had already reached abnormal size. Of the sixty varied and interesting species of wild sunflowers known to scientists, all are North American.

Moore's pretty statement,

”As the sunflower turns on her G.o.d when he sets The same look which she turn'd when he rose,”

lacks only truth to make it fact. The flower does not travel daily on its stalk from east to west. Often the top of the stem turns sharply toward the light to give the leaves better exposure, but the presence or absence of a terminal flower affects its action not at all.

Sneeze weed; Swamp Sunflower

_Helenium autumnale_

_Flower-heads_--Bright yellow, 1 to 2 in. across, numerous, borne on long peduncles in corymb-like cl.u.s.ters; the rays 3 to 5 cleft, and drooping around the yellow or yellowish-brown disk. _Stem:_ 2 to 6 ft.

tall, branched above. _Leaves:_ Alternate, firm, lance-shaped to oblong, toothed, seated on stem or the bases slightly decurrent; bitter.

_Preferred Habitat_--Swamps, wet ground, banks of streams.

_Flowering Season_--August-October.

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