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Rough Fleabane (Erigeron strigosus)

• Family: Aster (Asteraceae)
• Flowering: April-October.
• Field Marks: This fleabane is distinguished by its non-clasping leaves, the lack of spreading hairs on the stem, and its heads less than 1 inch wide with numerous white rays around a central disk.
• Habitat: Old fields, roadsides.
• Habit: Coarse annual herb with fibrous roots.
• Stems: Erect, branched, up to 5 feet tall, with appressed hairs or smooth.
• Leaves: Alternate, simple, linear-lanceolate to elliptic, pointed at the tip, tapering to the base, sparingly toothed, or the upper ones without teeth, usually somewhat hairy, less than 1 inch broad.
• Flowers: Many crowded into a head with several heads per plant, each head up to 3/4 inch across and subtended by many narrow, usually hairy, green bracts; the outer flowers about 90- 110, white and ray-like; the inner yellow, tubular, forming a disk.
• Sepals: 0.
• Petals: Some white, very narrow, ray-like, others yellow, 5-parted, forming a disk.
• Stamens: 5.
• Pistils: Ovary inferior, hairy.
• Fruits: Achenes pale brown, shiny, hairy, about 1/20 inch long, with a tuft of white bristles.
• Notes: White-tailed deer browse on this species.