Northeast Wetland Flora
Field Office Guide to Plant Species
Agrimonia striata Michx.
- Family: Rose (Rosaceae)
- Flowering: July-September
- Field Marks: The distinguishing features of this groovebur are its stems with spreading hairs, its 5-9 leaflets, its yellow petals about 1/6 inch long, and its large fruits up to 1/3 inch long, including the beak.
- Habitat: Woods, thickets.
- Habit: Perennial herb with slender, fibrous roots.
- Stems: Upright, stiff, up to 6 feet tall, spreading-hairy.
- Leaves: Alternate, pinnately compound, with smaller leaf segments mixed in among the larger leaflets, the larger leaflets 5-9, lanceolate to obovate, pointed at the tip, tapering to the base, coarsely toothed, hairy, glandular-dotted, up to 2 1/2inches long, up to 1 3/4 inches wide.
- Flowers: Several in spike-like racemes, subtended by 3-cleft bracts, the axis of the inflorescence minutely hairy.
- Sepals: 5, green, united below to form a smooth or short-hairy cup, the lobes longer than broad.
- Petals: 5, yellow, free from each other, about 1/6 inch long.
- Stamens: Usually about 15.
- Pistils: Several, situated within the cup formed by the sepals.
- Fruits: Many achenes in a turban-shaped cup, the cup with numerous hooked bristles around the top, the achenes with a slender beak up to 1/3 inch long.
- Notes: The bristles on the achenes adhere to the fur of mammals and aid in the dispersal of the seeds.
Previous Species -- Beaked Groovebur (Agrimonia rostellata)
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