Northeast Wetland Flora
Field Office Guide to Plant Species
Bidens mitis (Michx.) Sherff
- Family: Composite (Compositae)
- Flowering: September-October
- Field Marks: The distinguishing characters of this species are the pinnately compound or lobed or sometimes undivided leaves, the bright yellow ray flowers, and the short achenes less than 1/4 inch long.
- Habitat: Brackish swamps, freshwater swamps.
- Habit: Annual herb with fibrous roots.
- Stems: Upright, branched or unbranched, smooth, slender, up to 3 feet tall.
- Leaves: Opposite, highly variable and ranging from pinnately compound with 3-7 leaflets to undivided or merely lobed, the leaflets linear, pointed at the tip, tapering to the base, smooth, with or without teeth, up to 5 inches long.
- Flowers: Many flowers in heads, with several heads on smooth stalks up to 5 inches long, each head with numerous yellow rays and numerous yellow disk flowers, the rays oblong, up to 1 inch long, the disk flowers 1/6-1/4 inch long, each head subtended by 7-10 outer bracts.
- Sepals: 0.
- Petals: 5, some united to form yellow rays, others united to form tubular disk flowers.
- Stamens: 5.
- Pistils: Ovary inferior.
- Fruits: Achenes obovate to oblong-ovate, flat, without wings, smooth except for short cilia, less than 1/4 inch long, with a pair of barbed awns about 1/20 inch long.
- Notes: Gleason and Cronquist call this is family Asteraceae.
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