Northeast Wetland Flora
Field Office Guide to Plant Species
Erechtites hieracifolia (L.) Raf. ex DC.
- Family: Composite (Compositae)
- Flowering: July-September
- Field Marks: This species is distinguished by its cylindrical heads which are distinctly swollen at the base and that bear white disk flowers only. The jagged-edged leaves are membranous.
- Habitat: Marshes, moist woods, dry woods, damp thickets; often becoming common after a fire.
- Habit: Annual herb with fibrous roots.
- Stems: Upright, branched or unbranched, smooth or hairy, grooved, somewhat succulent, up to 10 feet tall.
- Leaves: Alternate, simple, membranous, lanceolate to elliptic to oblong, pointed at the tip, tapering to the base, jagged-toothed, smooth or hairy, sometimes clasping at the base, otherwise sessile or with a short stalk.
- Flowers: Many borne in heads in a flat-topped or elongated cluster, the heads cylindric, up to 3/4 inch long, surrounded by very slender, pointed, green, smooth or hairy bracts.
- Sepals: 0.
- Petals: 4-5, fused, forming disk flowers only, whitish.
- Stamens: 5.
- Pistils: Ovary inferior.
- Fruits: Ellipsoid, about 1/8 inch long, with 10-12 vertical ribs, appressed-hairy, with a tuft of bright white hairs at the tip.
- Notes: Gleason and Cronquist call this family Asteraceae. Although this species is characteristic of moist soil, it will come into recently burned areas very rapidly.
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