Heads many-flowered; the flowers all tubular; the central perfect, but sterile, few, with a 5-cleft corolla; all the others with a thread-shaped truncate corolla, pistillate and fertile. Involucre imbricated. Receptacle flat, naked. Anthers with tails. Achenes grooved; pappus capillary, in a single row.—Herbs, somewhat glandular, emitting a strong or camphoric odor, the heads cymosely clustered. Flowers purplish, in summer. (Dedicated to the Abbé Pluche.)
1. P. bífrons, DC. Perennial, 2–3° high; leaves closely sessile or half-clasping, oblong to lanceolate, sharply denticulate, veiny (only 2–3´ long); heads clustered in a corymb; scales lanceolate.—Low ground, Cape May, N. J., and southward.
2. P. camphoràta, DC. (Salt-marsh Fleabane.) Annual, pale (2–5° high); leaves scarcely petioled, oblong-ovate or lanceolate, thickish, obscurely veiny, serrate; corymb flat; involucral scales ovate to lanceolate. (P. fœtida, DC.)—Salt marshes, Mass. to Va., and southward, and on river-banks westward to Ky., Ill., and Neb. (?)
29. ÈVAX, Gaertn.
Heads rather many-flowered, discoid; flowers as in Pluchea, the central usually sterile. Involucral scales few, woolly. Receptacle convex to subulate, chaffy, the scarious chaff not embracing the smooth dorsally compressed achenes. Anthers with tails or acutely sagittate; pappus none.—Low, densely floccose-woolly annuals; extreme western. (Name of uncertain signification.)
1. E. prolífera, Nutt. A span high or less, simple or branching from the base; leaves numerous, small and spatulate; heads in dense proliferous clusters; receptacle convex; chaff subtending the sterile flowers woolly-tipped, the rest more scarious and naked, oval or oblong.—Dak. and W. Kan. to Tex.
30. FILÀGO, Tourn. Cotton-Rose.
Heads and flowers as in Evax. Receptacle elongated or top-shaped, naked at the summit, but chaffy at the margins or toward the base; the chaff resembling the proper involucral scales, each covering a single pistillate flower. Achenes terete; pappus of the central flowers capillary, of the outer ones mostly none.—Annual, low, branching woolly herbs, with entire leaves, and small heads in capitate clusters. (Name from filum, a thread, in allusion to the cottony hairs of these plants.)
F. Germánica, L. (Herba Impia.) Stem erect, short, clothed with lanceolate and upright crowded leaves, producing a capitate cluster of woolly heads, from which rise one or more branches, each terminated by a similar head, and so on;—hence the common name applied to it by the old botanists, as if the offspring were undutifully exalting themselves above the parent.—Dry fields, N. Y. to Va. July–Oct. (Nat. from Eu.)
31. ANTENNÀRIA, Gaertn. Everlasting.