Heads many-flowered, somewhat diœcious; in the substerile plant with a single row of ligulate pistillate ray-flowers, and many tubular sterile ones in the disk; in the fertile plant wholly or chiefly of pistillate flowers, tubular or distinctly ligulate. Otherwise as Tussilago.—Perennial woolly herbs, with the leaves all from the rootstock, white-woolly beneath, the scape with sheathing scaly bracts, bearing heads of purplish or whitish fragrant flowers, in a corymb. (The Greek name for the coltsfoot, from πέτασος, a broad-brimmed hat, on account of its large leaves.)
[*] Pistillate flowers ligulate; flowers whitish.
1. P. palmàta, Gray. Leaves rounded, somewhat kidney-form, palmately and deeply 5–7-lobed, the lobes toothed and cut. (Nardosmia palmata, Hook.)—Swamps, Maine and Mass. to Mich., Minn., and northwestward; rare. April, May.—Full-grown leaves 6–10´ broad.
2. P. sagittàta, Gray. Leaves deltoid-oblong to reniform-hastate, acute or obtuse, repand-dentate.—N. Minn. and westward.
[*][*] Ligules none; flowers purplish.
P. vulgàris, Desf. Rootstock very stout; leaves round-cordate, angulate-dentate and denticulate.—About Philadelphia. (Nat. from Eu.)
74. ÁRNICA, L.
Heads many-flowered, radiate; rays pistillate. Scales of the bell-shaped involucre lanceolate, equal, somewhat in 2 rows. Receptacle flat, fimbrillate. Achenes slender or spindle-shaped; pappus a single row of rather rigid and strongly roughened-denticulate bristles.—Perennial herbs, chiefly of mountains and cold northern regions, with simple stems, bearing single or corymbed large heads and opposite leaves. Flowers yellow. (Name thought to be a corruption of Ptarmica.)
1. A. Chamissònis, Less. Soft-hairy; stem leafy (1–2° high), bearing 1 to 5 heads; leaves thin, veiny, smoothish when old, toothed; the upper ovate-lanceolate, closely sessile, the lower narrower, tapering to a margined petiole; scales pointed; pappus almost plumose. (A. mollis, Hook.)—N. Maine, mountains of N. H. and northern N. Y., shores of L. Superior, and westward. July.
2. A. nudicaùlis, Nutt. Hairy and rather glandular (1–3° high); leaves thickish, 3–5-nerved, ovate or oblong, all sessile, mostly entire and near the root, the cauline small and only one or two pairs; heads several, corymbed, showy.—Damp pine barrens, S. Penn. and southward. April, May.