HE Cone Flower is one of the handsomest of our rayed flowers. The gorgeous flaming orange dress, with the deep purple disk of almost metallic lustre, is one of the ornaments of all our wild open prairie-like plains during the hot months of July, August and September. We find the Cone Flower on the sunny spots among the wild herbage of grassy thickets, associated with the wild Sunflowers, Asters and other plants of the widely diffused Composite Order.
During the harvest months, when the more delicate spring flowers are ripening their seed, our heat-loving Rudbeckias, Chrysanthemums, Sunflowers, Coreopsises, Ox-eyes, and Asters, are lifting their starry heads to greet the light and heat of the sun’s ardent rays, adorning the dry wastes, gravelly and sandy hills, and wide grassy plains, with their gay blossoms;
“Bright flowers that linger as they fall.
Whose last are dearest.”
Many of these compound flowers possess medicinal qualities. Some, as the thistle, dandelion, wild lettuce, and others, are narcotic, being supplied with an abundance of bitter milky juice. The Sunflower, Coreopsis, Cone-Flower, Tagweed, and Tansy, contain resinous properties.
The beautiful Aster family, if not remarkable for any peculiarly useful qualities, contains many highly ornamental plants. Numerous species of these charming flowers belong to our Canadian flora; lingering with us
“When fairer flowers are all decayed,”
brightening the waste places and banks of lakes and lonely streams with starry flowers of every hue and shade—white, pearly blue, and deep purple; while the Solidagoes (golden rod), are celebrated for the valuable dyes that are yielded by their deep golden blossoms. But to return to the subject of our artist’s plate, the Cone Flower:
The plant is from one to three feet in height, the stem simple, or branching, each branchlet terminating in a single head. The rays are of a deep orange colour, varying to yellow; the leaves broadly lanceolate, sometimes once or twice lobed, partly clasping the rough, hairy stem, hoary and of a dull green, few and scattered. The scales of the chaffy disk are of a dark, shining purple, forming a somewhat depressed cone. This species, with a slenderer-stemmed variety, with rays of a golden yellow, are to be met with largely diffused over the Province.
Many splendid species of the Cone Flower are to be found in the wide-spread prairies of the Western States, where their brilliant starry flowers are mingled with many a gay blossom known only to the wild Indian hunter, and the herb-seeking medicine men of the native tribes, who know their medicinal and healing qualities, if they are insensible to their outward beauties.