Gerarde describes it as follows: “The Indian Sun or the golden floure of Peru is a plant of such stature and talnesse that in one Sommer, being sowne of a seede in April, it hath risen up to the height of fourteen foot in my garden, where one floure was in weight three pound and two ounces, and crosse overthwart the floure by measure sixteen inches broad.”
The generic name is from helios—the sun, and anthos—a flower.
Sneezeweed. Swamp Sunflower.
Helenium autumnale. Composite Family (p. [13]).
One to six feet high. Stem.—Angled, erect, branching. Leaves.—Alternate, lance-shaped. Flower-heads.—Yellow, composed of both ray and disk-flowers, the rays being somewhat cleft.
As far north as Connecticut we see masses of these bright flowers bordering the streams and swamps in September.
Stick-tight. Bur Marigold, Beggar-ticks.
Bidens frondosa. Composite Family (p. [13]).
Two to six feet high. Stem.—Branching. Leaves.—Opposite, three to five-divided. Flower-heads.—Consisting of brownish-yellow tubular flowers, with a leaf-like involucre beneath.
PLATE LVIII
STICK-TIGHT.—B. frondosa.
If one were only describing the attractive wild flowers, the stick-tight would certainly be omitted, as its appearance is not prepossessing, and the small barbed seed-vessels so cleverly fulfil their destiny in making one’s clothes a means of conveyance to “fresh woods and pastures new” as to cause all wayfarers heartily to detest them. “How surely the desmodium growing on some cliff-side, or the bidens on the edge of a pool, prophesy the coming of the traveller, brute or human, that will transport their seeds on his coat,” writes Thoreau. But the plant is so constantly encountered in late summer, and yet so generally unknown, that it can hardly be overlooked.