ERIGERON

[Guest guest]

A member from another group found this information for me.

Pam

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http://www.botany.com/erigeron.html

ERIGERON (Erig'eron)

in northwestern America, eastern Europe, and other various parts of

the

world. These plants, also known as Fleabanes and Summer Starworts,

range in height between the varieties from 18 to 32 inches. E. 'White

Quakeress' is a pretty plant with lance- to spoon-shaped, grayish-

green

leaves. During the summer, tons of daisy-like flowers with thin, pure

white petals and greenish-yellow centers are produced. E. 'Dignity'

forms clumps of lance- to spoon-shaped, medium green leaves. An

abundance of beautiful flowers are produced throughout the summer.

They

resemble Daisies and have thin, pink-violet petals surrounding a

greenish-yellow disk. E. 'Serenity' has foliage and flowers

resembling

the other varieties described, except its flowers are colored violet.

I can't find any reports of toxicity other than the possibility of

contact dermatitis for humans from the green parts. I doubt it's been

tested specifically in or on cats, for instance.

There are different variaties of erigeron so the name alone isn't

very

informative. Erigeron breviscapus is enjoying lots of research

interest

but nothing comes up on PubMed when I enter " Erigeron fleas " .

http://www.hiltonpond.org/ThisWeek020522.html

DAISY FLEABANE

One plant that almost any visitor to Hilton Pond Center can identify

is

the Ox-eye Daisy, a common wildflower famous for an ability to tell

the

fortune of young lovers who denude its flower head while saying, " She

loves me, she loves me not. " These nervous lovers usually believe

they

are plucking petals one-by-one from the daisy, but as true composite

flowers, daisies have no obvious petals. What the amorous inquisitors

teally remove are sterile " ray flowers " whose function is to attract

insects that cross-pollinate the nectar- and pollen-rich disk flowers

at the daisy's center.

Since Ox-eye Daisy bears only about 20 ray flowers, an impatient

lover

is able to arrive at a verdict fairly quickly, but imagine his

frustration if he mistakes a Daisy Fleabane flower for an Ox-eye

Daisy.

Daisy Fleabane resembles the true daisy, but its half-inch flowers

are

only half the diameter and it has two to four times as many ray

flowers--up to a hundred in some specimens. As illustrated in the

photo

below, Daisy Fleabane's ray flowers tend to be narrower than those of

Ox-eye Daisy, but otherwise these composite flowers are indeed

similar--even though the fleabane has no verifiable fortune-telling

skills.

Several closely related composites are called " Daisy Fleabane, " but

perhaps most common in the Carolina Piedmont is Erigeron annuus,

whose

scientific name accurately indicates it is an annual plant. (Erigeron

comes from Greek words meaning " early " and " old man, " which allude to

the plant's tendency to blossom in late spring and to form fuzzy

white

seed heads while still producing new flowers.) Other fleabanes

commonly

found in the Carolinas are E. pulchellus (also called " Robin's

Plantain " ), E. canadensis (AKA Horse weed, Hogweed or Butterweed),

and

E. strigosus; they are identified in part by differences in leaf

shape

and other growth aspects. Daisy Fleabane has an even wider

distribution

than the common Ox-eye Daisy, occurring naturally in every state east

of the Rockies and now introduced into nearly all the rest of the

lower

48. Although all these fleabanes produce blooms that are pleasing to

the eye of the wandering flowerphile, they are held in disdain by

some

farmers who consider them to be invasive in agricultural plots.

E. annuus grows prolifically in fallow fields, meadows, and along

roadsides as a " winter annual " ; i.e., the seeds germinate in summer

or

late fall and form a basal rosette of leaves that in the following

spring or summer give rise to a stem and blossoms and a new seed

crop--after which the plant dies. Although Daisy Fleabane usually has

white ray flowers--a yellow species occurs in the West--it's not

uncommon to find Carolina specimens that are pinkish or pale lavender

(below left). Botanists are undecided about whether the pigment is

influence by minerals in the soil, genetics, or some other factor,

but

we've noticed the non-white forms seem more common in shadier

habitats.

Fleabanes get their common name from an old belief that they repelled

fleas and other pestiferous insects. Early European settlers in North

America stuffed mattresses with fleabane and hung clusters of plants

in

their cabins to drive out fleas. The custom persisted for

generations,

even though Daisy Fleabane appears to have no insect-repelling

ability

whatsoever. In fact, the plant ATTRACTS insects--not only pollinators

but also tiny herbivores that nibble away the ray flowers and leave

only the central disk. Here at Hilton Pond Center, we like to go out

into our meadows and spend time checking out the Daisy Fleabane

flower

heads, which typically have their own fascinating complement of tiny

bees, flies, and beetles in search of nectar.

Botanists aren't the only creatures who have figured out that Daisy

Fleabane attracts all kinds of little critters. When we were re-

sizing

the lavender fleabane photo (above left) to be used in this week's

essay, we spotted something we had overlooked while taking the

photograph: sticking out to the right from beneath the ray flowers

are

two long slender structures. Not part of the flower, these are two of

the thin but powerful legs of a Crab Spider, which uses them to grasp

an insect that happens to land on its adopted blossom. How

interesting

it is that Daisy Fleabane--employed to keep away fleas--does a far

better job attracting insects, their predators, and curious

naturalists

at Hilton Pond Center.

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