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Monthly Archives: June 2008

Saponaria

Wildflower
– Soapwort, Bouncing Bet
(S. Officinalis) (Family: Caryophyllaceae
soapwort
So named because of the sudsy soap-like quality when petals are crushed and rubbed. They come in a variety of showy blooms ranging from white to pink to mauve. Phlox-like and fragrant wildflower. Bounding Bet uses the imagery of the bouncing movement of a washerwoman using a washing board.

Saponaria is native to both North America and Europe. It can be grown very successfully if transplanted early in spring to the garden or grown from seed and does very well, even establishing itself to continue year to year.

Biden or Bidens

– wildflower
biden 003

Bidens is a genus of flowering plants in the aster family, Asteraceae. The common names beggarticks, black jack, burr marigolds, cobbler’s pegs, Spanish needles, stickseeds, tickseeds and tickseed sunflowers refer to the fruits of the plants, most of which are bristly and barbed, with two sharp pappi at the end. The generic name refers to the same character; Bidens comes from the Latin bis (“two”) and dens (“tooth”).

Kingdom: Plantae
(unranked): Angiosperms
(unranked): Eudicots
(unranked): Asterids
Order: Asterales
Family: Asteraceae
Subfamily: Asteroideae
Tribe: Coreopsideae
Genus: Bidens

Propagation

The plants are zoochorous; their seeds will stick to clothing, fur or feathers, and be carried to new habitat. This has enabled them to colonize a wide range, including many oceanic islands. Some of these species occur only in a very restricted range and several are now threatened with extinction, notably in the Hawaiian Islands. Due to the absence of native mammals on these islands, some of the oceanic island taxa have reduced burrs, evolving features that seem to aid in dispersal by the wind instead.

It is on the endangered list, so I do my bit by growing them (wildflower native to British Columbia) on my balcony hoping it will help reseed. It is native to British Columbia and other than that I don’t know too much, feel free to add via comments or email me.

biden 001

Distribution

Bidens is distributed throughout the tropical and warm temperate regions of the world.Most species occur in the Americas, Africa, and Polynesia, and there are some in Europe and Asia. Bidens is closely related to the American genus Coreopsis, and the genera are sometimes difficult to tell apart; in addition, neither is monophyletic.

On the Hawaiian Islands, Bidens are called kokoʻolau or koʻokoʻolau.

Uses

Nodding beggarticks (B. cernua) and hairy beggarticks (B. pilosa) are useful as honey plants. Several Bidens species are used as food by the caterpillars of certain Lepidoptera, such as the noctuid moth Hypercompe hambletoni and the brush-footed butterfly Vanessa cardui, the Painted Lady. The Bidens mottle virus, a plant pathogen, was first isolated from B. pilosa, and it infects many other Asteraceae and plants of other families.

Diversity

The taxonomy of Bidens has been described as “chaotic”, and it is not clear how many taxa are included in its bounds. There are probably at least 150 to 250 species, and some estimates fall around 230.

Species

Species include:

Formerly placed here

Hieracium

– Orange Hawkweed
– Devil’s Paintbrush
(H. aurantiacum)
Family: Asteraceae
Hieracium
Although considered a pernicious weed, the bright orange blooms along paths and roadways are breathtaking. I’ve personally transplanted a few to planters on my balcony. They thrive, blooming more than once, if given good fertilizer, right after a blooming is done.

Blackish hairs on the bracts around flower heads and elsewhere were so reminiscent of coal in their blackishness, that herbalists in the sixteenth century called it Grim the Collier.

Flowers and flower-heads

Hieracium or hawkweeds, like others in the Asteraceae family, have mostly yellow,[11] tightly packed flower-heads of numerous small flowers[8] but, unlike daisies and sunflowers in the same family, they have not two kinds of florets but only strap-shaped (spatulate) florets, each one of which is a complete flower in itself, not lacking stamens,[11] and joined to the stem by leafy bracts. As in other members of the tribe Cichorieae, each ray corolla is tipped by 3 to 5 teeth.[8]

Bracts, stems and leaves

Erect single, glabrous or hairy stems, sometimes branched away from the point of attachment, sometimes branched throughout.

The hairiness of hawkweeds can be very complex: from surfaces with scattered to crowded, tapered, whiplike, straight or curly, smooth to setae; “stellate-pubescent” or surfaces with scattered to crowded, dendritically branched (often called, but seldom truly, “stellate”) hairs; and “stipitate–glandular” or surfaces with scattered to crowded gland-tipped hairs mostly. Surfaces of stems, leaves, peduncles, and phyllaries may be glabrous or may bear one, two, or all three of the types of hairs mentioned above.[12]

Like the other members of the Chicory tribe, hawkweeds contain a milky latex.[11]

Ecology

The Large Yellow Underwing (Noctua pronuba) feeds on Hieracium species.

Distribution

Hieracium species are native to Africa,[12]Asia, Europe, North America,[13] Central America and South America.

Species

Main article: List of Hieracium species

The classification of Hieracium into species is notoriously difficult. One reason is the apomictic reproduction (in which plants asexually produce seeds), which tends to produce a lot of minor geographical variation. Over 9000 species names have been published in Hieracium but some botanists regard many of those as synonyms of larger species.[12]

Europe

North America

The list below is a selection of species that have been accepted by the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service[1] and Canada.[14] A more complete list is given in the list of Hieracium species.

Plant pest

All species of the genus Hieracium are classed as invasive species throughout New Zealand. They are banned from sale, propagation and distribution under the National Pest Plant Accord. Hieracium is a pasture weed that reduces available feed for livestock and displaces the indigenous plants.[15] It is a particular threat in alpine ecosystems previously dominated by native tussocks, though it will colonise habitats from bare ground, to exotic pine forest, to native Southern Beech forest.[16]

In the United States, many species of Hieracium have been introduced and all species present are considered noxious weeds in one or more states.[17]