Preferred Habitat - Dry fields, hillsides, open woods, uplands.
Flowering Season - July-September.
Distribution - North Carolina, Kansas, and California, far north.
When the small, white, overlapping scales of an everlasting's
oblong involucre expand stiff and straight, each pert little
flower-head resembles nothing so much as a miniature pond lily,
only what would be a lily's yellow stamens are in this case the
true flowers, which become brown in drying. It will be noticed
that these tiny florets, so well protected in the center, are of
two different kinds, separated on distinct heads: the female
florets with a tubular, five-cleft corolla, a two-cleft style,
and a copious pappus of hairy bristles; the staminate, or male,
florets more slender, the anthers tailed at the base.
Self-fertilization being, of course, impossible under such an
arrangement, the florets are absolutely dependent upon little
winged pollen carriers, whose sweet reward is well protected for
them from pilfering ants by the cottony substance on the wiry
stem, a device successfully employed by thistles also (q.
Pages:
611
612
613
614
615
616
617
618
619
620
621
622
623
624
625
626
627
628
629
630
631
632
633
634
635