Quebec and the
Northwest Territory to the Gulf States.
No longer classed as a true Solidago, but the type of a distinct
genus, the LANCE-LEAVED, BUSHY, or FRAGRANT GOLDENROD (Euthamia
graminifolia; formerly S. lanceolata) lifts its flat-topped,
tansy-like, fragrant clusters of flower-heads from two to four
feet above moist ground. From July to September it transforms
whole riverbanks, low fields, and roadsides into a veritable El
Dorado. Its numerous leaves are very narrow, lance-shaped, triple
or five nerved, uncut, sometimes with a few resinous dots. Range,
from New Brunswick to the Gulf, and westward to Nebraska.
"Along the roadside, like the flowers of gold
That tawny Incas for their gardens wrought,
Heavy with sunshine droops the goldenrod."
Bewildered by the multitude of species, and wondering at the
enormous number of representatives of many of them, we cannot but
inquire into the cause of such triumphal conquest of a continent
by a single genus. Much is explained simply in the statement that
goldenrods belong to the vast order of Compositae, flowers in
reality made up sometimes of hundreds of minute florets united
into a far-advanced socialistic community having for its motto,
"In union there is strength.
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