"
Yet the elecampane has not always led a vagabond existence. Once
it had its passage paid across the Atlantic, because special
virtue was attributed to its thick, mucilaginous roots as a
horse-medicine. For over two thousand years it has been employed
by home doctors in Europe and Asia; and at first Old World
immigrants thought they could not live here without the plant on
their farms. Once given a chance to naturalize itself, no
composite is slow in seizing it. The vigorous elecampane, rearing
its fringy, yellow disks above lichen-covered stone walls in New
England, the Virginia rail fence, and the rank weedy growth along
barbed-wire barriers farther west, now bids fair to cross the
continent.
CUP-PLANT; INDIAN-CUP; RAGGED CUP; ROSIN-PLANT
(Silphium perfoliatum) Thistle family
Plower-heads - Yellow, nearly flat; 2 to 3 in. across; 20 to 30
narrow, pistillate ray florets, about 1 in. long, overlapping in
2 or 3 series around the perfect but sterile disk florets. Stem:
4 to 8 ft.
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