Rough Fleabane (Erigeron strigosus)
- Family: Aster (Asteraceae)
- Flowering: April-October.
- Field Marks: This fleabane is distinguished by its
non-clasping leaves, the lack of spreading hairs on the stem, and
its heads less than 1 inch wide with numerous white rays around a
central disk.
- Habitat: Old fields, roadsides.
- Habit: Coarse annual herb with fibrous roots.
- Stems: Erect, branched, up to 5 feet tall, with
appressed hairs or smooth.
- Leaves: Alternate, simple, linear-lanceolate to
elliptic, pointed at the tip, tapering to the base, sparingly
toothed, or the upper ones without teeth, usually somewhat hairy,
less than 1 inch broad.
- Flowers: Many crowded into a head with several heads
per plant, each head up to 3/4 inch across and subtended by many
narrow, usually hairy, green bracts; the outer flowers about 90-
110, white and ray-like; the inner yellow, tubular, forming a
disk.
- Sepals: 0.
- Petals: Some white, very narrow, ray-like, others
yellow, 5-parted, forming a disk.
- Stamens: 5.
- Pistils: Ovary inferior, hairy.
- Fruits: Achenes pale brown, shiny, hairy, about 1/20
inch long, with a tuft of white bristles.
- Notes: White-tailed deer browse on this species.
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