26. ERÍGERON, L. FLEABANE. Heads many-flowered, radiate, mostly flat or hemispherical; the narrow rays very numerous, pistillate. Involucral scales narrow, equal and little imbricated, never coriaceous, foliaceous, nor green-tipped. Receptacle flat or convex, naked. Achenes flattened, usually pubescent and 2-nerved; pappus a single row of capillary bristles, with minuter ones intermixed, or with a distinct short outer pappus of little bristles or chaffy scales.--Herbs, with entire or toothed and generally sessile leaves, and solitary or corymbed naked-pedunculate heads. Disk yellow; ray white or purple. (Name from ἦρ, _spring_, and γέρων, _an old man_, suggested by the hoariness of some vernal species.) § 1. CÆNÒTUS. _Rays inconspicuous, in several rows, scarcely longer than the pappus; pappus simple; annuals._ 1. E. Canadénsis, L. (HORSE-WEED. BUTTER-WEED.) Bristly-hairy; _stem erect, wand-like_ (1--5° high); leaves linear, mostly entire, the radical cut-lobed; _heads_ very numerous and small, cylindrical, _panicled_.--Waste places; a common weed, now widely diffused over the world. July--Oct.--Ligule of the ray-flowers much shorter than the tube, white. 2. E. divaricàtus, Michx. _Diffuse and decumbent_ (3´--1° high); leaves linear or awl-shaped, entire; _heads loosely corymbed; rays purple_; otherwise like n. 1.--Ind. to Minn., and southward. § 2. TRIMORPHÆ̀A. _Like § 1, but a series of filiform rayless pistillate flowers within the outer row of ray-flowers; biennial or sometimes perennial._ 3. E. àcris, L. Hirsute-pubescent or smoothish; stem erect (10--20´ high); leaves lanceolate or the lower spatulate-oblong, entire; heads several or rather numerous, racemose or at length corymbose, nearly hemispherical (4--5´´ long), hirsute; rays purplish or bluish, equalling or a little exceeding the copious pappus.--Lower St. Lawrence, across the continent and northward. The var. DRŒBACHÉNSIS, Blytt, more glabrous and with the green involucre nearly or quite naked, occurs on the shores of L. Superior. (Eu.) § 3. ERIGERON proper. _Rays elongated (short in a form of n. 5), crowded in one or more rows._ [*] _Annuals (or sometimes biennial), leafy-stemmed and branching; pappus double, the outer a crown of minute scales, the inner of deciduous fragile bristles, usually wanting in the ray._ 4. E. ánnuus, Pers. (DAISY FLEABANE. SWEET SCABIOUS.) Stem stout (3--5° high), branched, _beset with spreading hairs; leaves coarsely and sharply toothed; the lowest ovate_, tapering into a margined petiole, the upper ovate-lanceolate, acute and entire at both ends; heads corymbed; rays white, tinged with purple, not twice the length of the bristly involucre.--Fields and waste places; a very common weed. June--Aug. (Nat. in Eu.)