Please help me with this plant ID Found this growing by the side of the road in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Can anyone identify it? Thanks, David
Thanks. Checking around on the web, I see that you are indeed correct on the botanical name. Also that there are a bewildering number of varieties of marigold. What are the distinguishing features that are common among them, if you happen to know? Thanks again, David
This is probably more up Douglas or Daniel's alley, I don't have a lot of reference material for annuals.
From the New RHS Dictionary of Gardening: Tagetes L.(From Tages, an Etruscan deity, grandson of Jupiter, said to have taught the Etruscans soothsaying.) Marigold. Compositae. About 50 species of annual or perennial herbs, to 1.5m. Stems solitary or several, usually more or less erect, variously branched, hairy or glabrous. Leaves opposite, sometimes alternate above, usually pinnatifid or pinnate, conspicuously gland-dotted. Capitula usually radiate, solitary and terminal or in leafy cymose inflorescences, pedunculate; receptacle flat, often small: involucre more or less cylindrical, medially swollen or campanulate; phyllaries in 1 series, 3-10, narrow, united nearly to apex, glandular; ray florets few, red-brown, orange, yellow or white, disc florets several, lobes triangular to lanceolate. Fruit a clavate, elongated cypsela; pappus of 3-10 unequal scales, 1-5 of these linear, awl-shaped, bristle-like, pointed and rough, much longer than the rest. Tropical and warm America, including one species from Africa.
Thanks. There are probably 15 words here that I don't know -- but now is as good a time as any to learn them. - David
