Kansas Wildflowers and Grasses - Nodding beggar-ticks

NODDING BEGGAR-TICKS

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Bidens cernua L.

Konza Prairie, Riley County, Kansas

Annual

Height: 8-100 inches

Family: Asteraceae - Sunflower Family

Flowering Period: August, September,October

Also Called:

Nodding bur-marigold, stick-tight.

Stems:

Erect or loosely ascending, branched, mostly glabrous; often rooting at lower nodes.

Leaves:

Opposite or occasionally lowermost in whorls of 3, simple, sessile, linear-lanceolate to oblanceolate, 1.6 to 8+ inches long.4 to 1.8 inch wide; margins finely to coarsely toothed or sometimes nearly entire; surfaces glabrous; tip usually tapering to long point; base wedge-shaped to rounded, usually united around stem.

Inflorescences:

Heads, solitary or several in loose, open clusters, 1 to 2.4 inches across, erect or nodding; stalks .4 to 4 inches long; disk .5 to .8 inch across; outer involucral bracts 5-10, narrowly lanceolate or linear-elliptic, .25 to 1.8 inches long, unequal, leaf-like, spreading or bent downward; margins entire; inner bracts 6-9, lanceolate to narrowly ovate, 1/6 to 1/2 inch long.

Flowers:

Ray florets 6-9, (rarely absent), conspicuous, 1/3 to 2/3 inch long, yellow; disk florets 40-150, 1/8 to 1/6 inch long, orangish-yellow.

Fruits:

Achene, narrowly wedge-shaped, 1/5 to 1/3 inch long, flattened, purplish-brown to purplish-black, 4-angled, with rounded projections and downward pointed barbs, tipped with 2-4 barbed awns, 1/8 to 1/6 inch long, enclosing small seed.

Habitat:

Low, wet sites, stream and river banks, pond and lake margins, ditches, seeps, marshes; wet soil.

Distribution:

Throughout Kansas

Origin:

Native

Comments:

Nodding beggar-ticks is weedy.

Nodding beggar-ticks inflorescence