Weeds I Like III - Southern Fleabane

Erigeron quercifolia, "Southern Fleabane," or "Oakleaf Fleabane," bloomed vigorously all through March and April, and has gone to seed now. Individual plants will bloom sporadically throughout most of the year, but spring is the time for the big show.

"Big show" is misleading, because this diminutive annual is one of the quiet bloomers. It just does its job, does it well, without fanfare, and in general is overlooked completely. However, in March and April masses of it adorn roadsides bordering ditches and  brackish bays. The pale heads seem to float above the ground like a layer of dew-bedazzled spider webs. Pollinators like it, but most homeowners who know it regard it only as a turf weed, if they are aware of it at all.

I've always liked this plant, yet I can't find any photos or notes, and I have precious few sketches of it.

The heads (see my post from Jan. 25, '18) are no bigger than a dime. Over 100 tiny white or slightly lavender ray flowers surround a central disk packed with bright orange-yellow disk flowers. The plant arises from a basal rosette, with clasping, often lobed, leaves with hairy undersides and edges.  A many-branched inflorescence, with each branch ending in a single head, arises from a central stalk, which is hairy to sandpapery in texture. Leaves on the inflorescence are sparse and smaller than those in the basal rosette. The entire plant grows 8 to 10 inches tall, possibly taller in particularly favorable  habitat.

Erigeron is a large, cosmopolitan genus in the family Asteraceae, or Composite.  The USDA Plants Database shows Erigeron quercifolius growing throughout Florida, west through Louisiana, and north through Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina, but the Flora of North America limits it to the southeast. It likes moist to wet situations, and Tobe, Burks, et. al. classify it as a wetland plant. (Florida Wetland Plants. 1998).

 It actually seems able to cope with fairly dry conditions as well. Though it grows only in part of my swale -  the lowest point on the property, where there must be at least some moisture beneath the rock - it still blooms vigorously in our dry, windy spring conditions.

Canadian fleabane, Erigeron canadensis, is well known in herbal medicine with both external and internal uses. Some of the conditions reportedly treated by it include coughs, lack of appetite, hemorrhages, diarrhea, and kidney and liver problems. The common explanation of how it got its common name is that people thought that the dried plants repelled fleas. A more likely origin is Culpepper's description of the seeds as black, shiny and small like fleas in his 17th century herbal.
(A Comprehensive Description of Nearly All Herbs with their Medicinal Properties and Directions for Compounding the Medicines Extracted from Them. 1652). Southern fleabane probably shares some of these medicinal qualities, though it doesn't seem to have been studied.

This charming little annual probably is a little too wild to be a reliable part of a flower border, but might be a good plant to give interest to a moist meadow. Next year I'll be careful to pay more attention and sketch it more.