Perennial erect herbs, often glandular. Leaves alternate, petioled, odd-pinnate, with smaller leaf-segments interposed between the larger ones, and conspicuous stipules. Flowers small, regular, perfect, yellow, in narrow spicate racemes. Calyx-tube in fruit obconic, hemispheric or turbinate, often grooved, uncinate-bristly above, somewhat constricted at the throat, the 5 lobes connivent. Petals 5, small. Stamens 5-15, slender. Carpels 2, included; style terminal; stigma 2-lobed; ovules pendulous. Fruit dry, mostly reflexed; achenes 1-2, oblong. Seed suspended, its testa membranous. [Ancient Latin name.]

About 15 species, natives of the north temperate zone, Mexico, and the Andes of South America. Besides the following, another occurs in the Southern States. Type species: Agrimonia Eupatoria L.

Racemes and leaves beneath with loose spreading hairs or glabrous.

Roots not tuberous; fruit large, turbinate, with numerous radiating bristles.

1.

A. gryposepala.

Roots tuberous; fruit very small, hemispheric, with few ascending or erect bristles.

2.

A. rostellata.

Racemes and leaves beneath closely or softly pubescent.

Roots tuberous; stems pubescent; leaves not glandular-dotted beneath.

Small, often simple, with elongated terminal raceme; leaflets 3-5.

3.

A. pumila.

Larger, paniculate-branched; leaflets 5-11.

4.

A. mollis.

Roots not tuberous; stems hirsute; leaves glandular-dotted beneath.

Leaflets mostly 7-9; fruit large, the bristles connivent.

5.

A. striata.

Leaflets mostly 11-17; fruit small, the bristles radiate.

6.

A. parvifiora.

1. Agrimonia Gryposépala Wallr. Tall Hairy Agrimony

Fig. 2267

A. Eupatoria hirsnta Muhl. Cat. 47. 1813. Agrimonia hirsuta Bicknell, Bull. Torr. Club 23:

509. 1896. Agrimonia gryposepala Wallr. Beitr. Bot. 1: 49.

1842.

Mostly 3°-4° tall (2°-6°), minutely glandular, villous. Leaves large; leaflets thin, bright green, mostly 7, spreading, elliptic to broadly oblong, or the odd one obovate, apex acute, base often subcordate, coarsely serrate, the margins and nerves beneath ciliate, the lower surface rarely pubescent; interposed leaf-segments ovate, mostly 3 pairs; stipules broad, coarsely cut-toothed; flowers 4"-6" broad, the buds ovoid, acute; fruit reflexed, 3" long, short-turbinate, abruptly contracted at the pedicel, the disk convex, the dilated marginal rim bearing numerous reflexed spreading and erect bristles.

Woods and thickets, Nova Scotia to Minnesota, North Carolina and California. Roots fibrous. Feverfew. Beggar's-ticks. Cockle-bur. Stickweed. Stickseed. June-Aug.

1 Agrimonia Grypos Pala Wallr Tall Hairy Agrimony 609