Mystery Plant: New York ironweed, Vernonia noveboracensis

A flash of brilliant red-purple: one way that nature tells us to say good-bye to summer …and this summer is on its way out, although slowly!

Its leaves are dark green, long and pointed, and with saw-tooth margins, and a bit hairy. As with all the members of the aster family, this plant has its small flowers congested into heads. A broad, extensively branched panicle of heads arises at the top of the leafy stem, which can sometimes get to be 8 or 9 feet tall. The stems often lean over. The individual heads are surrounded by a series of small bracts, and each bract has a sharp, needle-like point. The flowers themselves, which may number 40 or more per head, are all tubular: there are no flat "ray" flowers that you see in the heads of sunflowers, goldenrods, daisies, or asters (which are also "composites," a shorthand way of referring to members of this very large, fascinating family.) At the base of each flower is an ovary, which will eventually form a one-seeded achene, a variation of a sunflower seed. Atop the achene is a double ring of short, tawny, pinkish bristles (this is the "pappus"), the inner bristles long and slender, and the outer ones even shorter, and stumpier.