SPECIES DESCRIPTION
BIDENS PILOSA
Family:- COMPOSITAE
Common Names:- Include, 2 black-jack, beggarticks, farmer’s friends and
Spanish needle, but most commonly referred to as cobblers pegs.
Synonyms:- See
Meaning:- Bidens (Gr) Two-teeth (the scales of the fruit apex)
Pilosa (L) Lying flat but not rooting, prostrate.
General description:- Glabrous annual.
Stem:-
1)10-100 cm.
Leaves:-
1) Petiolate, pinnate, with 1(-2) pairs of petiolate pinnae (leaflets of a pinnate leaf)
and a larger, terminal pinna.
2) Pinnae, oblong-lanceolate to ovate, acute or acuminate, margins coarsely
serrate.
Flowers:-
1) Capitula, 5-15 mm diam, erect, longer than wide, at least in fruit.
2) Involucral bracts, outer a little longer than the inner, greenish.
3) Involucral bracts, inner ovate-oblong, blackish, with a scarious margin.
4) Receptacular scales, shorter than the achenes, oblong, scarious, with dark lines.
Fruit:-
1) Achenes 6-8(-12) mm, fusiform, papillose, glabrous, except for a few erect setae
on the ribs.
2) Bristles, 2-3 erecto-patent.
Key features:-
1) Capitula c. 10 mm diam.
2) Achenes fusiform.
Habitat:- A weed of gardens, woodlands, and waste areas.
Distribution:- Native to the Americas but is widely distributed as an introduced
species in other regions worldwide including Eurasia, Africa, Australia, South
America and the Pacific Islands. Previously unrecorded from Crete. Discovered by
Dorothea Hege near Elounda east Crete and a few days later by Christopher
Cheiladakis near the village of Fodele, Heraklion.
Flowering time:- The plant may flower at any time of the year, but mainly in
summer and autumn in temperate regions
Photos by:- Dorothea Hege and Christopher Cheiladakis
