The Beggartick Plant- A Sought After native Plant



Posted: Thursday, November 19, 2009

by Dennis Sons
tn nursery

Beggar Tick

The habitat of the Beggar Tick grows in slightly shaded, wet places, especially areas that are dry later in the summer. Found along peaty, sandy, or salty shores and often on hummocks or partially submerged and decaying, mossy logs in swamps. Their description is glabrous annual herb with fibrous roots. Upright stems 3-10 dm tall, branched or unbanked, very slender, often red. Opposite leaves , thin and membranous; lower innately compound with 3 leaflets, upper often simple, lanceolate, tapering to a long point at the tip; margins with coarse, forward-pointing teeth. Numerous, small, discoid, slightly orange flower heads , 5 mm tall and 3-10 mm wide; floral rays absent; each flower head subtended by 2-5 smooth, leafy bracts, much longer than disk. Fruit a flattened achene, 3-6 mm long with 2 bristly awns. Look-alikes: Swamp beggar's-tick is most likely to be initially confused with other beggar's-tick species; however, there are a few simple characters that easily differentiate it from the others. The lack of rays on the flower heads and the innately compound leaves eliminates many beggar's-ticks from consideration. Only devil's beggar's-tick and tall beggar's-tick also lack rays and have compound leaves. The up- or downward pointing bristles of the awns can be seen with 10x magnification during any stage of flower or fruit development. If you do not have a 10x hand lenses, hold the achene up to the light and you might be able to see which direction the bristles are pointing. Water-hemlock and water-parsnip also have compound leaves with lanceolate leaflets, but are easily distinguished from beggar's tick, by the alternate leaf arrangement.

There are a few similar species such as in Massachusetts, there are other species of beggar-ticks with simple or lobed leaves that occur in similar habitats as Eaton's beggar-ticks. Estuary beggar-ticks another endangered species, and smooth beggar-ticks are species that occur in tidal river shore communities. Both of these species have leaves that lack petioles, at least near the middle and upper parts of the stem. Also, smooth beggar-ticks have capitula with comparatively large, yellow ray flowers, unlike the tiny ray flowers sometimes found on the capitula of Eaton's beggar-ticks. It is more difficult to tell purple-stemmed beggar-ticks from Eaton's beggar-ticks. This common and wide ranging species is frequent in non-tidal habitats, but also occurs along fresh tidal river shores. It usually has more flowers per capitulum (2065, rarely up to 150) and has cypselas that are diamond-shaped in cross-section and are warty-tuberculation on the faces.

The Beggar's Tick is a very common plant that many people like to stay away from because once you get close to it; it stays on you for a while. The Beggar's Tick gets on ones clothes, skin and hair. But overall it is a beautiful plant to have on your property. You can purchase your Beggar's Tick at TN Nursery or www.tnnursery.net where they have reasonable wholesale prices to meet your needs.

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