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Individual flowerheads of false boneset are about a half inch long and surrounded by green phyllaries. Each floret (inset) consists of 7-21 creamy-white, tubular florets with five lobes at the tip, and a prominent divided style protruding from the corolla.

Brickellia

Brickellia eupatorioides

false boneset [Blooms: Jul-Aug]

American searocket's flowers are 3/8" across with four green sepals, four widely spread pale lavender to white petals, six stamens, and a pistil with a single white style.

Cakile

Cakile edentula

American searocket [Blooms: Jun-Aug]

The flowers of hedge bindweed are 2-3" long, formed from five white or pink fused petals; the throat of the trumpet is light yellow (less extensive than in field bindweed). The flowers are ephemeral, often lasting only a single day.

Calystegia

Calystegia sepium

hedge bindweed [Blooms: May-Sep]

Wild hyacinth flowers have six slender, light blue to white tepals, six stamens with yellow anthers, and a slender style emerging from a green, egg-shaped ovary; the style has tripartite tip. The flowers are each supported by a slender pedicel. Wild hyacinth is very similar to prairie hyacinth (Camassia angusta), but the latter blooms later, is much less common, has thread-like bracts beneath each flower pedicel, 4-5 thread-like bracts on the flower stalk beneath the flowers, and differ (mostly) in details of the seed capsule. Prairie hyacinth has not yet been found in Jackson Park.

Camassia

Camassia scilloides

wild hyacinth [Blooms: May-Jun]

Shepard's purse flowers bloom only at the stem's tip, which is continually elongating. Individual flowers are tiny (1/8") and have 4 greenish sepals, 4 rounded white petals, 6 greenish-yellow stamens, and a pistil with a single style. Flowers are followed by seedpods ("purses") that are 1/4" long, triangular, or heart-shaped, borne on ascending pedicels (lower part of image.)

Capsella

Capsella bursa-pastoris

shepard's purse [Blooms: Apr-May]

Cutleaf toothwort's flowers are ~1/2" across when fully open; the flowers arise from a slender pedicel as long as the flower, 4 green or purple bluntly-pointed sepals <1/3 the length of the petals, four lavender-white petals, six stamens with yellow anthers, and a single pistil with a flat, discoid stigma.

Cardamine

Cardamine concatenata

cutleaf toothwort [Blooms: Apr-May]

Hairy bittercress flower stalks with stem leaves. Here the three flowers bear seedpods (siliques - narrow cylinders) that elongate directly out of fertilized flowers (which continue bear petals).

Cardamine

Cardamine hirsuta

hairy bitter-cress [Blooms: April]

Pennsylvania bittercress flowers are 1/8" across with 4 light green, oblong sepals that cup the corolla, 4 white petals, 6 cream-colored stamens, and a single robust pistil with a flat, disc-shaped stigma. Fruits are erect, elongate (up to 1.25" long and 1 mm wide), flat-ended cylinders (siliques) containing a single row of seeds that emerge from the center of a fertilized flower while the petals persist.

Cardamine

Cardamine pensylvanica

Pennsylvania bitter-cress [Blooms: April]

Capitate sedge grows 1-2' tall in dense colonies. Each culm (= stem) is triangular in cross section and has an inflorescence about 1.5 cm. long and 1.0 cm. across at its tip. At the base of the inflorescence is a thin leaf (bract) up to 1.5 cm. long. The inflorescence looks like a collection of 5-8 spikey, tightly-clustered tapering stacks (spikelets) of flattened, oval structures sharply pointed at their distal end (the perigynia or florets). Each spikelet measures about 5x5 mm; it contains the actual (highly modified) florets. The male (staminate) florets are located toward the apex of each spikelet (see inflorescence at far left in the image), while the female (pistillate) florets are lower in the spikelet. (Cylindrical clusters of florets are called spikes; ovoid clusters are termed spikelets. Individual sedge flowers — a perigynium or utricle — are usually ovoid, with either 2-3 feathery stigmas or 3 stamens with anthers sticking out of one end. Bisexual flowers do not occur in sedges.)

Carex

Carex cephalophora

capitate sedge [Blooms: May-Jun]

Gray's sedge is the most easily identifiable sedge in Jackson Park — the large, pistillate (female) spikelet (reminiscent of the head of a medieval mace) is unmistakable. Fertile culms of Gray's sedge may reach up to 3' tall, but most plants don't exceed 2.5'. The culms are triangular in section ("three-angled"), light green and unbranched, with a few alternate, dark green leaves (each 5-14" long and 4-10 mm wide) along its length. The leaves have a deep groove along their midline and, usually, secondary folds on either side, producing a V- or W-shaped cross section in the leaves. Fertile culms produce an Inflorescence at their apex consisting of one or more globoid (mace-like) pistillate spikelets (1-1.5' diameter spiky clusters of perigynia that radiate in all directions) and a single staminate spikelet up to 2.5" long and 1-4 mm wide. Each pistillate spikelet has a 3-10" long leaf at its base. Each perigynum in the pistillate spikelets is quite large (12-18 mm long, 4-8 mm wide), an elongate teardrop (lanceolate) shape, with stigmas emerging from the pointed end. The staminate spikelet is at the tip of the culm on the end of a short pedicle, usually yellow-brown in color. The male and female spikelets are labeled; the long, tan-colored anthers (male) and white stigmas (female) are clearly visible in this image.

Carex

Carex grayi

Gray's sedge [Blooms: May-Jul]

Northern catalpa's inflorescence is a pyramidal panicle with 10-30 flowers. Individual flowers are large (~2" across) and trumpet-shaped with two lobes, bright white with purple lines leading towards the corolla's center; two yellow-orange spots are present on the lower lateral edges of the corolla's opening. Two fertile and three sterile stamens, and a single, white style with a bifurcated stigma are present.

Catalpa

Catalpa speciosa

Northern catalpa [Blooms: Jun-Jul]

New Jersey tea flowers occur in panicles ("puffballs") up to 5" long and 3" across on peduncles up to 8" long arising from the tip of stems or axils of a leaf. Flowers are 1/4-3/8" across on 1/4-3/4" stalks; each flower has five triangular white sepals folded inwards towards the flower center; five widely spreading, white spoon-shaped petals with narrow bases and broad tips (tips curled in to heighten the "spoon" impression) emerging from between the incurled sepals; five stamens with whitish-purple anthers; and a three-part style.

Ceanothus

Ceanothus americanus

New Jersey tea [Blooms: Jun-Jul]

American bittersweet side branches occasionally produce panicles of flowers (up to 6" long) at their tips. Male flowers are about 1/4" wide with five light green petals with jagged or undulate margins, five green sepals, and five stamens with yellow anthers and a narrow style rudiment.

Celastrus

Celastrus scandens

American bittersweet [Blooms: Jun-Jul]

Buttonbush is a shrub with golfball-sized white inflorescences studded with long, protruding styles — distinctive and unmistakable. Flowering stalks produce 1-3 spherical flowerheads 3/4-1.5" across completely covered with 100-200 small white flowers. Individual flowers are small (1/3" long), white, with four (sometimes five) lobes at the apex; stamens are short while the styles are very long (~3/8"), yellow-tipped, and projecting well beyond the corolla. Maturing seedheads are bright red, but turn brown when fully ripe.

Cephalanthus

Cephalanthus occidentalis

buttonbush [Blooms: Jun-Jul]

Mouse-ear chickweed has stems up to 1.5' long with long, spreading hairs; the flower stalks and sepals are also covered with fine hairs. The flowers are tiny (<1/4") with five white petals that have deeply notched tips, five sepals as long as the petals, five styles emerging from a green central ovary and ten stamens with yellow anthers. (Other chickweeds have three styles.)

Cerastium

Cerastium fontanum

mouse-ear chickweed [Blooms: Apr-May]

Wild chervil upper stems terminate in up to three clusters of 3-7 small, white flowers (right image). Individual flowers (upper left) are tiny (1/8" across), each with five white petals, five stamens, and a cylindrical green ovary bearing a split style; the sepals are highly reduced. After fertilization, both the cylindrical ovary and the flower stalk elongate; mature fruits (lower left) are usually hairless, about 1/4" long, and contain a single seed.

Chaerophyllum

Chaerophyllum procumbens

wild chervil [Blooms: May-?]

White turtlehead flowers are ~1-1.5" long with a few basal green sepal-like bracts and a green calyx bearing five oval teeth with rounded tips. The cavernous tubular, creamy-white corolla has two large lips — the two-lobed upper lip functions as a hood, while the three-lobed lower lip, "bearded" with wooly hairs, functions as a landing area for pollinators. Inside the corolla is a slim white style that runs along the inside of the upper lobe but turns down sharply at the lip, and five hairy stamens (one of which is green and sterile).

Chelone

Chelone glabra

white turtlehead [Blooms: Sep-Oct]

Enchanter's nightshade produces a raceme of scattered white flowers, 1/8-1/4" across; the flowers have two (deeply notched but otherwise quite pedestrian) white petals, two green sepals at 90° to the petals, two stamens, and a single slender style. At the base of the flower (behind the sepals) is an egg shaped, swollen green ovary; the ovary and the pedicels of the flowers are covered with long, hooked, white hairs. The fruit is a teardrop-shaped, bur-like remnant of the ovary; it contains two seeds. There is no other local plant that could be confused with this species.

Circaea

Circaea canadensis

enchanter's nightshade [Blooms: Jun-Jul]