Missouri ironweed facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Missouri ironweed |
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| Scientific classification | |
| Genus: |
Vernonia
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| Species: |
missurica
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Missouri ironweed (scientific name: Vernonia missurica) is a beautiful plant with bright purple flowers. It's a perennial, which means it lives for more than two years. You can find this plant growing in the central United States. It belongs to the Asteraceae family, which also includes sunflowers and daisies!
Contents
Missouri Ironweed: A Purple Plant
What Does It Look Like?
The Missouri ironweed plant usually grows about 3 to 5 feet (around 1 to 1.5 meters) tall. It can spread out about 3 to 4 feet (around 1 meter) wide. Sometimes, it can even grow taller than 6 feet (almost 2 meters)! Its leaves are dark green and grow in an alternating pattern along the stem.
Beautiful Purple Flowers
The flowers of the Missouri ironweed are a lovely magenta color, which is a bright purplish-red. They bloom from July to August, making the plant very colorful in late summer. Each flower cluster is about 4 to 7 inches long and about half an inch wide. Each cluster has many tiny flowers, called disk florets, usually between 30 and 60 of them.
The main stem of the flower is strong and covered with soft white hairs. The flowers grow close together and do not have ray petals like a daisy. Their stems are also hairy and have a reddish-brown color.
How It Reproduces
Missouri ironweed starts to bloom in late summer and continues into the fall. During this time, many different insects visit the flowers. These visitors help the plant make seeds.
The plant is often visited by bees with long tongues, like bumblebees. Butterflies and skippers also love to visit these purple flowers. If there are no insects to help, the plant can even pollinate itself. This means it can still make seeds on its own!
Where Does It Grow?
This plant likes to grow in damp places. You can find it in woods near rivers and in wet prairies. It also grows in special wet areas called fens and in sedge meadows. These are all places where the soil stays moist.
Who Visits This Plant?
Many different insects help to pollinate the Missouri ironweed. This means they carry pollen from one flower to another, helping the plant reproduce. Some of the bees that visit include bumblebees, epeoline cuckoo bees, halictid bees, and miner bees.
Butterflies and skippers are also frequent visitors to the flowers. While many insects visit, some caterpillars actually eat parts of the plant. These include the Grammia parthenice (Parthenice tiger moth), Perigea xanthioides (red groundling), and Papaipema cerussata (ironweed borer moth).
Interestingly, most plant-eating mammals, like deer, tend to avoid eating Missouri ironweed. This is because the plant has a bitter taste that they don't like.
See also
- In Spanish: Vernonia missurica para niños
