Pretty picture: Eupatorium sp.

This came very close to being included in the last roadside flowers post, but I didn't use it because it wasn't exactly a roadside flower. Or at least it's not a roadside flower in the usual way; this one was in Iowa City, along the route I used to walk to work, not out in the country minding its own business like they usually are.


The main reason it didn't get included in that last post, though, was because the last post was already plenty long and I didn't want to make it even longer.

I'm not sure on the ID; I'm pretty sure it's a Eupatorium, and I was pretty sure it was E. rugosum, too, until I looked at the illustration of this plant in Wicked Plants. The pictures at davesgarden.com look like this plant, but the illustration for WP has leaves which are a lot narrower.


If it is E. rugosum (Wikipedia claims E. rugosum has been renamed Ageratina altissima, by the way; I have no idea whether this is to be taken seriously), I'm surprised that it can be found in Iowa City, and more surprised to find it growing spontaneously: this was just in a bunch of other weeds along a drainage creek. The way Amy Stewart makes it sound in the book, people put a lot of work into trying to eradicate this plant, because it caused "milk sickness" (the plant poisons cattle that feed on it, and the poison is excreted in the milk, in sufficient quantity to poison humans who drink the milk; Abraham Lincoln's mother is thought to have died this way). If it's popping up in the middle of town, though, either the eradication was kind of half-assed, or it's just really prolific and weedy. Or both.