Bidens aristosa (Michx.) Britton

Bearded Beggarticks; Midwestern Tickseed Sunflower

Herb

Annual

Vascular

Bearded Beggarticks is a native herbaceous annual or biennial in the Sunflower family (Asteraceae). It can be found throughout Alabama. Bearded Beggarticks occurs in marshes, in roadside ditches, in disturbed woodlands, and in sunny right-of-ways. It is more tolerant of dryer soils than most species in the genus. Bearded Beggarticks is an annual or biennial with a tap root. The stems are erect, 1-4 feet in height, branched, reddish-brown to green in color, and glabrous or slightly hairy. Leaves are opposite, petiolate, pinnately or bi-pinnately compound, the segments lanceolate, glabrous, with serrate margins. Flowers are produced in heads. The heads are arranged in corymbs. Each head is subtended by 8-12 spreading or reflexed linear bracts with ciliate margins. The bracts are not leaf-like. Each head has 8-10 bright yellow ray flowers and 20-40 yellowish disc flowers. The fruit is a flat reddish-brown achene with 0-2 small retrorsely barbed awns. Bearded Beggarticks is available as seed from some native plant nurseries. It prefers a site with full sun and moist to wet soils. Bearded Beggarticks can form large, showy displays along roadsides and right-of-ways under favorable conditions. It can be used as a annual for late season color, or naturalized in prairies, meadows, and along woodland edges.—A. Diamond

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Native

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