3. Tragopogon pratensis L. (meadow salsify; Jack-go-to-bed-at-noon)

Pl. 263 h, i; Map 1103

Stems 20–80 cm long, not swollen at the tip at flowering, occasionally becoming slightly inflated at fruiting. Leaves 3–30 cm long, usually sometimes curled or recurved at the tip. Involucre 1.2–2.5 cm long at flowering, shorter than to as long as the florets, becoming elongated to 2–4 cm long at fruiting, the bracts 8(–12). Ligulate florets mostly 50–110 per head, the corollas 15–27 mm long, lemon yellow to bright yellow. Pappus 15–27 mm long, off-white to straw-colored or less commonly yellowish tan. Fruits with the body about 10–14 mm long, tapered to a relatively stout beak 4–9 mm long, the expanded disc at the tip densely pubescent with short, woolly hairs, the surfaces straw-colored to tan or yellowish brown. 2n=12. May–August.

Introduced, known thus far only from Nodaway County and the city of St. Louis (native of Europe, introduced nearly throughout the U.S., Canada). Railroads and open, disturbed areas.

Palmer and Steyermark (1935) included T. pratensis from fifteen counties, but Steyermark (1963) redetermined all of these records as representing T. dubius. Nevertheless, one of the specimens appears to represent a valid record of T. pratensis. The St. Louis record, which Steyermark (1963) did accept, resulted from the botanical inventories of the local railyards by Viktor Mühlenbach. The relatively short beak on the fruits is an additional character to help in distinguishing T. pratensis from the far more common T. dubius.

The taxonomy of the T. pratensis complex requires further study. Based on their morphological and cytogenetic studies of materials mostly from the Iberian Peninsula of Spain, Díaz de la Guardia and Blanca (1988) attempted to recognize two taxa within what had been known traditionally as T. pratensis, segregating a second species under the name T. lamottei Rouy. They subsequently (Díaz de la Guardia and Blanca, 1992) argued that the older name T. pratensis should be restricted to plants having only 5 (vs. usually 8) involucral bracts per head, these somewhat shorter and with green (vs. reddish) margins, and the leaves on average shorter and narrower (among other subtle characters). They further characterized T. pratensis in the strict sense as having shorter fruits with a shorter beak than is found in T. lamottei (Blanca and Díaz de la Guardia, 1997). Because populations in North America tend to have 8 bracts per involucre, there has been a temptation to adopt the name T. lamottei for our plants, but in fact, the situation is more complex. North American materials tend to have fruits that are larger and longer-beaked than the sets of measurements given for either taxon by Blanca and Díaz de la Guardia (1997). Ownbey and McCollum’s (1954) karyological studies showed more variation in the chromosomal morphology of North American plants than was accounted for by Díaz de la Guardia and Blanca (1988). The Spanish plants apparently all have swollen stem apices but were said to differ in whether the stem tip was contracted (in T. pratensis) or not (in T. lamottei) just below the base of the head. North American plants have stems that are not or only slightly swollen toward the tip at flowering, sometimes becoming enlarged as the fruits mature, and they appear to be variable for whether there is a constriction at the base of the head. Most recently, preliminary molecular studies of the genus by Mavrodiev et al. (2005) have shown that a sample of T. lamottei from Spain and T. pratensis from the state of Washington are not the same species. The relationship of the Spanish populations to those in the remainder of the range of the complex, including the North American nonnative occurrences, should be studied in much greater detail before the broad, traditional taxonomic concept of T. pratensis is abandoned.