Fragrant Snakeroot
Ageratina herbacea
Aster family (Asteraceae)
Fragrant Snakeweed (Ageratina herbacea) is a woody-based that can grow to 80 tall and to over a wide. Leaves are mainly , notched, from one to three inches long, and a pale yellow/green. Flowers are white, numerous, and showy. The flowers of Ageratina herbacea present a densely packed, swirling confusion of white. The filamentary projections are the which bear their pollen on the underside of the curved tips. About eight-to-twenty flowers are crowded into each head. There are no and the individual flowers are tubular, white (often with tinges of light red just above the ), and only about 1 1/2 millimeters wide. are nearly equal in length and usually in one inner and one outer row. Ageratina herbacea might be mistaken for a Brickellia, especially because of the similar and typical rocky habitat and triangular leaves. But a careful look, especially at the flowers, shows distinct differences.
In 1853 Asa Gray named this plant Eupatorium herbacea from specimens gathered in Mexico by Charles Wright when he participated in the Mexican Boundary Survey of 1851-1852. Edward Greene renamed the plant Ageratina herbacea in 1901. "Ageratina," a name given by Edouard Spach in 1841, is a diminutive of "Ageratum," a many of us know from our garden.
©2012 Keir Morse
