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Elephant’s-foot

2008 September 4

Originally published September 4, 2008
A close-up view reveals the beauty of the tiny disc flowers of elephant’s-foot.
A close-up view reveals the beauty of the tiny disc flowers of elephant’s-foot

By Ken Moore

The current flowering exuberance of local roadsides and fields clearly demonstrates fall’s domination by the great diversity of composites, plants of the aster family. This week’s featured plant is another one of those multiple, tiny-flowered composites.

You probably need not venture beyond your own home ground to find elephant’s-foot, Elephantopus tomentosus. That rosette of leaves lying flat on the ground in your lawn, on a moss-covered ground or on the edge of your driveway or woodland border, may have sparked your curiosity from time to time. My hunch is that most of these leafy rosettes scattered about our well-tended landscapes have been dug out as weeds or regularly mown so as never to have opportunity to send up one- to one-and-a-half-foot-tall flowering stems.

The official name, Elephantopus, from a Greek word, means “like an elephant’s foot.” For years, I’ve quietly imagined a small elephant footprint when gazing down on this plant. There must be a species of this plant in the tropics that has a very large basal rosette for the genus name to have earned association with such a large animal footprint.

Two other common names associated with elephant’s-foot are tobaccoweed and devil’s-grandmother. I can imagine finding this common wildflower on the edge of tobacco fields, but there is no way I’m going to come up with an explanation for devil’s-grandmother without hearing an explanatory story from some old-timer. The Lumbee Indians call it wood’s mullein and describe a poultice of it held on the chest to treat pneumonia. There is no limit to common names for plants.

The flower head is comprised of two to five individual disc or tube flowers. Unlike most other composite disc flowers, these are asymmetrical, with the five-pointed lobes of each flower tube being elongated and radiating out to one side.

Looking down upon a group of these tiny flowers may not be impressive, but getting down on hands and knees for that closer look does reveal another one of nature’s really beautiful creations.

If you discover some of these leafy rosettes in your yard or woods edge, watch over them to make certain they are not disturbed for a whole growing season and you’ll be rewarded with late-summer flowers.

You can get a good look at quite a few of them if you walk along the edge of the road just opposite the construction site at the Botanical Garden. Along both sides of the ditch there you’ll find lots of specimens of elephant’s-foot. It you want to see one that appears to have been on a long intake of steroids, walk back to the west front of the Totten Center and look on the ground at the base of the big trees near the utility post ground cable and you’ll find the world’s record, with multiple stems and dozens and dozens of flower clusters. That clump is impossible to photograph. Several folks have tried, and a photo just does not capture it. You’ll have to see it to believe it. Now that you know what you’re seeing, you’ll discover lots of them.

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