WildFMR

All flowers on Mount Royal, every one of them, fall under the division Magnoliophyta. All but four are of the class Magnoliopsida The Asiatic dayflower is truly unique, and three flowers; the Trillium, Trout Lilly and Jack-in-the-Pulpit, are of the order Lilliopsida. Valerian and Burdock, pictured here, fall directly under main order of Magnoliopsida. One major order of Magnoliopsida, Asterales, accounts for almost half of the flowers on the Mountain. Chicory is of the order Asterales. They all date back some sixty million years, which makes them young compared to the Mountain, which I understand to be at least half a billion years old. By that scale, they are all new arrivals.

 

Knowing these relations allows different trains of thought about these plants, a since of how they diversified in distant lands in distant times, under different conditions. The Burdock is closer to a Thistle than the Chicory is, and the Chicory is closer to the Assure Aster that arrives in the fall. With further work I might be able to update my knowledge all the way to nineteenth-century standards, but for me it is the close proximity and first-hand experience that give it meaning.