Green and Gold

Chrysogonum virginianum

Green-and-gold, also called golden star, is a beautiful plant with deep green leaves and bright golden flowers.  There is usually only one flower head, about an inch to an inch and a half wide, although sometimes there are two.  The leaves are oval to triangular and toothed along the edges.  The plants often begin to flower when very small, but continue to grow as flowering progresses.  The stem and leaves are usually hairy.

Green-and-gold is a member of the Asteraceae or Sunflower Family.  This is the largest family of flowering plants in North America, and we have met  a number of members of this family in our earlier Species of the Week, including the very first Species, the prairie ragwort.  Other members of the family include goldenrods, asters, daisies, fleabanes, ragweeds, dandelions, and sunflowers.

In the Asteraceae, what most people would call the flower is really an inflorescence or cluster of flowers.  The flowers come in two kinds, tiny tubular disc flowers in the center, and larger flowers, also tubular but with one side extended way out from the center as a ray flower.  Green-and-gold has a small cluster of yellow disc flowers, seen in the center of the flower heads in the pictures.  In older flowers you can still see the cluster of green sepals after the yellow petals have fallen.  There are also usually five, sometimes six yellow ray flowers arranged around the central disc flowers.  In green-and-gold the ray flowers are fairly wide, and have three teeth at the tip.  These three teeth represent three of the five petals that fused together to form the ray flower; the other two petals stayed small and make up the remainder of the tube at the base of the ray.

In green-and-gold, the central disc flowers have both male and female parts, but the female parts are sterile, so these flowers are functionally male.  The five or six ray flowers, on the other hand, have no male parts at all, and are strictly female.  Only the ray flowers, therefore can produce seeds.

Green-and gold is the only member of the genus Chrysogonum in the entire world.  It is found in open woods, and along wood edges from New York west to Ohio, south to Louisiana and Florida.  In Wildwood, green-and-gold is common on the bluffs above Wildwood Drive, under the powerline, and in the woods above these bluffs.  From North Carolina south and west, the plants spread by sending out stolons, horizontal stems that can take root at the tip, just like strawberries do.  These plants can form spreading colonies, while our plants cannot, and some botanists consider them a separate species, Chrysogonum australe.  However, both kinds are found in the Carolinas, and most botanists consider them varieties of one species.

The origin of the genus name Chrysogonum is unclear.  In the Flora of North America it says that the name comes from the Greek chrysos, meaning "gold" and gonos meaning "seed," presumably referring to the yellow seeds produced by the female ray flowers.  Other books, however, attribute it to chrysos plus the Greek gonu, meaning "knee."  Golden knee is an odd name, but it may perhaps refer to the stems, which are sometimes sharply bent, like a knee.

Look for beautiful green-and-gold as you walk along Wildwood Drive into the Park.  It makes a beautiful contrast with the green and pink of smooth phlox.

GGC