the former beginning at the bottom of a spike or raceme, where
the older, more mature flowers are, and working upward; the wasps
commencing at the top, among the newly opened ones. In spite of
the fact that we usually see hive bees about this plant,
pilfering the generous supply of nectar in each tiny cup, it is
undoubtedly the wasp that is the flower's truest benefactor,
since he carries pollen from the older blossoms of the last
raceme visited to the projecting stigmas of the newly opened
flowers at the top of the next cluster. Manifestly no flower,
even though it were especially adapted to wasps, as this one is,
could exclude bees. About one-third of all its visitors are
wasps.
HAIRY BEARD-TONGUE
(Pentstemon hirsutus; P. pubescens of Gray) Figwort family
Flowers - Dull violet or lilac and white, about 1 in. long, borne
in a loose spike. Calyx 5-parted, the sharply pointed sepals
overlapping; corolla, a gradually inflated tube widening where
the mouth divides into a 2-lobed upper lip and a 3-lobed lower
lip; the throat nearly closed by hairy palate at base of lower
lip; sterile fifth stamen densely bearded for half its length; 4
anther-bearing stamens, the anthers divergent. Stem: 1 to 3 ft.
high, erect, downy above. Leaves: Oblong to lance shape, upper
ones seated on stem; lower ones narrowed into petioles.
Preferred Habitat - Dry or rocky fields, thickets, and open
woods.
Flowering Season - May-July.
Distribution - Ontario to Florida, Manitoba to Texas.
It is the densely bearded, yellow, fifth stamen (pente =five,
stemon = a stamen) which gives this flower its scientific name
and its chief interest to the structural botanist. From the fact
that a blossom has a lip in the center of the lower half of its
corolla, that an insect must use as its landing place, comes the
necessity for the pistil to occupy a central position. Naturally,
a fifth stamen would be only in its way, an encumbrance to be
banished in time. In the figwort, for example, we have seen the
fifth stamen reduced, from long sterility, to a mere scale on the
roof of the corolla tube in other lipped flowers, the useless
organ has disappeared; but in the beard-tongue, it goes through a
series of curious curves from the upper to the under side of the
flower to get out of the way of the pistil. Yet it serves an
admirable purpose in helping close the mouth of the flower, which
the hairy lip alone could not adequately guard against pilferers.
A long-tongued bee, thrusting in his head up to his eyes only,
receives the pollen in his face. The blossom is male (staminate)
in its first stage and female (pistillate) in its second.
While this is the beard-tongue commonly found in the Eastern
United States, particularly southward, and one of the most
beautiful of its clan, the western species have been selected by
the gardeners for hybridizing into those more showy, but often
less charming, flowers now quite extensively cultivated. Several
varieties of these, having escaped from gardens in the East, are
locally common wild.
The LARGE-FLOWERED BEARD-TONGUE (P. grandiflorus), one of the
finest prairie species, whose lavender-blue, bell-shaped corolla
is abruptly dilated above the calyx, measures nearly two inches
long. Its sterile filament, curved over at the summit, is bearded
there only.
Handsomest of all is the COBEA BEARD-TONGUE, a native of the
Southwest, with a broadly rounded, bell-shaped corolla, hairy
without, like the leaves, but smooth within. The pale purple
blossom, delicately suffused with yellow, and pencilled with red
lines - pathfinders for the bees - has the base of its tube
creamy white. Few flowers hang from each stout clammy spike.
The more densely crowded spikes of the large SMOOTH BEARD-TONGUE
(P. glaber), a smaller blue or purple flowered, narrower-leaved
species, that shows an unusual preference for moist soil
throughout its range, is, like the other beard-tongues mentioned,
better known to the British gardener, perhaps, than to Americans,
who have yet to learn the value of many of their wild flowers
under cultivation.
The tall FOXGLOVE BEARD-TONGUE (P. digitalis), with large, showy
white blossoms tinged with purple, the one most commonly grown in
gardens here, escapes on the slightest encouragement to run wild
again from Maine to Virginia, west to Illinois and Arkansas.
Small bees crawl into the broad tube, and butterflies drain the
nectar evidently secreted for long-tongued bees, but without
certainly transferring pollen. To insure cross-fertilization, the
flower first develops its anthers, whose saw-edges grating
against the visitors thorax, aid in sifting out the dry pollen;
and later the style, which when immature clung to the top of the
corolla, lowers its receptive stigma to oppose the bee's
entrance. Professor Robertson has frequently detected the common
wasp nipping holes with her sharp jaws in the base of the tube.
With remarkable intelligence she invariably chose to insert her
tongue at the precise spots where the nectar is stored on either
side of the sterile filament.
BLUE-EYED MARY; INNOCENCE; BROAD-LEAVED COLLINSIA
(Collinsia verna) Figwort family
Flowers - On slender, weak stalks; whorled in axils of upper
leaves. Blue on lower lip of corolla, its middle lobe folded
lengthwise to enclose 4 adhering stamens and pistil; upper lip
white, with scalloped margins; corolla from 1/2 to 3/4 in. long,
its throat about equaling the deeply 5-cleft calyx. Stem: Hoary,
slender, simple or branched, from 6 in. to 2 ft. high. Leaves:
Thin, opposite; upper and more acute ones clasping the stem;
lower, ovate ones on short petioles. Fruit: A round capsule to
which the enlarged calyx adheres.
Preferred Habitat - Moist meadows, woods, and thickets. Flowering
Season - April-June.
Distribution - Western New York and Pennsylvania to Wisconsin,
Kentucky, and Indian Territory.
Next of kin to the great Paulonia tree, whose deliciously sweet,
vanilla-scented, trumpet-shaped violet flowers are happily fast
becoming as common here as in their native Japan, what has this
fragile, odorless blossom of the meadows in common with it?
Apparently nothing; but superficial appearances count for little
or nothing among scientists, to whom the structure of floral
organs is of prime importance; and analysis instantly shows the
close relationship between these dissimilar-looking cousins. Even
without analysis one can readily see that the monkey flower is
not far removed.
Because few writers have arisen as yet in the newly settled
regions of the middle West and Southwest, where blue-eyed Mary
dyes acres of meadow land with her heavenly color, her praises
are little sung in the books, but are loudly buzzed by myriads of
bees that are her most devoted lovers. "I regard the flower as
especially adapted to the early flying bees with abdominal
collecting brushes for pollen - i.e., species of Osmia - and
these bees," says Professor Robertson of Illinois, "although not
the exclusive visitors, are far more abundant and important than
all the other visitors together." For them are the brownish marks
on the palate provided as pathfinders. At the pressure of their
strong heads the palate yields to give them entrance, and at
their removal it springs back to protect the pollen against the
inroads of flies, mining bees, and beetles. As the longer stamens
shed their pollen before the shorter ones mature theirs, bees
must visit the flower several times to collect it all.
MONKEY-FLOWER
(Minulus ringens) Figwort family
Flowers - Purple, violet, or lilac, rarely whitish; about 1 in.
long, solitary, borne on slender footstems from axils of upper
leaves. Calyx prismatic, 5-angled, 5-toothed; corolla irregular,
tubular, narrow in throat, 2-lipped; upper lip 2-lobed, erect;
under lip 3-lobed, spreading; 4 stamens, a long and a short pair,
inserted on corolla tube; pistil with 2-lobed, plate-like stigma.
Stem: Square, erect, usually branched, 1 to 3 ft. high. Leaves:
Opposite, oblong to lance-shaped, saw-edged, mostly seated on
stem.
Preferred Habitat - Swamps, beside streams and ponds.
Flowering Season - June-September.
Distribution - Manitoba, Nebraska, and Texas, eastward to
Atlantic Ocean.
No wader is the square-stemmed Monkey-flower whose grinning
corolla peers at one from grassy tuffets in swamps, from the
brookside, the springy soil of low meadows, and damp hollows
beside the road; but moisture it must have to fill its nectary
and to soften the ground for the easier transit of its creeping
rootstock. Imaginative eyes see what appears to them the gaping
(ringens) face of a little ape or buffoon (mimulus) in this
common flower whose drolleries, such as they are, call forth the
only applause desired - the buzz of insects that become
pollen-laden during the entertainment.
Now the advanced stigma of this flower is peculiarly irritable,
and closes up on contact with an incoming visitor's body, thus
exposing the pollen-laden anthers behind it, and, except in rare
cases, preventing self-fertilization. Delpino was the first to
guess what advantage so sensitive a stigma might mean. Probably
the smaller bees find the tube too long for their short tongues.
The yellow palate, which partially guards the entrance to the
nectary from pilferers, of course serves also as a pathfinder to
the long-tongued bees.
AMERICAN BROOKLIME
(Veronica Americana) Figwort family
Flowers - Light blue to white, usually striped with deep blue or
purple structure of flower similar to that of V. officinalis, but
borne in long, loose racemes branching outward on stems that
spring from axils of most of the leaves. Stem: Without hairs,
usually branched, 6 in. to 3 ft. long, lying partly on ground and
rooting from lower joints. Leaves: Oblong, lance-shaped,
saw-edged, opposite, petioled, and lacking hairs; 1 to 3 in.
long, 1/4 to 1 in. wide. Fruit: A nearly round, compressed, but
not flat, capsule with flat seeds in 2 cells.
Preferred Habitat - In brooks, ponds, ditches, swamps.
Flowering Season - April-September.
Distribution - From Atlantic to Pacific, Alaska to California and
New Mexico, Quebec to Pennsylvania.
This, the perhaps most beautiful native speedwell, whose sheets
of blue along the brookside are so frequently mistaken for masses
of forget-me-nots by the hasty observer, of course shows marked
differences on closer investigation; its tiny blue flowers are
marked with purple pathfinders, and the plant is not hairy, to
mention only two. But the poets of England are responsible for
most of whatever confusion stills lurks in the popular mind
concerning these two flowers. Speedwell, a common medieval
benediction from a friend, equivalent to our farewell or adieu,
and forget - me-not of similar intent, have been used
interchangeably by some writers in connection with parting gifts
of small blue flowers. It was the germander speedwell that in
literature and botanies alike was most commonly known as the
forget-me-not for over two hundred years, or until only fifty
years ago. When the "Mayflower" and her sister ships were
launched; "Speedwell" was considered a happier name for a vessel
than it proved to be.
The WATER SPEEDWELL, or PIMPERNEL (V. Anagallis-aquatica),
differs from the preceding chiefly in having most of its leaves
seated on the stalk, only the lower ones possessing stems, and
those short ones. In autumn the increased growth of sterile
shoots from runners produce almost circular leaves, often two
inches broad, a certain aid to identification.
Another close relation, the MARSH or SKULLCAP SPEEDWELL (V.
scutellata), on the other hand, has long, very slender, acute
leaves, their teeth far apart; and as these three species are the
only members of their clan likely to be found in watery places
within our limits, a close examination of the leaves of any
water-loving plant bearing small four-lobed blue flowers, usually
marked with lines of a deeper blue or purple, should enable one
to correctly name the species. None of these blossoms can be
carried far after being picked; they have a tantalizing habit of
dropping off, leaving a bouquet of tiny green calices chiefly.
Many kinds of bees, wasps, flies, and butterflies fertilize all
these little flowers, which are first staminate, then pistillate,
simply by crawling over them in search of nectar.
COMMON SPEEDWELL; FLUELLIN; PAUL'S BETONY; GROUND-HELE
(Veronica officinalis) Figwort family
Flowers - Pale blue, very small, crowded on spike-like racemes
from axils of leaves, often from alternate axils. Calyx 4-parted;
corolla of 4 lobes, lower lobe commonly narrowest ; 2 divergent
stamens inserted at base and on either side of upper corolla lobe
; a knob-like stigma on solitary pistil. Stem: From 3 to 10 in.
long, hairy, often prostrate, and rooting at joints. Leaves:
Opposite, oblong, obtuse, saw-edged, narrowed at base. Fruit:
Compressed heart-shaped capsule, containing numerous flat seeds.
Preferred Habitat - Dry fields, uplands, open woods.
Flowering Season - May-August.
Distribution - From Michigan and Tennessee eastward, also from
Ontario to Nova Scotia. Probably an immigrant from Europe and
Asia.
An ancient tradition of the Roman Church relates that when Jesus
was on His way to Calvary, He passed the home of a certain Jewish
maiden, who, when she saw the drops of agony on His brow, ran
after Him along the road to wipe His face with her kerchief. This
linen, the monks declared, ever after bore the impress of the
sacred features - vera iconica, the true likeness. When the
Church wished to canonize the pitying maiden, an abbreviated form
of the Latin words was given her, St. Veronica, and her kerchief
became one of the most precious relics at St. Peter's, where it
is said to be still preserved. Medieval flower lovers, whose
piety seems to have been eclipsed only by their imaginations,
named this little flower from a fancied resemblance to the relic.
Of course, special healing virtue was attributed to the square of
pictured linen, and since all could not go to Rome to be cured by
it, naturally the next step was to employ the common, wayside
plant that bore the saint's name. Mental healers will not be
surprised to learn that because of the strong popular belief in
its efficacy to cure all fleshly ills, it actually seemed to
possess miraculous powers. For scrofula it was said to be the
infallible remedy, and presently we find Linnaeus grouping this
flower, and all its relatives under the family name of
Scrofulariaceae. "What's in a name?" Religion, theology,
medicine, folk-lore, metaphysics, what not?
One of the most common wild flowers in England is this same
familiar little blossom of that lovely shade of blue known by
Chinese artists as "the sky after rain." "The prettiest of all
humble roadside flowers I saw," says Burroughs, in "A Glance at
British Wild Flowers." "It is prettier than the violet, and
larger and deeper colored than our houstonia. It is a small and
delicate edition of our hepatica, done in indigo blue, and wonted
to the grass in the fields and by the waysides.
'The little speedwell's darling blue'
sings Tennyson. I saw it blooming with the daisy and buttercup
upon the grave of Carlyle. The tender human and poetic element of
his stern, rocky nature was well expressed by it."
Only as it grows in masses is the speedwell conspicuous - a
sufficient reason for its habit of forming colonies and of
gathering its insignificant blossoms together into dense spikes,
since by these methods it issues a flaunting advertisement of its
nectar. The flower that simplifies dining for insects has its
certain reward in rapidly increased and vigorous descendants. To
save repetition, the reader interested in the process of
fertilization is referred to the account of the Maryland figwort,
since many members of the large family to which both belong
employ the same method of economizing pollen and insuring fertile
seed. In this case visitors have only to crawl over the tiny
blossoms.
>From Labrador to Alaska, throughout almost every section of the
United States, in South America, Europe, and Asia, roams the
THYME-LEAVED SPEEDWELL (V. serpyllifolia), by the help of its
numerous flat seeds, that are easily transported on the wind, and
by its branching stem, that lies partly on the ground, rooting
where the joints touch earth. The small oval leaves, barely half
an inch long, grow in pairs. The tiny blue, or sometimes white,
flowers, with dark pathfinders to the nectary, are borne on
spike-like racemes at the ends of the stem and branches that rear
themselves upward in fields and thickets to display their bloom
before the passing bee.
PALE, or NAKED, or ONE-FLOWERED BROOM-RAPE
(Thalesia uniflora; Aphyllon uniflorum of Gray) Broom-rape
family
Flowers - Violet, rarely white, delicately fragrant, solitary at
end of erect, glandular peduncles. Calyx hairy, bell-shaped,
5-toothed, not half the length of corolla, which is 1 in. or less
long, with curved tube spreading into 2 lips, 5-lobed,
yellow-bearded within; 4 stamens, in pairs, inserted on tube of
corolla ; 1 pistil. Stem: About 1 in. long, scaly, often entirely
underground; the 1 to 4 brownish scape-like peduncles, on which
flowers are borne, from 3 to 8 in. high. Leaves: None. Fruit: An
elongated, egg-shaped, 1-celled capsule containing numerous
seeds.
Preferred Habitat - Damp woods and thickets.
Flowering Season - April-June.
Distribution - British Possessions and United States from coast
to coast, southward to Virginia, and Texas.
A curious, beautiful parasite, fastened on the roots of honest
plants from which it draws its nourishment. The ancestors of this
species, having deserted the path of rectitude ages ago to live
by piracy, gradually lost the use of their leaves, upon which
virtuous plants depend as upon a part of their digestive
apparatus; they grew smaller and smaller, shriveled and dried,
until now that the one-flowered broom-rape sucks its food,
rendered already digestible through another's assimilation, no
leaves remain on its brownish scapes. Disuse of any talent in the
vegetable kingdom, as in the spiritual, leads to inevitable loss:
"Unto every one which hath shall be given; and from him that hath
not, even that he hath shall be taken away."
HAIRY RUELLIA
(Ruellia ciliosa) Acanthus family
Flowers - Pale violet blue, showy, about 2 in. long, solitary or
clustered in the axils or at the end of stem. Calyx of 5
bristle-shaped hairy segments; corolla with very slender tube
expanding above in 5 nearly equal obtuse lobes; stamens 4; pistil
with recurved style. Stem: Hairy, especially above, erect, 1 to 2
1/2 ft. high. Leaves: Opposite, oblong, narrowed at apex, entire,
covered with soft white hairs.
Preferred Habitat - Dry soil.
Flowering Season - June-September.
Distribution - New Jersey southward to the Gulf and westward to
Michigan and Nebraska.
Many charming ruellias from the tropics adorn hothouses and
window gardens in winter; but so far north as the New Jersey pine
barrens, and westward where killing frosts occur, this perennial
proves to be perfectly hardy. In addition to its showy blossoms,
which so successfully invite insects to transfer their pollen,
thereby counteracting the bad effects of close inbreeding, the
plant bears inconspicuous cleistogamous or blind ones also. These
look like arrested buds that never open; but, being fertilized
with their own pollen, ripen abundant seed nevertheless.
One frequently finds holes bitten in these flowers, as in so many
others long of tube or spur. Bumblebees, among the most
intelligent and mischievous of insects, are apt to be the chief
offenders; but wasps are guilty too, and the female carpenter
bee, which ordinarily slits holes to extract nectar, has been
detected in the act of removing circular pieces of the corolla
from this ruellia with which to plug up a thimble-shaped tube in
some decayed tree. Here she deposits an egg on top of a layer of
baby food, consisting of a paste of pollen and nectar, and seals
up the nursery with another bit of leaf or flower, repeating the
process until the long tunnel is filled with eggs and food for
larvae. Then she dies, leaving her entire race apparently
extinct, and living only in embryo for months. This is the bee
which commonly cuts her round plugs from rose leaves.
The SMOOTH RUELLIA (R. strepens), an earlier bloomer than the
preceding, and with a more southerly range, has a shorter,
thicker tube to its handsome blue flower, and lacks the hairs
which guard its relative from crawling pilferers.
BLUETS; INNOCENCE; HOUSTONIA; QUAKER LADIES; QUAKER BONNETS;
VENUS' PRIDE
(Houstonia caerulea) Madder family
Flowers - Very small, light to purplish blue or white, with
yellow center, and borne at end of each erect slender stem that
rises from 3 to 7 in. high. Corolla funnel-shaped, with 4 oval,
pointed, spreading lobes that equal the slender tube in length;
rarely the corolla has more divisions; 4 stamens inserted on tube
of corolla; 2 stigmas; calyx 4-lobed. Leaves: Opposite, seated on
stem, oblong, tiny; the lower ones spatulate. Fruit: A 2-lobed
pod, broader than long, its upper half free from calyx; seeds
deeply concave. Root stock: Slender, spreading, forming dense
tufts.
Preferred Habitat - Moist meadows, wet rocks and banks.
Flowering Season - April-July, or sparsely through summer.
Distribution - Eastern Canada and United States west to Michigan,
south to Georgia and Alabama.
Millions of these dainty wee flowers, scattered through the grass
of moist meadows and by the wayside, reflect the blue and the
serenity of heaven in their pure, upturned faces. Where the white
variety grows, one might think a light snowfall had powdered the
grass, or a milky way of tiny floral stars had streaked a
terrestrial path. Linnaeus named the flower for Dr. Houston, a
young English physician, botanist, and collector, who died in
South America in 1733, after an exhausting tramp about the Gulf
of Mexico.
To secure cross-fertilization, the object toward which so much
marvelous floral organism is directed, this little plant puts
forth two forms of blossoms - one with the stamens in the lower
portion of the corolla tube, and the stigmas exserted; the other
form with the stigmas below, and the stamens elevated to the
mouth of the corolla. But the two kinds do not grow in the same
patch, seed from either producing after its kind. Many insects
visit these blossoms, but chiefly small bees and butterflies.
Conspicuous among the latter is the common little meadow
fritillary (Brenthis bellona), whose tawny, dark-speckled wings
expand and close in apparent ecstasy as he tastes the tiny drop
of nectar in each dainty enameled cup. Coming to feast with his
tongue dusted from anthers nearest the nectary, he pollenizes the
large stigmas of a short-styled blossom without touching its tall
anthers. But it is evident that he could not be depended on to
fertilize the long-styled form, with its smaller stigma, because
of this ability to insert his slender tongue from the side where
it avoids contact. Flies and beetles enter the blossoms, but
small bees are best adapted as all-round benefactors. This
simple-looking blossom, that measures barely half an inch across,
is clever enough to multiply its lovely species a thousand fold,
while many a larger, and therefore one might suppose a wiser,
flower dwindles toward extinction.
John Burroughs found a single bluet in blossom one January, near
Washington, when the clump of earth on which it grew was frozen
solid. A pot of roots gathered in autumn and placed in a sunny
window has sent up a little colony of star-like flowers
throughout a winter.
WILD, COMMON, or CARD TEASEL; GYPSY COMBS
(Dipsacus sylvestris) Teasel family
Flowers - Purple or lilac, small, packed in dense, cylindric
heads, 3 to 4 in. long; growing singly on ends of footstalks, the
flowers set among stiffly pointed, slender scales. Calyx
cup-shaped, 4-toothed. Corolla 4-lobed; stamens 4; leaves of
involucre, slender, bristled, curved upward as high as
flower-head or beyond. Stems: 3 to 6 ft. high, stout, branched,
leafy, with numerous short prickles. Leaves: Opposite,
lance-shaped, seated on stem, with bristles along the stout
midrib.
Preferred Habitat - Roadsides and waste places.
Flowering Season - July-September.
Distribution - Maine to Virginia, westward to Ontario and the
Mississippi. Europe and Asia.
Manufacturers find that no invention can equal the natural teasel
head for raising a nap on woolen cloth, because it breaks at any
serious obstruction, whereas a metal substitute, in such a case,
tears the material. Accordingly, the plant is largely cultivated
in the west of England, and quantities that have been imported
from France and Germany may be seen in wagons on the way to the
factories in any of the woolen-trade towns. After the
flower-heads wither, the stems are cut about eight inches long,
stripped of prickles, to provide a handle, and after drying, the
natural tool is ready for use.
Bristling with armor, the teasel is not often attacked by
browsing cattle. Occasionally even the upper leaf surfaces are
dotted over with prickles enough to tear a tender tongue. This is
a curious feature, for prickles usually grow out of veins. In the
receptacle formed where the bases of the upper leaves grow
together, rain and dew are found collected - a certain cure for
warts, country people say. Venus' Cup, Bath, or Basin, and Water
Thistle, are a few of the teasel's folk names earned by its
curious little tank. In it many small insects are drowned, and
these are supposed to contribute nourishment to the plant; for
Mr. Francis Darwin has noted that protoplasmic filaments reach
out into the liquid.
Owing to the stiff spines which radiate from the flower cluster,
the bumblebees, which principally fertilize it, can reach the
florets only with their heads, and not pollenize them by merely
crawling over them as in the true compositae. But by first
maturing its anthers, then when they have shed their pollen,
elevating its stigmas, the teasel prevents self-fertilization.
HAREBELL or HAIRBELL; BLUE BELLS of SCOTLAND; LADY'S THIMBLE
(Campanula rotundifolia) Bellflower family
Flowers - Bright blue or violet blue, bell-shaped, 1/2 in. long
or over, drooping from hair-like stalks. Calyx of 5-pointed,
narrow, spreading lobes; slender stamens alternate with lobes of
corolla, and borne on summit of calyx tube, which is adherent to
ovary; pistil with 3 stigmas in maturity only. Stem: Very
slender, 6 in. to 3 ft. high, often several from same root;
simple or branching. Leaves: Lower ones nearly round, usually
withered and gone by flowering season; stem leaves narrow,
pointed, seated on stem. Fruit: An egg-shaped, pendent, 3-celled
capsule with short openings near base; seeds very numerous, tiny.
Preferred Habitat - Moist rocks, uplands.
Flowering Season - June-September.
Distribution - Arctic regions of Europe, Asia, and America;
southward on this continent, through Canada to New Jersey and
Pennsylvania; westward to Nebraska, to Arizona in the Rockies,
and to California in the Sierra Nevadas.
The inaccessible crevice of a precipice, moist rocks sprayed with
the dashing waters of a lake or some tumbling mountain stream,
wind-swept upland meadows, and shady places by the roadside may
hold bright bunches of these hardy bells, swaying with exquisite
grace on tremulous, hair-like stems that are fitted to withstand
the fiercest mountain blasts, however frail they appear. How
dainty, slender, tempting these little flowers are! One gladly
risks a watery grave or broken bones to bring down a bunch from
its aerial cranny.
It was a long stride forward in the evolutionary scale when the
harebell welded its five once separate petals together; first at
the base, then farther and farther up the sides, until a solid
bell-shaped structure resulted. This arrangement which makes
insect fertilization a more certain process because none of the
pollen is lost through apertures, and because the visitor must
enter the flower only at the vital point where the stigmas come
in contact with his pollen-laden body, has given to all the
flowers that have attained to it, marked ascendency.
Like most inverted blossoms, the harebell hangs its head to
protect its nectar and pollen, not only from rain, but from the
intrusion of undesirable crawling insects which would simply
brush off its pollen in the grass before reaching the pistil of
another flower, and so defeat cross-fertilization, the end and
aim of so many blossoms. Advertising for winged insects by its
bright color, the harebell attracts bees, butterflies, and many
others. These visitors cannot well walk on the upright petals,
and sooner or later must clasp the pistil if they would secure
the nectar secreted at the base. In doing so, they will dust
themselves and the immature pistil with the pollen from the
surrounding anthers; but a newly opened flower is incapable of
fertilization. The pollen, although partially discharged in the
unopened bud, is prevented from falling out by a coat of hairs on
the upper part of the style. By the time all the pollen has been
removed by visitors, however, and the stamens which matured early
have withered, the pistil has grown longer, until it looks like
the clapper in a bell; the stigma at its top has separated into
three horizontal lobes which, being sticky on the under side, a
pollen-laden insect on entering the bell must certainly brush
against them and render them fertile. But bumblebees, its chief
benefactors, and others may not have done their duty by the
flower; what then? Why, the stigmas in that case finally bend
backward to reach the left over pollen, and fertilize themselves,
obviously the next best thing for them to do. How one's reverence
increases when one begins to understand, be it ever so little of,
the divine plan!
"Probably the most striking blue and purple wild flowers we
have," says John Burroughs, "are of European origin. These
colors, except with the fall asters and gentians, seem rather
unstable in our flora." This theory is certainly borne out in the
case of the RAMPION, EUROPEAN, or CREEPING BELLFLOWER (C.
rapunculoides), now detected in the act of escaping from gardens
from New Brunswick to Ontario, Southern New York, Pennsylvania,
and Ohio, and making itself very much at home in our fields and
along the waysides. Compared with the delicate little harebell,
it is a plant of rank, rigid habit. Its erect, rather stout stem,
set with elongated oval, hairy, alternate leaves, and crowned
with a one-sided raceme of widely expanded, purple-blue bells
rising about two feet above the ground, has little of the
exquisite grace of its cousin. It blooms from July to September.
This is the species whose roots are eaten by the omnivorous
European peasant.
One of the few native campanulas, the TALL BELLFLOWER (C.
Americana), waves long, slender wands studded with blue or
sometimes whitish flowers high above the ground of moist thickets
and woods throughout the eastern half of this country, but rarely
near the sea. Doubtless the salt air, which intensifies the color
of so many flowers, would brighten its rather slatey blue. The
corolla, which is flat, round, about an inch across, and deeply
cleft into five pointed petals, has the effect of a miniature
pinwheel in motion. Mature flowers have the style elongated, bent
downward, then curved upward, that the stigmas may certainly be
in the way of the visiting insect pollen-laden from an earlier
bloomer, and be cross-fertilized. The larger bees, its
benefactors, which visit it for nectar, touch only the upper side
of the style, on which they must alight; but the anthers waste
pollen by shedding it on all sides. No insect can take shelter
from rain or pass the night in this flower, as he frequently does
in its more hospitable relative, the harebell. English gardeners,
more appreciative than our own of our native flora, frequently
utilize this charming plant in their rockwork, increasing their
stock by a division of the dense, leafy rosettes.
VENUS' LOOKING-GLASS; CLASPING BELLFLOWER
(Legouzia perfoliata; Specularia perfoliata of Gray)
Bellflower family
Flowers - Violet blue, from 1/2 to 3/4 in. across; solitary or 2
or 3 together, seated, in axils of upper leaves. Calyx lobes
varying from 3 to 5 in earlier and later flowers, acute, rigid;
corolla a 5-spoked wheel; 5 stamens; pistil with 3 stigmas. Stem:
6 in. to 2 ft. long, hairy, densely leafy, slender, weak. Leaves:
Round, clasped about stem by heart-shaped base.
Preferred Habitat - Sterile waste places, dry woods.
Flowering Season - May-September.
Distribution - From British Columbia, Oregon, and Mexico, east to
Atlantic Ocean.
At the top of a gradually lengthened and apparently overburdened
leafy stalk, weakly leaning upon surrounding vegetation, a few
perfect blossoms spread their violet wheels, while below them
insignificant earlier flowers, which, although they have never
opened, nor reared their heads above the hollows of the little
shell-like leaves where they lie secluded, have, nevertheless,
been producing seed without imported pollen while their showy
sisters slept. But the later blooms, by attracting insects, set
cross-fertilized seed to counteract any evil tendencies that
might weaken the species if it depended upon self-fertilization
only. When the European Venus' looking-glass used to be
cultivated in gardens here, our grandmothers tell us it was
altogether too prolific, crowding out of existence its less
fruitful, but more lovely, neighbors.
The SMALL VENUS' LOOKING-GLASS (L. biflora), of similar habit to
the preceding, but with egg-shaped or oblong leaves seated on,
not clasping, its smooth and very slender stem, grows in the
South and westward to California.
GREAT LOBELIA; BLUE CARDINAL-FLOWER
(Lobelia syphilitica) Bellflower family
Flowers - Bright blue, touched with white, fading to pale blue,
about 1 in. long, borne on tall, erect, leafy spike. Calyx
5-parted, the lobes sharply cut, hairy. Corolla tubular, open to
base on one side, 2-lipped, irregularly 5-lobed, the petals
pronounced at maturity only. Stamens 5, united by their hairy
anthers into a tube around the style; larger anthers smooth.
Stem: 1 to 3 ft. high, stout, simple, leafy, slightly hairy.
Leaves: Alternate, oblong, tapering, pointed, irregularly
toothed, 2 to 6 in. long, 1/2 to 2 in. wide.
Preferred Habitat - Moist or wet soil; beside streams.
Flowering Season - July-October
Distribution - Ontario and northern United States west to Dakota,
south to Kansas and Georgia.
To the evolutionist, ever on the lookout for connecting links,
the lobelias form an interesting group, because their corolla,
slit down the upper side and somewhat flattened, shows the
beginning of the tendency toward the strap or ray flowers that
are nearly confined to the composites of much later development,
of course, than tubular single blossoms. Next to massing their
flowers in showy heads, as the composites do, the lobelias have
the almost equally advantageous plan of crowding theirs along a
stem so as to make a conspicuous advertisement to attract the
passing bee and to offer him the special inducement of numerous
feeding places close together.
The handsome GREAT LOBELIA, constantly and invidiously compared
with its gorgeous sister the cardinal flower, suffers unfairly.
When asked what his favorite color was, Eugene Field replied:
"Why, I like any color at all so long as it's red!" Most men, at
least, agree with him, and certainly hummingbirds do; our
scarcity of red flowers being due, we must believe, to the
scarcity of hummingbirds, which chiefly fertilize them. But how
bees love the blue blossoms!
There are many cases where the pistil of a flower necessarily
comes in contact with its own pollen, yet fertilization does not
take place, however improbable this may appear. Most orchids, for
example, are not susceptible to their own pollen. It would seem
as if our lobelia, in elevating its stigma through the ring
formed by the united anthers, must come in contact with some of
the pollen they have previously discharged from their tips, not
only on the bumblebee that shakes it out of them when he jars the
flower, but also within the tube. But when the anthers are
mature, the two lobes of the still immature stigma are pressed
together, and cannot be fertilized. Nevertheless, the hairy tips
of some of the anthers brush off the pollen grains that may have
lodged on the stigma as it passes through the ring in its ascent,
thus making surety doubly sure. Only after the stigma projects
beyond the ring of anthers does it expand its lobes, which are
now ready to receive pollen brought from another later flower by
the incoming bumblebee to which it is adapted.
Linnaeus named this group of plants for Matthias de l'Obel, a
Flemish botanist, or herbalist more likely, who became physician
to James I. of England.
Preferably in dry, sandy soil or in meadows, and over a wide
range, the slender, straight shoots of PALE SPIKED LOBELIA (L.
spicata) bloom early and throughout the summer months, the
inflorescence itself sometimes reaching a height of two feet. At
the base of the plant there is usually a tuft of broadly oblong
leaves; those higher up narrow first into spoon-shaped, then into
pointed, bracts, along the thick and gradually lengthened spike
of scattered bloom. The flowers are oft en pale enough to be
called white. Like their relatives, they first ripen their
anthers to prevent self-fertilization.
The lithe, graceful little BROOK LOBELIA (L. Kalmii), whose
light-blue flowers, at the end of thread-like footstems, form a
loose raceme, sways with a company of its fellows among the grass
on wet banks, beside meadow runnels and brooks, particularly in
limestone soil, from Nova Scotia to the Northwest Territory and
southward to New Jersey. It bears an insignificant capsule, not
inflated like the Indian tobacco's; and long, narrow,
spoon-shaped leaves. Twenty inches is the greatest height this
little plant may hope to attain.
Not only beside water, and in it, but often totally immersed,
grows the WATER LOBELIA or GLADIOLE (L. Dortmanna). The slender,
hollow, smooth stem rises from a submerged tuft of round, hollow,
fleshy leaves longitudinally divided by a partition, and bears at
the top a scattered array of pale-blue flowers from August to
September.
INDIAN or WILD TOBACCO; GAG-ROOT; ASTHMA-WEED; BLADDER-POD
LOBELIA
(Lobelia inflata) Bellflower family
Flowers - Pale blue or violet, small, borne at short intervals in
spike-like leafy racemes. Calyx 5-parted, its awl-shaped lobes
1/4 in. long, or as long as the tubular, 2-lipped, 5-cleft,
corolla that opens to base of tube on upper side. Stamens, 5
united by their hairy anthers into a ring around the 2-lobed
style. Stem: From 1 to 3 feet high, hairy, very acrid, much
branched, leafy. Leaves: Alternate, oblong or ovate, toothed, the
upper ones acute, seated on stem; lower ones obtuse, petioled, to
2 1/2 in. long. Fruit: A much inflated, rounded, ribbed, many
seeded capsule.
Preferred Habitat - Dry fields and thickets; poor soil.
Flowering Season - July-November.
Distribution - Labrador westward to the Missouri River, south to
Arkansas and Georgia.
The most stupid of the lower animals knows enough to let this
poisonous, acrid plant alone; but not so man, who formerly made a
quack medicine from it in the days when a drug that set one's
internal organism on fire was supposed to be especially
beneficial. One taste of the plant gives a realizing sense of its
value as an emetic. How the red man enjoyed smoking and chewing
the bitter leaves, except for the drowsiness that followed, is a
mystery.
On account of the smallness of its flowers and their scantiness,
the Indian tobacco is perhaps the least attractive of the
lobelias, none of which has so inflated a seed vessel, the
distinguishing characteristic of this common plant.
CHICORY; SUCCORY; BLUE SAILORS; BUNK
(Cichorium Intybus) Chicory family
Flower-head - Bright, deep azure to gray blue, rarely pinkish or
white, 1 to 1 1/2 in. broad, set close to stem, often in small
clusters for nearly the entire length; each head a composite of
ray flowers only, 5-toothed at upper edge, and set in a flat
green receptacle. Stem: Rigid, branching, to 3 ft. high. Leaves:
Lower ones spreading on ground, 3 to 6 in. long, spatulate, with
deeply cut or irregular edges, narrowed into petioles, from a
deep tap-root; upper leaves of stem and branches minute,
bract-like.
Preferred Habitat - Roadsides, waste places, fields.
Flowering Season - July-October.
Distribuition - Common in Eastern United States and Canada, south
to the Carolinas; also sparingly westward to Nebraska.
At least the dried and ground root of this European invader is
known to hosts of people who buy it undisguised or not, according
as they count it an improvement to their coffee or a disagreeable
adulterant. So great is the demand for chicory that,
notwithstanding its cheapness, it is often in its turn
adulterated with roasted wheat, rye, acorns, and carrots. Forced
and blanched in a warm, dark place, the bitter leaves find a
ready market as a salad known as "barbe de Capucin" by the
fanciful French. Endive and dandelion, the chicory's relatives,
appear on the table too, in spring, where people have learned the
possibilities of salads, as they certainly have in Europe.
>From the depth to which the tap-root penetrates, it is not
unlikely the succory derived its name from the Latin succurrere =
to run under. The Arabic name chicourey testifies to the almost
universal influence of Arabian physicians and writers in Europe
after the Conquest. As chicoree, achicoria, chicoria, cicorea,
chicorie, cichorei, cikorie, tsikorei, and cicorie the plant is
known respectively to the French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italians,
Germans, Dutch, Swedes, Russians, and Danes.
On cloudy days or in the morning only throughout midsummer the
"peasant posy" opens its "dear blue eyes"
"Where tired feet
Toil to and fro;
Where flaunting Sin
May see thy heavenly hue,
Or weary Sorrow look from thee
Toward a tenderer blue!"
- Margaret Deland.
In his "Humble Bee" Emerson, too, sees only beauty in the
"Succory to match the sky;" but, mirabile dictu, Vergil, rarely
caught in a prosaic, practical mood, wrote, "And spreading
succ'ry chokes the rising field."
IRON-WEED; FLAT TOP
(Vernonia Noveboracensis) Thistle family.
Flower-head - Composite of tubular florets only, intense
reddish-purple thistle-like heads, borne on short, branched
peduncles and forming broad, flat clusters; bracts of involucre,
brownish purple, tipped with awl-shaped bristles. Stem: 3 to 9
ft. high, rough or hairy, branched. Leaves: Alternate, narrowly
oblong or lanceolate, saw-edged, 3 to 10 in. long, rough.
Preferred Habitat - Moist soil, meadows, fields.
Flowering Season - July-September.
Distribution - Massachusetts to Georgia, and westward to the
Mississippi.
Emerson says a weed is a plant whose virtues we have not yet
discovered; but surely it is no small virtue in the iron-weed to
brighten the roadsides and low meadows throughout the summer with
bright clusters of bloom. When it is on the wane, the asters, for
which it is sometimes mistaken, begin to appear, but an instant's
comparison shows the difference between the two flowers. After
noting the yellow disk in the center of an aster, it is not
likely the iron-weed's thistle-like head of ray florets only will
ever again be confused with it. Another rank-growing neighbor
with which it has been confounded by the novice is the Joe Pye
weed, a far paler, pinkish flower.
To each tiny floret, secreting nectar in its tube, many insects,
attracted by the bright color of the iron-weed standing high
above surrounding vegetation, come to feast. Long-lipped bees and
flies rest awhile for refreshment, but butterflies of many
beautiful kinds are by far the most abundant visitors. Pollen
carried out by the long, hairy styles as they extend to maturity
must attach itself to their tongues. The tiger swallow-tail
butterfly appears to have a special preference for this flower.
(See Self-Heal.)
COMMON or SCALY BLAZING STAR; COLIC-ROOT; RATTLESNAKE MASTER;
BUTTON SNAKEROOT
(Lacinaria squarrosa; Liatris squarrosa of Gray) Thistle
family
Flower-heads - Composite, about 1 in. long, bright purple or rose
purple, of tubular florets only, from an involucre of
overlapping, rigid, pointed bracts; each of the few flower-heads
from the leaf axils along a slender stem in a wand-like raceme.
Stem: 1/2 to 2 ft. high. Leaves: Alternate, narrow, entire.
Preferred habitat - Dry, rich soil.
Flowering Season - June-September.
Distribution - Ontario to the Gulf of Mexico, westward to
Nebraska.
Beginning at the top, the apparently fringed flower-heads open
downward along the wand, whose length depends upon the richness
of the soil. All of the flowers are perfect and attract
long-tongued bees and flies (especially Exoprosopa fasciata) and
butterflies, which, as they sip from the corolla tube, receive
the pollen carried out and exposed on the long divisions of the
style. Some people have pretended to cure rattlesnake bites with
applications of the globular tuber of this and the next species.
The LARGE BUTTON SNAKEROOT, BLUE BLAZING STAR, or GAY FEATHER (L.
scariosa), may attain six feet, but usually not more than half
that height; and its round flower-heads normally stand well away
from the stout stem on foot-stems of their own. The bristling
scales of the involucre, often tinged with purple at the tips,
are a conspicuous feature. With much the same range and choice of
habitat as the last species, this Blazing Star is a later
bloomer, coming into flower in August, and helping the goldenrods
and asters brighten the landscape throughout the early autumn.
The name of gay feather, miscellaneously applied to several
blazing stars, is especially deserved by this showy beauty of the
family.
Unlike others of its class, the DENSE BUTTON SNAKEROOT, DEVIL'S
BIT, ROUGH or BACKACHE ROOT, PRAIRIE PINE or THROATWORT (L.
spicata), the commonest species we have, chooses moist soil, even
salt marshes near the coast, and low meadows throughout a range
nearly corresponding with that of the scaly blazing star.
Resembling its relatives in general manner of growth, we note
that its oblong involucre, rounded at the base, has blunt, not
sharply pointed, bracts; that the flower-heads are densely set
close to the wand for from four to fifteen inches; that the five
to thirteen bright rose-purple florets which compose each head
occasionally come white; that its leaves are long and very
narrow, and that October is not too late to find the plant in
bloom.
BLUE and PURPLE ASTERS or STARWORTS
Thistle family
Evolution teaches us that thistles, daisies, sunflowers, asters,
and all the triumphant horde of composites were once very
different flowers from what we see today. Through ages of natural
selection of the fittest among their ancestral types, having
finally arrived at the most successful adaptation of their
various parts to their surroundings in the whole floral kingdom,
they are now overrunning the earth. Doubtless the aster's remote
ancestors were simple green leaves around the vital organs, and
depended upon the wind, as the grasses do - a most extravagant
method - to transfer their pollen. Then some rudimentary flower
changed its outer row of stamens into petals, which gradually
took on color to attract insects and insure a more economical
method of transfer. Gardeners today take advantage of a blossom's
natural tendency to change stamens into petals when they wish to
produce double flowers. As flowers and insects developed side by
side, and there came to be a better and better understanding
between them of each other's requirements, mutual adaptation
followed. The flower that offered the best advertisement, as the
composites do, by its showy rays; that secreted nectar in tubular
flowers where no useless insect could pilfer it; that fastened
its stamens to the inside wall of the tube where they must dust
with pollen the underside of every insect, unwittingly
cross-fertilizing the blossom as he crawled over it; that massed
a great number of these tubular florets together where insects
might readily discover them and feast with the least possible
loss of time - this flower became the winner in life's race.
Small wonder that our June fields are white with daisies and the
autumn landscape is glorified with goldenrod and asters!
Since North America boasts the greater part of the two hundred
and fifty asters named by scientists, and as variations in many
of our common species frequently occur, the tyro need expect no
easy task in identifying every one he meets afield. However, the
following are possible acquaintances to everyone:
In dry, shady places the LARGE or BROAD-LEAVED ASTER (A.
macrophyllus), so called from its three or four conspicuous,
heart-shaped leaves on long petioles, in a clump next the ground,
may be more easily identified by these than by the pale lavender
or violet flower-heads of about sixteen rays each which crown its
reddish angular stem in August and September. The disk turns
reddish brown.
In prairie soil, especially about the edges of woods in western
New York, southward and westward to Texas and Minnesota, the
beautiful SKY-BLUE ASTER (A. azureus) blooms from August till
after frost. Its slender, stiff, rough stem branches above to
display the numerous bright blue flowers, whose ten to twenty
rays measure only about a quarter of an inch in length. The upper
leaves are reduced to small flat bracts; the next are linear; and
the lower ones, which approach a heart shape, are rough on both
sides, and may be five or six inches long.
Much more branched and bushy is the COMMON BLUE, BRANCHING, WOOD,
or HEART-LEAVED ASTER (A. cordifolius), whose generous masses of
small, pale lavender flower-heads look like a mist hanging from
one to five feet above the earth in and about the woods and shady
roadsides from September even to December in favored places.
The WAVY or VARIOUS-LEAVED ASTER or SMALL FLEABANE (A. undulatus)
has a stiff, rough, hairy, widely branching stalk, whose thick,
rough lowest leaves are heart-shaped and set on long foot-stems;
above these, the leaves have shorter stems, dilating where they
clasp the stalk; the upper leaves, lacking stems, are seated on
it, while those of the branches are shaped like tiny awls. The
flowers, which measure less than an inch across, often grow along
one side of an axis as well as in the usual raceme. Eight to
fifteen pale blue to violet rays surround the disks which, yellow
at first, become reddish brown in maturity. We find the plant in
dry soil, blooming in September and October.
By no means tardy, the LATE PURPLE ASTER, so-called, or PURPLE
DAISY (A. patens), begins to display its purplish-blue,
daisy-like flower-heads early in August, and farther north may be
found in dry, exposed places only until October. Rarely the
solitary flowers, that are an inch across or more, are a deep,
rich violet. The twenty to thirty rays which surround the disk,
curling inward to dry, expose the vase-shaped, green, shingled
cups that terminate each little branch. The thick, somewhat
rigid, oblong leaves, tapering at the tip, broaden at the base to
clasp the rough, slender stalk. Range similar to the next
species.
Certainly from Massachusetts, northern New York, and Minnesota
southward to the Gulf of Mexico one may expect to find the NEW
ENGLAND ASTER or STARWORT (A. Novae-Angliae) one of the most
striking and widely distributed of the tribe, in spite of its
local name. It is not unknown in Canada. The branching clusters
of violet or magenta-purple flower-heads, from one to two inches
across - composites containing as many as forty to fifty purple
ray florets around a multitude of perfect five-lobed, tubular,
yellow disk florets in a sticky cup - shine out with royal
splendor above the swamps, moist fields, and roadsides from
August to October. The stout, bristle-hairy stem bears a quantity
of alternate lance-shaped leaves lobed at the base where they
clasp it.
In even wetter ground we find the RED-STALKED, PURPLE-STEMMED, or
EARLY PURPLE ASTER, COCASH, SWANWEED, or MEADOW SCABISH (A.
puniceus) blooming as early as July or as late as November. Its
stout, rigid stem, bristling with rigid hairs, may reach a height
of eight feet to display the branching clusters of pale violet or
lavender flowers. The long, blade-like leaves, usually very rough
above and hairy along the midrib beneath, are seated on the stem.
The lovely SMOOTH or BLUE ASTER (A. laevis), whose sky-blue or
violet flower-heads, about one inch broad, are common through
September and October in dry soil and open woods, has strongly
clasping, oblong, tapering leaves, rough margined, but rarely
with a saw-tooth, toward the top of the stem, while those low
down on it gradually narrow into clasping wings.
In dry, sandy soil, mostly near the coast, from Massachusetts to
Delaware, grows one of the loveliest of all this beautiful clan,
the LOW, SHOWY, or SEASIDE PURPLE ASTER (A. spectabilis). The
stiff, usually unbranched stem does its best in attaining a
height of two feet. Above, the leaves are blade-like or narrowly
oblong, seated on the stem, whereas the tapering, oval basal
leaves are furnished with long footstems, as is customary with
most asters. The handsome, bright, violet-purple flower-heads,
measuring about an inch and a half across, have from fifteen to
thirty rays, or only about half as many as the familiar New
England aster. Season August to November.
The low-growing BOG ASTER (A. nemoralis), not to be confused with
the much taller Red-stalked species often found growing in the
same swamp, and having, like it, flower-heads measuring about an
inch and a half across, has rays that vary from light violet
purple to rose pink. Its oblong to lance-shaped leaves, only two
inches long at best, taper to a point at both ends, and are
seated on the stem. We look for this aster in sandy bogs from New
Jersey northward and westward during August and September.
The STIFF or SAVORY-LEAVED ASTER, SANDPAPER, or PINE STARWORT
(Ionactis linariifolius), now separated from the other asters
into a genus by itself, is a low, branching little plant with no
basal leaves, but some that are very narrow and blade-like,
rigid, entire and one-nerved, ascending the stiff stems. The
leaves along the branches are minute and awl-shaped, like those
on a branch of pine. Only from ten to fifteen violet ray flowers
(pistillate) surround the perfect disk florets. From Quebec to
the Gulf of Mexico, and westward beyond the Mississippi this prim
little shrub grows in tufts on dry or rocky soil, and blooms from
July to October.
ROBIN'S, or POOR ROBIN'S, or ROBERT'S PLANTAIN; BLUE SPRING
DAISY; DAISY-LEAVED FLEABANE
(Erigeron pulchellus; E. bellifolium of Gray) Thistle family
Flower-heads - Composite, daisy-like, 1 to 1/2 in. across; the
outer circle of about 50 pale bluish-violet ray florets; the disk
florets greenish yellow. Stem: Simple, erect, hairy, juicy,
flexible, from 10 in. to 2 ft. high, producing runners and
offsets from base. Leaves: Spatulate, in a flat tuft about the
root; stem leaves narrow, more acute, seated, or partly clasping.
Preferred Habitat - Moist ground, hills, banks, grassy fields.
Flowering Season - April-June.
Distribution - United States and Canada, east of the Mississippi.
Like an aster blooming long before its season, Robin's plantain
wears a finely cut lavender fringe around a yellow disk of minute
florets; but one of the first, not the last, in the long
procession of composites has appeared when we see gay companies
of these flowers nodding their heads above the grass in the
spring breezes as if they were village gossips.
Doubtless it was the necessity for attracting insects which led
the Robin's plantain and other composites to group a quantity of
minute florets, each one of which was once an independent,
detached blossom, into a common head. In union there is strength.
Each floret still contains, however, its own tiny drop of nectar,
its own stamens, its own pistil connected with embryonic seed
below; therefore, when an insect alights where he can get the
greatest amount of nectar for the least effort, and turns round
and round to exhaust each nectary, he is sure to dust the pistils
with pollen, and so fertilize an entire flower-head in a trice.
The lavender fringe and the hairy involucre and stem serve the
end of discouraging crawling insects, which cannot transfer
pollen from plant to plant, from pilfering sweets that cannot be
properly paid for. Small wonder that, although the composites
have attained to their socialistic practices at a comparatively
recent day as evolutionists count time, they have become as
individuals and as species the most numerous in the world; the
thistle family, dominant everywhere, containing not less than ten
thousand members.
COMMON or PHILADELPHIA FLEABANE, or SKEVISH (E. Philadelphicus),
a smaller edition of Robin's plantain, with a more findely cut
fringe, its reddish-purple ray florets often numbering one
hundred and fifty, may be found in low fields and woods
throughout North America, except in the circumpolar regions.
THISTLES
(Carduus) Thistle family
Is land fulfilling the primal curse because it brings forth
thistles? So thinks the farmer, no doubt, but not the goldfinches
which daintily feed among the fluffy seeds, nor the bees, nor the
"painted lady," which may be seen in all parts of the world where
thistles grow, hovering about the beautiful rose-purple flowers.
In the prickly cradle of leaves, the caterpillar of this thistle
butterfly weaves a web around its main food store.
When the Danes invaded Scotland, they stole a silent night march
upon the Scottish camp by marching barefoot; but a Dane
inadvertently stepped on a thistle, and his sudden, sharp cry,
arousing the sleeping Scots, saved them and their country: hence
the Scotch emblem.
>From July to November blooms the COMMON, BURR, SPEAR, PLUME,
BANK, HORSE, BULL, BLUE, BUTTON, BELL, or ROADSIDE THISTLE
(C. lanceolatus or Circium lanceolatum of Gray), a native of
Europe and Asia, now a most thoroughly naturalized American from
Newfoundland to Georgia, westward to Nebraska. Its violet
flower-heads, about an inch and a half across, and as high as
wide, are mostly solitary at the ends of formidable branches, up
which few crawling creatures venture. But in the deep tube of
each floret there is nectar secreted for the flying visitor who
can properly transfer pollen from flower to flower. Such a one
suffers no inconvenience from the prickles, but, on the contrary,
finds a larger feast saved for him because of them. Dense,
matted, wool-like hairs, that cover the bristling stems of most
thistles, make climbing mighty unpleasant for ants, which ever
delight in pilfering sweets. Perhaps one has the temerity to
start upward.
"Fain would I climb, yet fear to fall."
"If thy heart fail thee, climb not at all,"
might be the ant's passionate outburst to the thistle, and the
thistle's reply, instead of a Sir Walter and Queen Elizabeth
couplet. Long, lance-shaped, deeply cleft, sharply pointed, and
prickly dark green leaves make the ascent almost unendurable;
nevertheless the ant bravely mounts to where the bristle-pointed,
overlapping scales of the deep green cup hold the luscious
flowers. Now his feet becoming entangled in the cottony fibers
wound about the scaly armor, and a bristling bodyguard thrusting
spears at him in his struggles to escape, death happily releases
him. All this tragedy to insure the thistle's cross-fertilized
seed that, seated on the autumn winds, shall be blown far and
wide in quest of happy conditions for the offspring!
Sometimes the PASTURE or FRAGRANT THISTLE (C. odoratus or C.
pumilum of Gray) still further protects its beautiful, odorous
purple or whitish flower-head, that often measures three inches
across, with a formidable array of prickly small leaves just
below it. In case a would-be pilferer breaks through these lines,
however, there is a slight glutinous strip on the outside of the
bracts that compose the cup wherein the nectar-filled florets are
packed; and here, in sight of Mecca, he meets his death, just as
a bird is caught on limed twigs. The pasture thistle, whose range
is only from Maine to Delaware, blooms from July to September.
Even gentle Professor Gray hurls anathema at the CANADA THISTLE;
"a vile pest" he calls it. As CURSED, CORN, HARD, and CREEPING
THISTLE it is variously known here and in Europe, whence it came
to overrun our land from Newfoundland to Virginia, westward to
Nebraska. By horizontal rootstocks it creeps and forms patches
almost impossible to eradicate. The small reddish-purple
flower-heads, barely an inch across, usually contain about a
hundred florets each. In their tubes the abundant nectar rises
high, so that numerous insects, even with the shortest tongues,
are able to enjoy it. Not only bees and butterflies, but wasps,
flies, and beetles feast diligently. When a floret opens, a
quantity of pollen emerges at the upper end of the anther
cylinder, pressed up by the growing style. Owing to their slight
stickiness and the sharp processes over their entire surface, the
pollen grains, which readily cling to the hairs of insects, are
transported to the two-branched, hairy stigma of an older floret.
But even should insects not visit the flower (and in fine weather
they swarm about it), it is marvelously adapted to fertilize
itself. Farmers may well despair of exterminating a plant so
perfectly equipped in every part; to win life's battles.
"The colour of purple...was, amongst the ancients, typical of
royalty. It was a kind of red richly shot with blue, and the dye
producing it was attained from a shell found in considerable
numbers off the coast of Tyre, and on the shore near the site of
that ancient city, great heaps of such shells are still to be
found. The production of the true royal purple dye was a very
costly affair, and therefore it was often imitated with a mixture
of cochineal and indigo..." - J. JAMES TISSOT.
As many so-called purple flowers are more strictly magenta, the
reader is referred to the next group if he has not found the
flower for which he is in search here. Also to the "White and
Greenish" section since many colored flowers show a tendency to
revert to the white type from which, doubtless, all were evolved.
He should remember that all flowers are more or less variable in
shade, according to varying conditions.