SESSILE-LEAVED TWISTED-STALK
(Streptopus roseus) Lily-of-the-Valley family
Flowers - Dull, purplish pink, 1/2 in. long or less, solitary, on
threadlike, curved footstalks longer than the small flower
itself, nodding from leaf-axils. Perianth bill-shaped, of 6
spreading segments; stamens 6, 2-horned; style spreading into 3
branches, stigmatic on inner side. Stem: 1 to 2 1/2 ft. high,
simple or forked. Leaves: Thin, alternate, green on both sides,
many nerved, tapering at end, rounded at base, where they are
seated on stem. Fruit: A round, red, many-seeded berry.
Preferred Habitat - Moist woods.
Flowering Season - May-July.
Distribution - North America east and west, southward to Georgia
and Oregon.
As we look down on this graceful plant, no blossoms are visible;
but if we bend the zig-zagged stem backward, we shall discover
the little rosy bells swaying from the base of the leaves on
curved footstalks (streptos = twisted, pous = a foot or stalk)
very much as the plant's relatives the Solomon's seals grow. In
the confident expectation of having its seeds dropped far and
wide, it bears showy red berries in August for the birds now
wandering through the woods with increased, hungry families.
The CLASPING-LEAVED TWISTED-STALK (S. amplexifolius), which has
one or two greenish-white bells nodding from its axils, may be
distinguished when not in flower by its leaves, which are hoary -
not green - on the under side, or by its oval berry. Indeed most
plants living in wet soil have a coating of down on the under
sides of their leaves to prevent the pores from clogging with
rising vapors.
MOCCASIN FLOWER; PINK, VENUS', or STEMLESS LADY'S SLIPPER
(Cypripedium acaule) Orchid family
Flowers - Fragrant, solitary, large, showy, drooping from end of
scape, 6 to 12 in. high. Sepals lance-shaped, spreading, greenish
purple, 2 in. long or less; petals narrower and longer than
sepals. Lip an inflated sac, often over 2 in. long, slit down the
middle, and folded inwardly above, pale magenta, veined with
darker pink upper part of interior crested with long white hairs.
Stamens united with style into unsymmetrical declined column,
bearing an anther on either side, and a dilated triangular
petal-like sterile stamen above, arching over the broad concave
stigma. Leaves: 2, from the base; elliptic, thick, 6 to 8 in.
long.
Preferred Habitat - Deep, rocky, or sandy woods.
Flowering Season - May-June.
Distribution - Canada southward to North Carolina, westward to
Minnesota and Kentucky.
Because most people cannot forbear picking this exquisite flower
that seems too beautiful to be found outside a millionaire's
hothouse, it is becoming rarer every year, until the finding of
one in the deep forest, where it must now hide, has become the
event of a day's walk. Once it was the commonest of the orchids.
"Cross-fertilization," says Darwin, "results in offspring which
vanquish the offspring of self-fertilization in the struggle for
existence." This has been the motto of the orchid family for
ages. No group of plants has taken more elaborate precautions
against self-pollination or developed more elaborate and
ingenious mechanism to compel insects to transfer their pollen
than this.
The fissure down the front of the pink lady's slipper is not so
wide but that a bee must use some force to push against its
elastic sloping sides and enter the large banquet chamber where
he finds generous entertainment secreted among the fine white
hairs in the upper part. Presently he has feasted enough. Now one
can hear him buzzing about inside, trying to find a way out of
the trap. Toward the two little gleams of light through apertures
at the end of a passage beyond the nectary hairs, he at length
finds his way. Narrower and narrower grows the passage until it
would seem as if he could never struggle through; nor can he
until his back has rubbed along the sticky, overhanging stigma,
which is furnished with minute, rigid, sharply pointed papillae,
all directed forward, and placed there for the express purpose of
combing out the pollen he has brought from another flower on his
back or head. The imported pollen having been safely removed, he
still has to struggle on toward freedom through one of the narrow
openings, where an anther almost blocks his way.
As he works outward, this anther, drawn downward on its hinge,
plasters his back with yellow granular pollen as a parting gift,
and away he flies to another lady's slipper to have it combed out
by the sticky stigma as described above. The smallest bees can
squeeze through the passage without paying toll. To those of the
Andrena and Halictus tribe the flower is evidently best adapted.
Sometimes the largest bumblebees, either unable or unwilling to
get out by the legitimate route, bite their way to liberty.
Mutilated sacs are not uncommon. But when unable to get out by
fair means, and too bewildered to escape by foul, the large bee
must sometimes perish miserably in his gorgeous prison.
SHOWY, GAY, or SPRING ORCHIS
(Orchis spectabilis) Orchid family
Flowers - Purplish pink, of deeper and lighter shade, the lower
lip white, and thick of texture; from 3 to 6 on a spike;
fragrant. Sepals pointed, united, arching above the converging
petals, and resembling a hood; lip large, spreading, prolonged
into a spur, which is largest at the tip and as long as the
twisted footstem. Sterm: 4 to 12 in. high, thick, fleshy,
5-sided. Leaves: 2 large, broadly ovate, glossy green, silvery on
under side, rising from a few scales from root. Fruit: A sharply
angled capsule, 1 in. long.
Preferred Habitat - Rich, moist woods, especially under hemlocks.
Flowering Season - April-June.
Distribution - From New Brunswick and Ontario southward to our
Southern States, westward to Nebraska.
Of the six floral leaves which every orchid, terrestrial or
aerial, possesses, one is always peculiar in form, pouch-shaped,
or a cornucopia filled with nectar, or a flaunted, fringed
banner, or a broad platform for the insect visitors to alight on.
Some orchids look to imaginative eyes as if they were
masquerading in the disguise of bees, moths, frogs, birds,
butterflies. A number of these queer freaks are to be found in
Europe. Spring traps, adhesive plasters, and hair-triggers
attached to explosive shells of pollen are among the many devices
by which orchids compel insects to cross-fertilize them, these
flowers as a family showing the most marvelous mechanism adapted
to their requirements from insects in the whole floral kingdom.
No other blossoms can so well afford to wear magenta, the ugliest
shade nature produces, the "lovely rosy purple" of Dutch bulb
growers, a color that has an unpleasant effect on not a few
American stomachs outside of Hoboken.
But an orchid, from the amazing cleverness of its operations, is
attractive under any circumstances to whomever understands
it. This earliest member of the family to appear charms the
female bumblebee, to whose anatomy it is especially adapted. The
males, whose faces are hairy where the females' are bare, and
therefore not calculated to retain the sticky pollen masses, are
not yet flying when the showy orchis blooms. Bombus Americanorum,
which can drain the longest spurs, B. separatus, B. terricola,
and, rarely, butterflies as well, have been caught with its
pollen masses attached. The bee alights on the projecting lip,
pushes her head into the mouth of the corolla, and, as she sips
the nectar from the horn of plenty, ruptures by the slight
pressure a membrane of the pouch where two sticky buttons, to
which two pollen masses are attached, lie imbedded. Instantly
after contact these adhere to the round bare spots on her face,
the viscid cement hardening before her head is fairly withdrawn.
Now the diverging pollen masses, that look like antennae, fall
from the perpendicular, by remarkable power of contraction, to a
horizontal attitude, that they may be in the precise position to
fertilize the stigma of the next flower visited - just as if they
possessed a reasoning intelligence! Even after all the pollen has
been deposited on the sticky stigmas of various blossoms,
stump-like caudicles to which the two little sacs were attached
have been found still plastered on a long-suffering bee. But so
rich in nectar are the moisture-loving orchids that, to obtain a
draught, the sticky plasters which she must carry do not seem too
dear a price to pay. In this showy orchis the nectar often rises
an eighth of an inch in the tube, and sufficient pressure to
cause a rupture will eject it a foot.
ROSE or SWEET POGONIA; SNAKE-MOUTH
(Pogonia ophioglossoides) Orchid family
Flowers - Pale rose pink, fragrant, about 1 in. long, usually
solitary at end of stem 8 to 15 in. high, and subtended by a
leaf-like bract. Sepals and petals equal, oval, about 1/2 in.
long, the lip spoon-shaped, crested, and fringed. Column shorter
than petals, thick, club-shaped. Anther terminal, attached to
back of column, pollen mass in each of its 2 sacs. Stigma a
flattened disk below anther. Leaves: 1 to 3, erect, lance-oblong,
sometimes one with long footstem from fibrous root.
Preferred Habitat - Swamps and low meadows.
Flowering Season - June-July.
Distribution - Canada to Florida, westward to Kansas.
Rearing its head above the low sedges, often brightened with
colonies of the grass pink at the same time, this shy recluse of
the swamps woos the passing bee with lovely color, a fragrance
like fresh red raspberries, an alluring alighting place all
fringed and crested, and with the prospect of hospitable
entertainment in the nectary beyond. So in she goes, between the
platform and the column overhead, pushing first her head, then
brushing her back against the stigma just below the end of the
thick column that almost closes the passage. Any powdery pollen
she brought on her back from another pogonia must now be brushed
off against the sticky stigma. Her feast ended, out she backs.
And now a wonderful thing happens. The lid of the anther which is
at the end of the column, catching in her shoulders, swings
outward on its elastic hinge, releasing a little shower of golden
dust, which she must carry on the hairs of her head or back until
the sticky stigma of the next pogonia entered kindly wipes it
off! This is one of the few orchids whose pollen, usually found
in masses, is not united by threads. Without the bee's aid in
releasing it from its little box, the lovely species would
quickly perish from the face of the earth.
ARETHUSA; INDIAN PINK
(Arethusa bulbosa) Orchid family
Flowers - 1 to 2 in. long, bright purple pink, solitary, violet
scented, rising from between a pair of small scales at end of
smooth scape from 5 to 10 in. high. Lip dropping beneath sepals
and petals, broad, rounded, toothed, or fringed, blotched with
purple, and with three hairy ridges down its surface. Leaf:
Solitary, hidden at first, coming after the flower, but attaining
length of 6 in. Root: Bulbous. Fruit: A 6-ribbed capsule, 1 in.
long, rarely maturing.
Preferred Habitat - Northern bogs and swamps.
Flowering Season - May-June.
Distribution - From North Carolina and Indiana northward to the
Fur Countries.
One flower to a plant, and that one rarely maturing seed; a
temptingly beautiful prize which few refrain from carrying home,
to have it wither on the way pursued by that more persistent
lover than Alpheus, the orchid-hunter who exports the bulbs to
European collectors - little wonder this exquisite orchid is
rare, and that from certain of those cranberry bogs of Eastern
New England, which it formerly brightened with its vivid pink, it
has now gone forever. Like Arethusa, the nymph whom Diana changed
into a fountain that she might escape from the infatuated river
god, Linnaeus fancied this flower a maiden in the midst of a
spring bubbling from wet places where presumably none may follow
her.
But the bee, our Arethusa's devoted lover, although no villain,
still pursues her. He knows that moisture-loving plants secrete
the most nectar. When the head of the bee enters the flower to
sip, nothing happens; but as he raises his head to depart, it
cannot help lifting the lid of the helmet-shaped anther and so
letting fall a few soft pellets of pollen on it. Now, after he
has drained the next arethusa, his pollen-laden head must rub
against the long sticky stigma before it touches the helmet-like
anther lid and precipitates another volley of pollen. In some
such manner most of our orchids compel insects to work for them
in preventing self-fertilization.
Another charming, but much smaller, orchid, that we must don our
rubber boots to find where it hides in cool, peaty bogs from
Canada and the Northern United States to California, and
southward in the Rockies to Arizona, is the CALYPSO (Calypso
bulbosa). It is a solitary little flower, standing out from the
top of a jointed scape that never rises more than six inches from
the solid bulb, hidden in the moss, nor boasts more than one
nearly round leaf near its base. The blossom itself suggests one
of the lady's slipper orchids, with its rosy purple, narrow,
pointed sepals and petals clustered at the top above a large,
sac-shaped, whitish lip. The latter is divided into two parts,
heavily blotched with cinnamon brown, and woolly with a patch of
yellow hairs near the point of the division. May - June.
CALOPOGON; GRASS PINK
(Limodorum tuberosum; Calopogon pulchellus of Gray) Orchid
family
Flowers - Purplish pink, 1 in. long, 3 to 15 around a long, loose
spike. Sepals and petals similar, oval, acute; the lip on upper
side of flower is broad at the summit, tapering into a claw,
flexible as if hinged, densely bearded on its face with white,
yellow, and magenta hairs (Calopogon = beautiful beard). Column
below lip (ovary not twisted in this exceptional case); sticky
stigma at summit of column, and just below it a 2-celled anther,
each cell containing 2 pollen masses, the grain lightly connected
by threads. Scape: 1 to 1 1/2 ft. high, slender, naked. Leaf:
Solitary, long, grass-like, from a round bulb arising from bulb
of previous year.
Preferred Habitat - Swamps, cranberry bogs, and low meadows.
Flowering Season - June-July.
Distribution - Newfoundland to Florida, and westward to the
Mississippi.
Fortunately this lovely orchid, one of the most interesting of
its highly organized family, is far from rare, and where we find
the rose pogonia and other bog-loving relatives growing, the
calopogon usually outnumbers them all. Limodorum translated reads
meadow-gift; but we find the flower less frequently in grassy
places than those who have waded into its favorite haunts could
wish.
Owing to the crested lip being oddly situated on the upper part
of the flower, which appears to be growing upside down in
consequence, one might suppose a visiting insect would not choose
to alight on it. The pretty club-shaped, vari-colored hairs,
which he may mistake for stamens, and which keep his feet from
slipping, irresistibly invite him there, however, when, presto!
down drops the fringed lip with startling suddenness. Of course,
the bee strikes his back against the column when he falls. Now,
there are two slightly upturned little wings on either side of
the column, which keep his body from slipping off at either side
and necessitate its exit from the end where the stigma smears it
with viscid matter. The pressure of the insect on this part
starts the pollen masses from their pocket just below; and as the
bee slides off the end of the column, the exposed, cobwebby
threads to which the pollen grains are attached cling to his
sticky body. The sticky substance instantly hardening, the pollen
masses, which are drawn out from their pocket as he escapes, are
cemented to his abdomen in the precise spot where they must
strike against the stigma of the next calopogon he tumbles in;
hence cross-fertilization results. What recompense does the bee
get for such rough handling? None at all, so far as is known. The
flower, which secretes no nectar, is doubtless one of those gay
deceivers that Sprengel named "Scheinsaftblumen," only it leads
its visitors to look for pollen instead of nectar, on the
supposition that the club-shaped hairs on the crests are stamens.
The wonder is that the intelligent little bees (a species of
Andrenidae), which chiefly are its Victims, have not yet learned
to boycott it.
"Calopogon," says Professor Robertson, who knows more about the
fertilization of American wild flowers by insects than most
writers, "is one of a few flowers which move the insect toward
the stigma.... There is no expenditure in keeping up a supply of
nectar, and the flower, although requiring a smooth insect of a
certain size and weight, suffers nothing from the visits of those
it cannot utilize. Then, there is no delay caused by the insect
waiting to suck; but as soon as it alights it is thrown down
against the stigma. This occurs so quickly that, while standing
net in hand, I have seen insects effect pollination and escape
before I could catch them. So many orchids fasten their pollinia
upon the faces and tongues of insects that it is interesting to
find one which applies them regularly to the first abdominal
segment. Mr. Darwin has observed that absence of hair on the
tongues of Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) and on the faces
of Hymenoptera (bees; wasps, etc.) has led to the more usual
adaptations, and sparseness of hair has its influence in this
case. Species of Augochlora are the only insects on which I found
pollinia. These bees are very smooth, depending for ornament on
the metallic sheen of their bodies. An Halictus repeatedly pulled
down the labella (lips) of flowers from which pollinia had not
been removed; and the only reason I can assign for its failure to
extract pollinia is that it is more hairy than the Augochlora.
COMMON PERSICARIA, PINK KNOTWEED, or JOINT-WEED; SMARTWEED
(Polygonum Pennsylvanicum) Buckwheat family
Flowers - Very small, pink, collected in terminal, dense, narrow,
obtuse spikes, 1 to 2 in. long. Calyx pink or greenish, 5-parted,
like petals; no corolla; stamens 8 or less; style 2-parted. Stem:
1 to 3 ft. high, simple or branched, often partly red, the joints
swollen and sheathed; the branches above, and peduncles
glandular. Leaves: Oblong, lance-shaped, entire edged, 2 to 11
in. long, with stout midrib, sharply tapering at tip, rounded
into short petioles below.
Preferred Habitat - Waste places, roadsides, moist soil.
Flowering Season - July-October.
Distribution - Nova Scotia to the Gulf of Mexico; westward to
Texas and Minnesota.
Everywhere we meet this commonest of plants or some of its
similar kin, the erect pink spikes brightening roadsides, rubbish
heaps, fields, and waste places, from midsummer to frost. The
little flowers, which open without method anywhere on the spike
they choose, attract many insects, the smaller bees (Andrena)
conspicuous among the host. As the spreading divisions of the
perianth make nectar-stealing all too easy for ants and other
crawlers that would not come in contact with anthers and stigma
where they enter a flower near its base, most buckwheat plants
whose blossoms secrete sweets protect themselves from theft by
coating the upper stems with glandular hairs that effectually
discourage the pilferers. Shortly after fertilization, the little
rounded, flat-sided fruit begins to form inside the persistent
pink calyx. At any time the spike-like racemes contain more
bright pink buds and shining seeds than flowers. Familiarity
alone breeds contempt for this plant, that certainly possesses
much beauty.
The LADY'S THUMB (P. Persicaria), often a troublesome weed, roams
over the whole of North America, except at the extreme north -
another illustration of the riotous profusion of European floral
immigrants rejoicing in the easier struggle for existence here.
Its pink spikes are shorter and less slender than those of the
preceding taller, but similar species, and its leaves, which are
nearly seated on the stem, have dark triangular or lunar marks
near the center in the majority of cases.
An insignificant little plant, found all over our continent,
Europe, and Asia, is the familiar KNOT-GRASS or DOORWEED (P.
aviculare), often trailing its leafy, jointed stems over the
ground, but at times weakly erect, to display its tiny greenish
or white pink-edged flowers, clustered in the axils of oblong,
bluish-green leaves that are considerably less than an inch long.
Although in bloom from June to October, insects seldom visit it,
for it secretes very little, if any, nectar. As might be expected
in such a case, its stem is smooth.
When the amphibious WATER PERSICARIA (P. amphibium) lifts its
short, dense, rose-colored ovoid or oblong club of bloom above
ponds and lakes, it is sufficiently protected from crawling
pilferers, of course, by the water in which it grows. But suppose
the pond dries up and the plant is left on dry ground, what then?
Now, a remarkable thing happens: protective glandular, sticky
hairs appear on the epidermis of the leaves and stems, which were
perfectly smooth when the flowers grew in water. Such small
wingless insects as might pilfer nectar without bringing to their
hostess any pollen from other blossoms are held as fast as on
bird-lime. The stem, which sometimes floats, sometimes is
immersed, may attain a length of twenty feet; the rounded,
elliptic, petioled leaves may be four inches long or only half
that size. From Quebec to New Jersey, and westward to the
Pacific, the solitary, showy inflorescence, which does well to
attain a height of an inch, may be found during July and August.
Throughout the summer, narrow, terminal, erect, spike-like
racemes of small, pale pink, flesh-colored, or greenish flowers
are sent upward by the MILD WATER PEPPER (P. hydropiperoides). It
is like a slender, pale variety of the common pink persicaria.
One finds its inconspicuous, but very common, flowers from June
to September. The plant, which grows in shallow water, swamps,
and moist places throughout the Union and considerably north and
south of it, rises three feet or less. The cylindric sheaths
around the swollen joints of the stem are fringed with long
bristles - a clue to identification. Another similar WATER PEPPER
or SMARTWEED (P. hydropiper) is so called because of its acrid,
biting juice.
The CLIMBING FALSE BUCKWHEAT (P. scandens) straggles over bushes
in woods, thickets, and by the waysides throughout a very wide
range; yet its small, dull, greenish-yellow and pinkish flowers,
loosely clustered in long pedicelled racemes, are so
inconspicuous during August and September, when the showy
composites are in their glory, that we give them scarcely a
glance. The alternate leaves, which are heart-shaped at the base
and pointed at the lip, suggesting those of the morning glory,
are on petioles arising from sheaths over the enlarged joints
which, in this family, are always a most prominent characteristic
- (Poly = many, gonum = a knee). The three outer sepals, keeled
when in flower, are irregularly winged when the three-angled,
smooth achene hangs from the matured blossom in autumn, the
season at which the vine assumes its greatest attractiveness.
The ARROW-LEAVED TEAR THUMB (P. sagittatum), found in ditches and
swampy wet soil, weakly leans on other plants, or climbs over
them with the help of the many sharp, recurved prickles which arm
its four-angled stem. Even the petioles and underside of the
leaf's midrib are set with prickles. The light green leaves, that
combine the lance and the arrow shapes, take on a beautiful
russet-red tint in autumn. The little, five-parted rose-colored
or greenish-white flowers grow in small, close terminal heads
from July to September from Nova Scotia to the Gulf and far
westward.
SEASIDE or COAST JOINTWEED or KNOT-GRASS (Polygonella articulata;
Polygonum articulatum of Gray) a low, slender, wiry, diffusely
spreading little plant, with thread-like leaves seated on its
much-jointed stem, rises cleanly from out the sand of the coast
from Maine to Florida, and the shores of the Great Lakes. Very
slender racemes of tiny, nodding, rose-tinted white flowers, with
a dark midrib to each of the five calyx segments, are
insignificant of themselves; but when seen in masses, from July
to October, they tinge the upper beaches and sandy meadows with a
pink blush that not a few artists have transferred to the
foreground of their marine pictures.
CORN COCKLE; CORN ROSE; CORN or RED CAMPION; CROWN-OF-THE-FIELD
(Agrostemma Githago; Lychnis Githago of Gray) Pink family
Flowers - Magenta or bright purplish crimson, to 3 in. broad,
solitary at end of long, stout footstem; 5 lobes of calyx
leaf-like, very long and narrow, exceeding petals. Corolla of 5
broad, rounded petals; 10 stamens; 5 styles alternating with
calyx lobes, opposite petals. Stem: 1 to 3 ft. high, erect, with
few or no branches, leafy, the plant covered with fine white
hairs. Leaves: Opposite, seated on stem, long, narrow, pointed,
erect. Fruit: a 1-celled, many-seeded capsule.
Preferred Habitat - Wheat and other grain fields; dry, waste
places.
Flowering Season - July-September.
Distribution - United States at large; most common in Central and
Western States. Also in Europe and Asia.
"Allons! allons! sow'd cockle, reap'd no corn," exclaims Biron in
"Love's Labor Lost." Evidently the farmers even in Shakespeare's
day counted this brilliant blossom the pest it has become in many
of our own grain fields just as it was in ancient times, when
Job, after solemnly protesting his righteousness, called on his
own land to bear record against him if his words were false. "Let
thistles grow instead of wheat, and cockle instead of barley," he
cried, according to James the First's translators; but the
"noisome weeds" of the original text seem to indicate that these
good men were more anxious to give the English people an adequate
conception of Job's willingness to suffer for his honor's sake
than to translate literally. Possibly the cockle grew in Southern
Asia in Job's time : today its range is north.
Like many another immigrant to our hospitable shores, this
vigorous invader shows a tendency to outstrip native blossoms in
life's race. Having won in the struggle for survival in the old
country, where the contest has been most fiercely waged for
centuries, it finds life here easy, enjoyable. What are its
methods for insuring an abundance of fertile seed? We see that
the tube of the flower is so nearly closed by the stamens and
five-styled pistil as to be adapted only to the long, slender
tongues of moths and butterflies, for which benefactors it became
narrow and deep to reserve the nectar. "A certain night-flying
moth (one of the Dianthaecia) fertilizes flowers of this genus
exclusively, and its larvae feed on their unripe seeds as a
staple. Bees and some long-tongued flies seen about the corn
cockle doubtless get pollen only; but there are few flowers so
deep that the longest-tongued bees cannot sip them. Butterflies,
attracted by the bright color of the flower - and to them color
is the most catchy of advertisements - are guided by a few dark
lines on the petals to the nectary.
Soon after the blossom opens, five of the stamens emerge from the
tube and shed their pollen on the early visitor. Later, the five
other stamens empty the contents of their anthers on more tardy
comers. Finally, when all danger of self-fertilization is past,
the styles stretch upward, and the butterfly, whose head is
dusted with pollen brought from earlier flowers, necessarily
leaves some on their sticky surfaces as he takes the leavings in
the nectary.
So much cross-fertilized seed as the plant now produces and
scatters through the grain fields may well fill the farmer's
prosaic mind with despair. To him there is no glory in the
scarlet of the poppy comparable with the glitter of a silver
dollar; no charm in the heavenly blue of the corn-flower, that
likewise preys upon the fertility of his soil; the vivid flecks
of color with which the cockle lights up his fields mean only
loss of productiveness in the earth that would yield him greater
profit without them. Moreover, seeds of this so-called weed not
only darken his wheat when they are threshed out together, but
are positively injurious if swallowed in any quantity. Emerson
said every plant is called a weed until its usefulness is
discovered. Linnaeus called this flower Agrostemma = the
crown-of-the-field. Agriculturalists never realize that beauty is
in itself a sufficient plea for respected existence. Not a few of
the cockle's relatives adorn men's gardens.
WILD PINK or CATCHFLY
(Silene Caroliniana; S. Pennsylvanica of Gray) Pink family
Flowers - Rose pink, deep or very pale; about inch broad, on
slender footstalks, in terminal clusters. Calyx tubular,
5-toothed, much enlarged in fruit, sticky; 5 petals with claws
enclosed in calyx, wedged-shaped above, slightly notched. Stamens
10; pistil with 3 styles. Stem: 4 to 10 in. high, hairy, sticky
above, growing in tufts. Leaves: Basal ones spatulate; 2 or 3
pairs of lance-shaped, smaller leaves seated on stem.
Preferred Habitat - Dry, gravelly, sandy, or rocky soil.
Flowering Season - April-June.
Distribution - New England, south to Georgia, westward to
Kentucky.
Fresh, dainty, and innocent-looking as Spring herself are these
bright flowers. Alas, for the tiny creatures that try to climb up
the rosy tufts to pilfer nectar, they and their relatives are not
so innocent as they appear! While the little crawlers are almost
within reach of the cup of sweets, their feet are gummed to the
viscid matter that coats it, and here their struggles end as
flies' do on sticky fly-paper, or birds' on limed twigs. A
naturalist counted sixty-two little corpses on the sticky stem of
a single pink. All this tragedy to protect a little nectar for
the butterflies which, in sipping it, transfer the pollen from
one flower to another, and so help them to produce the most
beautiful and robust offspring.
The pink, which has two sets of stamens of five each, elevates
first one set, then the other, for economy's sake and to run less
risk of failure to get its pollen transferred in case of rain
when its friends are not flying. After all the golden dust has
been shed, however, up come the three recurved styles from the
depth of the tube to receive pollen brought by butterflies from
younger flowers. There are few cups so deep that the largest
bumblebees cannot suck them. Flies which feed on the pink's
pollen only, sometimes come by mistake to older blossoms in the
stigmatic stage, and doubtless cross-fertilize them once in a
while.
In waste places and woods farther southward and westward, and
throughout the range of the Wild Pink as well, clusters of the
SLEEPY CATCHFLY (S. antirrhina) open their tiny pink flowers for
a short time only in the sunshine. At any stage they are mostly
calyx, but in fruit this part is much expanded. Swollen, sticky
joints are the plant's means of defense from crawlers. Season:
Summer.
When moths begin their rounds at dusk, the NIGHT-FLOWERING
CATCHFLY (S. noctiflora) opens its pinkish or white flowers to
emit a fragrance that guides them to a feast prepared for them
alone. Day-blooming catchflies have no perfume, nor do they need
it; their color and markings are a sufficient guide to the
butterflies. Sticky hairs along the stems of this plant
ruthlessly destroy, not flies, but ants chiefly, that would
pilfer nectar without being able to render the flower any
service. Yet the calyx is beautifully veined, as if to tantalize
the crawlers by indicating the path to a banquet hail they may
never reach. Only a very few flowers, an inch across or less, are
clustered at the top of the plant, which blooms from July to
September in waste places east of the Mississippi and in Canada.
SOAPWORT; BOUNCING BET; HEDGE PINK; BRUISEWORT; OLD MAID'S PINK;
FULLER'S HERB
(Saponaria officinalis) Pink family
Flowers - Pink or whitish, fragrant, about 1 inch broad, loosely
clustered at end of stem, also sparingly from axils of upper
leaves. Calyx tubular, 5-toothed, about 3/4 in. long; 5 petals,
the claws inserted in deep tube. Stamens 10, in 2 sets; 1 pistil
with 2 styles. Flowers frequently double. Stem: to 2 ft. high,
erect, stout, sparingly branched, leafy. Leaves: Opposite,
acutely oval, 2 to 3 in. long, about 1 in. wide, 3 to 5 ribbed.
Fruit: An oblong capsule, shorter than calyx, opening at top by 4
short teeth or valves.
Preferred Habitat - Roadsides, banks, and waste places.
Flowering Season - June-September.
Distribution - Generally common. Naturalized from Europe.
A stout, buxom, exuberantly healthy lassie among flowers is
bouncing Bet, who long ago escaped from gardens whither she was
brought from Europe, and ran wild beyond colonial farms to
roadsides, along which she has traveled over nearly our entire
area. Underground runners and abundant seed soon form thrifty
colonies. This plant, to which our grandmothers ascribed healing
virtues, makes a cleansing, soap-like lather when its bruised
leaves are agitated in water.
Butterflies, which delight in bright colors and distinct
markings, find little to charm them here; but the pale shade of
pink or white, easily distinguished in the dark, and the
fragrance, strongest after sunset, effectively advertise the
flower at dusk when its benefactors begin to fly. The sphinx
moth, a frequent visitor, works as rapidly in extracting nectar
from the deep tube as any hawk moth, so frequently mistaken for a
hummingbird. The little cliff-dwelling bees (Halictus), among
others, visit the flowers by day for pollen only. At first five
outer stamens protrude slightly from the flower and shed their
pollen on the visitor, immediately over the entrance. Afterward,
having spread apart to leave the entrance free, the path is clear
for the five inner stamens to follow the same course. Now the
styles are still enclosed in the tube but when there is no longer
fear of self-fertilization - that is to say, when the pollen has
all been carried off, and the stamens have withered - up they
come and spread apart to expose their rough upper surfaces to
pollen brought from younger flowers by the moths.
DEPTFORD PINK
(Dianthus Armeria) Pink family
Flowers - Pink, with whitish dots, small, borne in small clusters
at end of stem. Calyx tubular, 5-toothed, with several bract-like
leaves at base; 5 petals with toothed edges, clawed at base
within deep calyx; 10 stamens; 1 pistil with 2 styles. Stem: 6 to
18 in. high, stiff, erect, finely hairy, few branches. Leaves:
Opposite, blade-shaped, or lower ones rounded at end.
Preferred Habitat - Fields, roadsides.
Flowering Season - June-September.
Distribution - Southern Ontario, New England, south to Maryland,
west to Michigan.
The true pinks of Europe, among which are the SWEET WILLIAM or
BUNCH PINK (D. barbatus) of our gardens, occasionally wild here,
and the deliciously spicy CLOVE PINK (D. Carophyllus), ancestor
of the superb carnations of the present day, that have reached a
climax in the Lawson pink of newspaper fame, were once held
sacred to Jupiter, hence Dianthus = Jove's own flower. The
Deptford pink, a rather insignificant little European immigrant,
without fragrance, has a decided charm, nevertheless, when seen
in bright patches among the dry grass of early autumn, with small
butterflies, that are its devoted admirers, hovering above.
PINK OR PALE CORYDALIS
(Capnoides sempervirens; Corydalis glauca of Gray) Poppy
family
Flowers - Pink, with yellow tip, about 1/2 in. long, a few borne
in a loose, terminal raceme. Calyx of 2 small sepals; corolla
irregular, of 4 erect, closed, and flattened petals joined, 1 of
outer pair with short rounded spur at base, the interior ones
narrow and keeled on back. Stamens 6, in 2 sets, Opposite outer
petals; 1 pistil. Stem: Smooth, curved, branched, 1 to 2 feet
high. Leaves: Pale grayish green, delicate, divided into
variously and finely cut leaflets. Fruit: Very narrow, erect pod,
1 to 2 in. long.
Preferred Habitat - Rocky, rich, cool woods.
Flowering Season - April-September.
Distribution - Nova Scotia westward to Alaska, south to Minnesota
and North Carolina.
Dainty little pink sacs, yellow at the mouth, hang upside down
along a graceful stem, and instantly suggest the Dutchman's
breeches, squirrel corn, bleeding heart, and climbing fumitory,
to which the plant is next of kin. Because the lark (Korydalos)
has a spur, the flower, which boasts a small one also, borrows
its Greek name.
Hildebrand proved by patient experiments that some flowers of
this genus have not only lost the power of self-fertilization,
but that they produce fertile seed only when pollen from another
plant is carried to them. Yet how difficult they make dining for
their benefactors! The bumblebee, which can reach the nectar, but
not lap it conveniently, often "gets square" with the secretive
blossom by nipping holes through its spur, to which the hive bees
and others hasten for refreshment. We frequently find these
punctured flowers. But hive and other bees visiting the blossom
for pollen, some rubs off against their breast when they depress
the two middle petals, a sort of sheath that contains pistil and
stamens.
HARDHACK; STEEPLE BUSH
(Spiraea tomentosa) Rose family
Flowers - Pink or magenta, rarely white, very small, in dense,
pyramidal clusters. Calyx of 5 sepals; corolla of 5 rounded
petals; stamens, 20 to 60; usually 5 pistils, downy. Stem: 2 to 3
ft. high, erect, shrubby, simple, downy. Leaves: Dark green
above, covered with whitish woolly hairs beneath; oval,
saw-edged, 1 to 2 in. long.
Preferred Habitat - Low moist ground, roadside ditches, swamps.
Flowering Season - July-September.
Distribution - Nova Scotia westward, and southward to Georgia and
Kansas.
These bright spires of pink bloom attract our attention no less
than the countless eyes of flies, beetles, and bees, ever on the
lookout for food to be eaten on the spot or stored up for future
progeny. Pollen-feeding insects such as these, delight in the
spireas, most of which secrete little or no nectar, but yield an
abundance of pollen, which they can gather from the crowded
panicles with little loss of time, transferring some of it to the
pistils, of course, as they move over the tiny blossoms. But most
spireas are also able to fertilize themselves, insects failing
them.
An instant's comparison shows the steeple bush to be closely
related to the fleecy, white meadow-sweet, often found growing
near. The pink spires, which bloom from the top downward, have
pale brown tips where the withered flowers are, toward the end of
summer.
Why is the under side of the leaves so woolly? Not as a
protection against wingless insects crawling upward, that is
certain; for such could only benefit these tiny clustered
flowers. Not against the sun's rays, for it is only the under
surface that is coated. When the upper leaf surface is hairy, we
know that the plant is protected in this way from perspiring too
freely. Doubtless these leaves of the steeple bush, like those of
other plants that choose a similar habitat, have woolly hairs
beneath as an absorbent to protect their pores from clogging with
the vapors that must rise from the damp ground where the plant
grows. If these pores were filled with moisture from without, how
could they possibly throw off the waste of the plant? All plants
are largely dependent upon free perspiration for health, but
especially those whose roots, struck in wet ground, are
constantly sending up moisture through the stem and leaves.
PURPLE-FLOWERING OR VIRGINIA RASPBERRY
(Rubus odoratus) Rose family
Flowers - Royal purple or bluish pink, showy, fragrant, 1 to 2
in. broad, loosely clustered at top of stem. Calyx sticky-hairy,
deeply 5-parted, with long pointed tips; corolla of 5 rounded
petals; stamens and pistils very numerous. Stem: 3 to 5 ft. high,
erect, branched, shrubby, bristly, not prickly. Leaves:
Alternate, petioled, 3 to 5 lobed, middle lobe largest, and all
pointed; saw-edged lower leaves immense. Fruit: A depressed red
berry, scarcely edible.
Preferred Habitat - Rocky woods, dells, shady roadsides.
Flowering Season - June-August.
Distribution - Northern Canada south to Georgia, westward to
Michigan and Tennessee.
To be an unappreciated, unloved relative of the exquisite wild
rose, with which this flower is so often likened, must be a
similar misfortune to being the untalented son of a great man, or
the unhappy author of a successful first book never equaled in
later attempts. But where the bright blossoms of the Virginia
raspberry burst forth above the roadside tangle and shady
woodland dells, even those who despise magenta see beauty in them
where abundant green tones all discordant notes into harmony.
Purple, as we of today understand the color, the flower is not;
but rather the purple of ancient Orientals. On cool, cloudy days
the petals are a deep, clear purplish rose, that soon fades and
dulls with age, or changes into pale, bluish pink when the sun is
hot.
Many yellow stamens help conceal the nectar secreted in a narrow
ring between the filaments and the base of the receptacle.
Bumblebees, the principal and most efficient visitors, which can
reach sweets more readily than most insects, although numerous
others help to self-fertilize the flower, bring to the mature
stigmas of a newly opened blossom pollen carried on their
undersides from the anthers of a flower a day or two older. When
the inner row of anthers shed their pollen, some doubtless falls
on the stigmas below them, and so spontaneous self-fertilization
may occur. Fruit sets quickly; nevertheless the shrub keeps on
flowering nearly all summer. Children often fold the lower
leaves, which sometimes measure a foot across, to make
drinking-cups.
QUEEN-OF-THE-PRAIRIE
(Ulmaria rubra; Spirea lobata of Gray) Rose family
Flowers - Deep pink, like the peach blossom, fragrant, about 1/3
in. across, clustered in large cymose panicles on a long
footstalk. Calyx 5-lobed; 5-clawed, rose-like petals; stamens
numerous; pistils 5 to 15, usually 10. Stem: 2 to 8 ft. tall,
smooth, grooved, branched. Leaves: Mostly near the ground, large,
rarely measuring 3 ft. long, compounded of from 3 to 7 leaflets;
end leaflet, of 7 to 9 divisions, much the largest; side leaflets
opposite, seated on stem, 3 to 5 lobed or parted; all lobes
acute, and edges unequally incised. Prominent kidney-shaped
stipules.
Preferred Habitat - Moist meadows and prairies.
Flowering Season - June-July.
Distribution - Western Pennsylvania to Michigan and Iowa, and
southward.
A stately, beautiful native plant, seen to perfection where it
rears bright panicles of bloom above the ranker growth in the low
moist meadows of the Ohio Valley. When we find it in the East, it
has only recently escaped from man's gardens into Nature's.
Butterflies and bees pay grateful homage to this queen. Indeed,
butterflies appear to have a special fondness for pink, as bees
have for blue flowers. Cattle delight to chew the leaves, which,
when crushed, give out a fragrance like sweet birch.
WILD ROSES
(Rosa) Rose family
Just as many members of the lily tribe show a preference for the
rule of three in the arrangements of their floral parts, so the
wild roses cling to the quinary method of some primitive
ancestor, a favorite one also with the buttercup and many of its
kin, the geraniums, mallows, and various others. Most of our
fruit trees and bushes are near relatives of the rose. Five
petals and five sepals, then, we always find on roses in a state
of nature; and although the progressive gardener of today has
nowhere shown his skill more than in the development of a
multitude of petals from stamens in the magnificent roses of
fashionable society, the most highly cultivated darling of the
greenhouses quickly reverts to the original wild type, setting
his work of years at naught, if once it regain its natural
liberties through neglect.
To protect its foliage from being eaten by hungry cattle, the
rose goes armed into the battle of life with curved, sharp
prickles, not true thorns or modified branches, but merely
surface appliances which peel off with the bark. To destroy
crawling pilferers of pollen, several species coat their calices,
at least, with fine hairs or sticky gum; and to insure wide
distribution of offspring, the seeds are packed in the
attractive, bright red calyx tube or hip, a favorite food of many
birds, which drop them miles away. When shall we ever learn that
not even a hair has been added to or taken from a blossom without
a lawful cause, and study it accordingly? Fragrance, abundant
pollen, and bright-colored petals naturally attract many insects;
but roses secrete no nectar. Some species of bees, and a common
beetle (Trichius piger) for example, seem to depend upon certain
wild roses exclusively for pollen to feed themselves and their
larvae. Bumblebees, to which roses are adapted, require a firmer
support than the petals would give, and so alight on the center
of the flower, where the pistil receives pollen carried by them
from other roses. Although the numerous stamens and the pistils
mature simultaneously, the former are usually turned outward,
that the incoming pollen-laden insect may strike the stigma
first. When the large bees cease their visits as they may in
long-continued dull or rainy weather, the rose, turning toward
the sun, stands more or less obliquely, and some of the pollen
must fall on its stigma. Occasional self-fertilization matters
little.
If plants have insect benefactors, they have their foes as well
and hordes of tiny aphids, commonly known as green flies or plant
lice, moored by their sucking tubes to the tender sprays of
roses, wild and cultivated, live by extracting their juices. A
curious relationship exists between these little creatures and
the ants, which "milk" them by stroking and caressing them with
their antennae until they emit a tiny drop of sweet, white fluid.
The yellow ant, that lives an almost subterranean life, actually
domesticates flocks and herds of root-feeding aphids; the brown
ant appropriates those that live among the bark of trees; and the
common black garden ant (Lasius niger), devoting itself to the
aphis of the rose bushes, protects it in extraordinary ways,
delightfully described by the author of "Ants, Bees, and Wasps."
In literature, ancient and modern, sacred and profane, no flower
figures so conspicuously as the rose. To the Romans it was most
significant when placed over the door of a public or private
banquet hall. Each who passed beneath it bound himself thereby
not to disclose anything said or done within; hence the
expression sub rosa, common to this day.
The PRAIRIE, CLIMBING, or MICHIGAN ROSE (R. setigera) lifts
clusters of deep, bright pink flowers, that after a while fade
almost white, above the thickets and rich prairie soil, from
southern Ontario and Wisconsin to the Gulf, as far eastward as
Florida. Its distinguishing characteristics are: Stout, widely
separated prickles along the stem, that grows several feet long;
leaves compounded of three, rarely five, oval leaflets, acute or
obtuse at the apex; stalks and calyx often glandular; odorless
flowers that, opening in June and July, measure about two and a
half inches across, their styles cohering in a smooth column on
which bees are tempted to alight; and a round hip, or seed
vessel, formed by the fruiting calyx, which is more or less
glandular. From this parent stock several valuable
double-flowering roses have been derived, among others the Queen
and the Gem of the Prairies, but it is our only native rose that
has ever passed into cultivation.
The SMOOTH, EARLY, or MEADOW ROSE (R. blanda), found blooming in
June and July in moist, rocky places from Newfoundland to New
Jersey and a thousand miles westward, has a trifle larger and
slightly fragrant flowers, at first pink, later pure white. Their
styles are separate, not cohering in a column nor projecting as
in the climbing rose. This is a leafy, low bush mostly less than
three feet high; it is either entirely unarmed, or else provided
with only a few weak prickles; the stipules are rather broad, and
the leaf is compounded of from five to seven oval, blunt, and
pale green leaflets, often hoary below.
In swamps and low wet ground from Quebec to Florida, and westward
to the Mississippi, the SWAMP ROSE (R. Carolina) blooms late in
May and on to midsummer. The bush may grow taller than a man, or
perhaps only a foot high. It is armed with stout, hooked, rather
distant prickles, and few or no bristles. The leaflets, from five
to nine, but usually seven, to a leaf, are smooth, pale, or
perhaps hairy beneath to protect the pores from filling with
moisture arising from the wet ground. Long, sharp calyx lobes,
which drop off before the cup swells in fruit into a round,
glandular, hairy red hip, are conspicuous among the clustered
pink flowers and buds.
Surely no description of our COMMON, LOW, DWARF, or PASTURE ROSE
(R. humilis; R. lucida of Gray) is needed. One's acquaintance
with flowers must be limited indeed, if it does not include this
most abundant of all the wild roses from Ontario to Georgia, and
westward to Wisconsin. In light, dry, or rocky soil we find the
exquisite, but usually solitary, blossom late in May until July,
and, like most roses, it has the pleasant practice of putting
forth a stray blossom or two in early autumn. The stamens of this
species are turned outward so strongly that self- pollination
must very rarely take place.
Among the following charming wild roses, not natives, but
naturalized immigrants from foreign lands, that have escaped from
gardens, is Shakespeare's CANKER-BLOOM, the lovely DOG ROSE or
WILD BRIER (R. canina), that spreads its long, straggling
branches along the roadsides and banks, covering the waste lands
with its smooth, beautiful foliage, and in June and July with
pink or white roses. Because it lacks the fragrance of
sweetbrier, which it otherwise closely resembles, it has been
branded with the dog prefix as a mark of contempt. Professor Koch
says that long before it was customary to surround gardens with
walls, men had rose hedges. "Each of the four great peoples of
Asia," he continues, "possessed its own variety of rose, and
carried it during all wanderings, until finally all four became
the common property of the four peoples. The great Indo-Germanic
stock chose the 'hundred-leaved' and RED ROSE (R. Gallica);
nevertheless, after the Niebelungen the common dog rose played an
important part among the ancient Germans. The DAMASCUS ROSE (R.
Damascena), which blooms twice a year, as well as the MUSK ROSE
(R. moschata), were cherished by the Semitic or Arabic stock;
while the Turkish-Mongolian people planted by preference the
YELLOW ROSE (R. lutea). Eastern Asia (China and Japan) is the
fatherland of the INDIAN and TEA ROSES."
How fragrant are the pages of Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare
with the Eglantine! This delicious plant, known here as
SWEETBRIAR (R. rubIginosa), emits its very aromatic odor from
russet glands on the under, downy side of the small leaflets,
always a certain means of identification. From eastern Canada to
Virginia and Tennessee the plant has happily escaped from man's
gardens back to Nature's.
In spite of its American Indian name, the lovely white CHEROKEE
ROSE (R. Sinica), that runs wild in the South, climbing, rambling
and rioting with a truly Oriental abandon and luxuriance, did
indeed come from China. Would that our northern thickets and
roadsides might be decked with its pure flowers and almost
equally beautiful dark, glossy, evergreen leaves!
COMMON RED, PURPLE, MEADOW, or HONEYSUCKLE CLOVER
(Trifolium pratense) Pea family
Flowers - Magenta, pink, or rarely whitish, sweet-scented, the
tubular corollas set in dense round, oval, or egg-shaped heads
about 1 in. long, and seated in a sparingly hairy calyx. Stem: 6
in. to 2 ft. high, branching, reclining, or erect, more or less
hairy. Leaves: On long petioles, commonly compounded of 3, but
sometimes of 4 to 11 oval or oblong leaflets, marked with white
crescent, often dark-spotted near center; stipules egg-shaped,
sharply pointed, strongly veined, over 1/2 in. long.
Preferred Habitat - Fields, meadows, roadsides.
Flowering Season - April-November.
Distribution - Common throughout Canada and United States.
Meadows bright with clover-heads among the grasses, daisies, and
buttercups in June resound with the murmur of unwearying industry
and rapturous enjoyment. Bumblebees by the tens of thousands
buzzing above acres of the farmer's clover blossoms should be
happy in a knowledge of their benefactions, which doubtless
concern them not at all. They have never heard the story of the
Australians who imported quantities of clover for fodder, and had
glorious fields of it that season, but not a seed to plant next
year's crops, simply because the farmers had failed to import the
bumblebee. After her immigration the clovers multiplied
prodigiously. No; the bee's happiness rests on her knowledge that
only the butterflies' long tongues can honestly share with her
the brimming wells of nectar in each tiny floret. Children who
have sucked them too appreciate her rapture. If we examine a
little flower under the magnifying glass, we shall see why its
structure places it in the pea family. Bumblebees so depress the
keel either when they sip, or feed on pollen, that their heads
and tongues get well dusted with the yellow powder, which they
transfer to the stigmas of other flowers; whereas the butterflies
are of doubtful value, if not injurious, since their long,
slender tongues easily drain the nectar without depressing the
keel. Even if a few grains of pollen should cling to their
tongues, it would probably be wiped off as they withdrew them
through the narrow slit, where the petals nearly meet, at the
mouth of the flower. Bombus terrestris delights in nipping holes
at the base of the tube, which other pilferers also profit by.
Our country is so much richer in butterflies than Europe, it is
scarcely surprising that Professor Robertson found thirteen
Lepidoptera out of twenty insect visitors to this clover in
Illinois, whereas Muller caught only eight butterflies on it out
of a list of thirty-nine visitors in Germany. The fritillaries
and the sulphurs are always seen about the clover fields among
many others, and the "dusky wings" and the caterpillar of several
species feeds almost exclusively on this plant.
"To live in clover," from the insect's point of view at least,
may well mean a life of luxury and affluence. Most peasants in
Europe will tell you that a dream about the flower foretells not
only a happy marriage, but long life and prosperity. For ages the
clover has been counted a mystic plant, and all sorts of good and
bad luck were said to attend the finding of variations of its
leaves which had more than the common number of leaflets. At
evening these leaflets fold downward, the side ones like two
hands clasped in prayer, the end one bowed over them. In this
fashion the leaves of the white and other clovers also go to
sleep, to protect their sensitive surfaces from cold by
radiation, it is thought.
The ZIG-ZAG CLOVER, COW or MARL-GRASS (T. Medium), a native of
Europe and Asia, now naturalized in the eastern half of the
United States and Canada, may scarcely be told from the common
red clover, except by its crooked, angular stems - often
provokingly straight - by its unspotted leaves, and the short
peduncle in which its heads are elevated above the calyx.
Farmers here are beginning to learn the value of the beautiful
CRIMSON, CARNATION or ITALIAN CLOVER or NAPOLEONS (T.
incarnatum), and happily there are many fields and waste places
in the East already harboring the brilliant runaways. The narrow
heads may be two and a half inches long. A meadow of this fodder
plant makes one envious of the very cattle that may spend the
summer day wading through acres of its deep bright bloom.
GOAT'S RUE; CAT-GUT; HOARY PEA or WILD SWEET PEA
(Cracca Virginiana; Tephrosia Virginiana of Gray) Pea family
Flowers - In terminal cluster, each 1/2 in. long or over,
butterfly-shaped, consisting of greenish, cream-yellow standard,
purplish-rose wings, and curved keel of greenish yellow tinged
with rose; petals clawed; 10 stamens (9 and 1); calyx 5-toothed.
Stem: Hoary, with white, silky hairs, rather woody, 1 to 2 feet
high. Leaves: Compounded of 7 to 25 oblong leaflets. Root: Long,
fibrous, tough. Fruit: A hoary, narrow pod, to 2 in. long.
Preferred Habitat - Dry, sandy soil, edges of pine woods.
Flowering Season - June-July.
Distribution - Southern New England, westward to Minnesota, south
to Florida, Louisiana, and Mexico.
Flowers far less showy and attractive than this denizen of sandy
wastelands, a cousin of the wisteria vine and the locust tree,
have been introduced to American gardens. Striking its long
fibrous root deep into the dry soil, the plant spreads in thrifty
clumps through heat and drought - and so tough are its fibers
they might almost be used for violin strings. As in the case of
the lupine, the partridge pea and certain others akin to it, the
leaves of the hoary pea "go to sleep" at night, but after a
manner of their own, i.e., by lying along the stem and turning on
their own bases.
In similar situations from New York south and southwestward, the
MILK PEA (Galactia regularis; G. glabella of Gray) lies prostrate
along the ground, the matted, usually branched stems sending up
at regular intervals a raceme of rose-purple flowers in July and
August from the axil of the trefoliate leaf.
TRAILING BUSH CLOVER
(Lespedeza procumbens) Pea family
Flowers - Purplish pink or violet, veined, the butterfly-shaped
ones having standard petal, wings, and keel, clustered at end of
peduncles; the minute flowers lacking a corolla, nearly sessile.
Calyx of 5 slender, nearly equal lobes. Stems: Prostrate,
trailing, or sometimes ascending, woolly or downy, leafy. Leaves:
Clover-like, trefoliate. Fruit: A very small, hairy, flat,
rounded, acute pod.
Preferred Habitat - Dry soil open, sandy places.
Flowering Season - August-September.
Distribution - Massachusetts to the Gulf, and westward to the
Mississippi.
Springing upward from a mass of clover-like leaves, these showy
little blossoms elevate themselves to arrest, not our attention,
but the notice of the passing bee. As the claw of the standard
petal and the calyx are short, he need not have a long tongue to
drain the nectary pointed out to him by a triangular white mark
at the base of the banner. Now, as his weight depresses the
incurved keel, wherein the vital organs are protected, the stigma
strikes the visitor in advance of the anthers, so that pollen
brought on his underside from another flower must come off on
this one before he receives fresh pollen to transfer to a third
blossom. At first the keel returns to its original position when
depressed; later it loses its elasticity. But besides these showy
flowers intended to be cross-fertilized by insects, the bush
clovers bear, among the others, insignificant-looking, tightly
closed, bud-like ones that produce abundant self-fertilized seed.
The petaliferous flowers are simply to counteract the inevitable
evils resulting from close inbreeding. One usually finds
caterpillars of the "dusky wings" butterfly feeding on the
foliage and the similar tick trefoils which are its staple. At
night the bush clover leaves turn upward, completely changing the
aspect of these plants as we know them by day. Michaux named the
group of flowers for his patron, Lespedez, a governor of Florida
under the Spanish regime.
Perhaps the commonest of the tribe is the VIOLET BUSH CLOVER (L.
violacea), a variable, branching, erect, or spreading plant,
sometimes only a foot high, or again three times as tall. Its
thin leaves are more elliptic than the decidedly clover-like ones
of the preceding species; its rose-purple flowers are more
loosely clustered, and the stems are only sparingly hairy, never
woolly.
On the top of the erect, usually unbranched, but very leafy stem
of the WAND-LIKE BUSH CLOVER (L. frutescens), the two kinds of
flowers grow in a crowded cluster, and more sparingly from the
axils below. The clover-like leaflets, dark green and smooth
above, are paler and hairy below. Like the rest of its kin, this
bush clover delights in dry soil, particularly in open, sandy
places near woods of pine and oak. One readily distinguishes the
SLENDER BUSH CLOVER (L. Virginica) by the very narrowly oblong
leaves along its wand, which bears two kinds of bright rose
flowers, clustered at the top chiefly, and in the axils.
Yellowish-white flowers, about a quarter of an inch long, and
with a purplish-rose spot on the standard petal to serve as a
pathfinder to the nectary, are crowded in oblong spikes an inch
and a half long or less on the HAIRY BUSH CLOVER (L. hirta). The
stem, which may attain four feet, or half that height, is usually
branched; and the entire plant is often downy to the point of
silkiness.
Dense clusters of the yellowish-white flowers of the ROUND-HEADED
BUSH CLOVER (L. capitata) are seated in the upper axils of the
silvery-hairy, wand-like stem. Pink streaks at the base of the
standard petal serve as pathfinders, and its infolded edges guide
the bee's tongue straight to the opening in the stamen tube
through which he sucks.
WILD or SPOTTED GERANIUM or CRANE'S-BILL; ALUM-ROOT
(Geranium maculatum) Geranium family
Flowers - Pale magenta, purplish pink, or lavender, regular, 1 to
1 1/2 in. broad, solitary or a pair, borne on elongated
peduncles, generally with pair of leaves at their base. Calyx of
5 lapping, pointed sepals; 5 petals, woolly at base; 10 stamens;
pistil with 5 styles. Fruit: A slender capsule pointed like a
crane's bill. In maturity it ejects seeds elastically far from
the parent plant. Stem: 1 to 2 ft. high, hairy, slender, simple
or branching above. Leaves: Older ones sometimes spotted with
white; basal ones 3 to 6 in. wide, 3 to 5 parted, variously cleft
and toothed; 2 stem leaves opposite.
Preferred Habitat - Open woods, thickets, and shady roadsides.
Flowering Season - April-July.
Distribution - Newfoundland to Georgia, and westward a thousand
miles.
Sprengel, who was the first to exalt flowers above the level of
mere botanical specimens, had his attention led to the intimate
relationship existing between plants and insects by studying out
the meaning of the hairy corolla of the common wild geranium of
Germany (G. sylvaticum), being convinced, as he wrote in 1787,
that "the wise Author of Nature has not made even a single hair
without a definite design." A hundred years before, Nehemias Grew
had said that it was necessary for pollen to reach the stigma of
a flower in order that it might set fertile seed; and Linnaeus
had to come to his aid with conclusive evidence to convince a
doubting world that this was true. Sprengel made the next step
forward, but his writings lay neglected over seventy years
because he advanced the then incredible and only partially true
statement that a flower is fertilized by insects which carry its
pollen from its anthers to its stigma. In spite of his
discoveries that the hairs inside the geranium's corolla protect
its nectar from rain for the insect's benefit, just as eyebrows
keep perspiration from falling into the eye; that most flowers
which secrete nectar have what he termed "honey guides" - spots
of bright color, heavy veining, or some such pathfinder on the
petals - in spite of the most patient and scientific research
that shed great light on natural selection a half-century before
Darwin advanced the theory, he left it for the author of "The
Origin of Species" to show that cross-fertilization - the
transfer of pollen from one blossom to another, not from anthers
to stigma of the same flower - is the great end to which so much
marvelous mechanism is chiefly adapted. Cross-fertilized blossoms
defeat self-fertilized flowers in the struggle for existence.
No wonder Sprengel's theory was disproved by his scornful
contemporaries in the very case of his wild geranium, which sheds
its pollen before it has developed a stigma to receive any;
therefore no insect that had not brought pollen from an earlier
bloom could possibly fertilize this flower. How amazing that he
did not see this! Our common wild crane's-bill, which also has
lost the power to fertilize itself, not only ripens first the
outer, then the inner, row of anthers, but actually drops them
off after their pollen has been removed, to overcome the barest
chance of self-fertilization as the stigmas become receptive.
This is the geranium's and many other flowers' method to compel
cross-fertilization by insects. In cold, stormy, cloudy weather a
geranium blossom may remain in the male stage several days before
becoming female; while on a warm, sunny day, when plenty of
insects are flying, the change sometimes takes place in a few
hours. Among others, the common sulphur or puddle butterfly, that
sits in swarms on muddy roads and makes the clover fields gay
with its bright little wings, pilfers nectar from the geranium
without bringing its long tongue in contact with the pollen.
Neither do the smaller bees and flies which alight on the petals
necessarily come in contact with the anthers and stigmas.
Doubtless the larger bees are the flowers' true benefactors.
The so-called geraniums in cultivation are pelargoniums, strictly
speaking.
In barren soil, from Canada to the Gulf, and far westward, the
CAROLINA CRANE'S-BILL (G. Carolinianum), an erect, much-branched
little plant resembling the spotted geranium in general features,
bears more compact clusters of pale rose or whitish flowers,
barely half an inch across. As their inner row of anthers comes
very close to the stigmas, spontaneous self-fertilization may
sometimes occur; although in fine weather small bees, especially,
visit them constantly. The beak of the seed vessel measures
nearly an inch long.
HERB ROBERT; RED ROBIN; RED SHANKS; DRAGON'S BLOOD
(Geranium Robertianum) Geranium family
Flowers - Purplish rose, about 1/2 in. across, borne chiefly in
pairs on slender peduncles. Five sepals and petals; stamens 10;
pistil with 5 styles. Stem: Weak, slender, much branched, forked,
and spreading, slightly hairy, 6 to i8 in. high. Leaves: Strongly
scented, opposite, thin, of 3 divisions, much subdivided and
cleft. Fruit: Capsular, elastic, the beak 1 in. long,
awn-pointed.
Preferreed Habitat - Rocky, moist woods and shady roadsides
Flowering Season - May-October
Distribution - Nova Scotia to Pennsylvania, and westward to
Missouri.
Who was the Robert for whom this his "holy herb" was named? Many
suppose that he was St. Robert, a Benedictine monk, to whom the
twenty-ninth of April - the day the plant comes into flower in
Europe - is dedicated. Others assert that Robert Duke of
Normandy, for whom the "Ortus Sanitatis," a standard medical
guide for some hundred of years, was written, is the man honored;
and since there is now no way of deciding the mooted question, we
may take our choice.
Only when the stems are young are they green; later the plant
well earns the name of red shanks, and when its leaves show
crimson stains, of dragon's blood.
At any time the herb gives forth a disagreeable odor, but
especially when its leaves and stem have been crushed until they
emit a resinous secretion once an alleged cure for the plague.
Flies, that never object to a noxious smell, constantly visit the
flower, and have their tongues guided through passages between
little ridge-like processes on each petal to the nectar secreted
by the base of the filaments at the base of each sepal. To
prevent self-fertilization the five stigmas are folded close
together when the flower opens, nor do they spread apart and
become receptive until after the outer row of anthers, then the
inner row, have shed their pollen. When the elastic carpels have
ripened their seed, bang! go the little guns, scattering them far
and wide.
WHITE OR TRUE WOOD~SORREL; ALLELULA
(Oxalis acetosella) Wood-sorrel family
Flowers - White or delicate pink, veined with deep pink, about
1/2 in. long. Five sepals; 5 spreading petals rounded at tips; 10
stamens, 5 longer, 5 shorter, all anther-bearing; 1 pistil with 5
stigmatic styles. Scape: Slender, leafless, 1-flowered, 2 to 5
in, high. Leaf: Clover-like, of 3 leaflets, on long petioles from
scaly, creeping rootstock.
Preferred Habitat - Cold, damp woods.
Flowering Season - May-July.
Distribution - Nova Scotia and Manitoba, southward to North
Carolina. Also a native of Europe.
Clumps of these delicate little pinkish blossoms and abundant
leaves, cuddled close to the cold earth of northern forests,
usually conceal near the dry leaves or moss from which they
spring blind flowers that never open - cleistogamous the
botanists call them - flowers that lack petals, as if they were
immature buds; that lack odor, nectar, and entrance; yet they are
perfectly mature, self-fertilized, and abundantly fruitful.
Fifty-five genera of plants contain one or more species on which
these peculiar products are found, the pea family having more
than any other, although violets offer perhaps the most familiar
instance to most of us. Many of these species bury their
offspring below ground; but the wood-sorrel bears its blind
flowers nodding from the top of a curved scape at the base of the
plant, where we can readily find them. By having no petals, and
other features assumed by an ordinary flower to attract insects,
and chiefly in saving pollen, they produce seed with literally
the closest economy. It is estimated that the average blind
flower of the wood-sorrel does its work with four hundred pollen
grains, while the prodigal peony scatters with the help of wind
and insect visitors over three and a half millions!
Yet no plant, however economically inclined, can afford to
deteriorate its species through self-fertilization; therefore, to
overcome the evils of in-breeding, the wood-sorrel, like other
plants that bear cleistogamous flowers, takes special pains to
produce showy blossoms to attract insects, on which they
absolutely depend to transfer their pollen from flower to flower.
These have their organs so arranged as to make self-fertilization
impossible.
Every child knows how the wood-sorrel "goes to sleep" by drooping
its three leaflets until they touch back to back at evening,
regaining the horizontal at sunrise - a performance most
scientists now agree protects the peculiarly sensitive leaf from
cold by radiation. During the day, as well, seedling, scape, and
leaves go through some interesting movements, closely followed by
Darwin in his "Power of Movement in Plants," which should be read
by all interested.
Oxalis, the Greek for sour, applies to all sorrels because of
their acid juice; but acetosella = vinegar salt, the specific
name of this plant, indicates that from it druggists obtain salt
of lemons. Twenty pounds of leaves yield between two and three
ounces of oxalic acid by crystallization. Names locally given the
plant in the Old World are wood sour or sower, cuckoo's meat,
sour trefoil, and shamrock - for this is St. Patrick's own
flower, the true shamrock of the ancient Irish, some claim.
Alleluia, another folk-name, refers to the joyousness of the
Easter season, when the plant comes into bloom in England.
VIOLET WOOD-SORREL
(Oxalis violacea) Wood-sorrel family
Flowers - Pinkish purple, lavender, or pale magenta; less than 1
in. long; borne on slender stems in umbels or forking clusters,
each containing from 3 to 12 flowers. Calyx of 5 obtuse sepals; 5
petals; 10 (5 longer, 5 shorter) stamens; 5 styles persistent
above 5-celled ovary. Stem: From brownish, scaly bulb 4 to 9 in.
high. Leaves: About 1 in. wide, compounded of 3 rounded,
clover-like leaflets with prominent midrib, borne at end of
slender petioles, springing from root.
Preferred Habitat - Rocky and sandy woods.
Flowering Season - May-June.
Distribution - Northern United States to Rocky Mountains, south
to Florida and New Mexico; more abundant southward.
Beauty of Leaf and blossom is not the only attraction possessed
by this charming little plant. As a family the wood-sorrels have
great interest for botanists since Darwin devoted such exhaustive
study to their power of movement, and many other scientists have
described the several forms assumed by perfect flowers of the
same species to secure cross-fertilization. Some members of the
clan also bear blind flowers, which have been described in the
account of the white wood-sorrel given above. Even the
rudimentary leaves of the seedlings "go to sleep" at evening, and
during the day are in constant movement up and down. The stems,
too, are restless; and as for the mature leaves, every child
knows how they droop their three leaflets back to back against
the stem at evening, elevating them to the perfect horizontal
again by day. Extreme sensitiveness to light has been thought to
be the true explanation of so much activity, and yet this is not
a satisfactory theory in many cases. It is certain that drooping
leaves suffer far less from frost than those whose upper surfaces
are flatly exposed to the zenith. This view that the sleep of
leaves saves them from being chilled at night by radiation is
Darwin's own, supported by innumerable experiments; and probably
it would have been advanced by Linnaeus, too, since so many of
his observations in "Somnus Plantarum" verify the theory, had the
principle of radiation been discovered in his day.
The violet wood-sorrel produces two sorts of perfect flowers
reciprocally adapted to each other, but on different plants in
the same neighborhood. The two are essentially alike, except in
arrangement of stamens and pistil; one flower having high anthers
and low stigmas, the other having lower anthers and higher
stigmas; and as the high stigmas are fertile only when pollenized
with grains from a flower having high anthers, it is evident
insect aid to transfer pollen is indispensable here. Small bees,
which visit these blossoms abundantly, are their benefactors;
although there is nothing to prevent pollen from falling on the
stigmas of the short-styled form. Hildebrand proved that
productiveness is greatest, or exists only, after legitimate
fertilization. To accomplish cross-pollination, many plants bear
flowers of opposite sexes on different individuals; but the
violet wood-sorrel's plan, utilized by the bluet and
partridge-vine also, has the advantage in that both kinds of its
flowers are fruitful.
COMMON, FIELD, or PURPLE MILKWORT; PURPLE POLYGALA
(Polygala viridescens; P. sanguinca of Gray) Milkwort family
Flowers - Numerous, very small, variable; bright magenta, pink,
or almost red, or pale to whiteness, or greenish, clustered in a
globular clover-like head, gradually lengthening to a cylindric
spike. Stem: 6 to 15 in. high, smooth, branched above, leafy.
Leaves: Alternate, narrowly oblong, entire.
Preferred Habitat - Fields and meadows, moist or sandy.
Flowering Season - June-September.
Distribution - Southern Canada to North Carolina, westward to the
Mississippi.
When these bright clover-like heads and the inconspicuous
greenish ones grow together, the difference between them is so
striking it is no wonder Linnaeus thought they were borne by two
distinct species, sanguinea and viridescens, whereas they are now
known to be merely two forms of the same flower. At first glance
one might mistake the irregular little blossom for a member of
the pea family; two of the five very unequal sepals - not petals
- are colored wings. These bright-hued calyx-parts overlap around
the flower-head like tiles on a roof. Within each pair of wings
are three petals united into a tube, split on the back, to expose
the vital organs to contact with the bee, the milkwort's best
friend.
Plants of this genus were named polygala, the Greek for much
milk, not because they have milky juice - for it is bitter and
clear - but because feeding on them is supposed to increase the
flow of cattle's milk.
In sandy swamps, especially near the coast from Maine to the
Gulf, and westward to the Mississippi, grows the MARSH or
CROSS-LEAVED MILKWORT (P. cruciata). Most of its leaves,
especially the lower ones, are in whorls of four, and from July
to September its dense, bright purple-pink, white, or greenish
flower-heads, the wings awn-pointed, are seated on the ends of
the square branching stem of this low, mossy little plant.
FRINGED MILKWORT or POLYGALA; FLOWERING WINTERGREEN; GAY WINGS
(Polygala paucifolia) Milkwort family
Flowers - Purplish rose, rarely white, showy, over 1/2 in. long,
from 1 to 4 on short, slender peduncles from among upper leaves.
Calyx of 5 unequal sepals, of which 2 are wing-like and highly
colored like petals. Corolla irregular, its crest finely fringed;
6 stamens; pistil. Also pale, pouch-like, cleistogamous flowers
underground. Stem: Prostrate, 6 to 15 in. long, slender, from
creeping rootstock, sending up flowering shoots 4 to 7 in. high.
Leaves: Clustered at summit, oblong, or pointed egg-shaped, 1 1/2
in. long or less; those on lower part of shoots scale-like.
Preferred habitat - Moist, rich woods, pine lands, light soil.
Flowering Season - May-July.
Distribution - Northern Canada, southward and westward to Georgia
and Illinois.
Gay companies of these charming, bright little blossoms hidden
away in the woods suggest a swarm of tiny mauve butterflies that
have settled among the wintergreen leaves. Unlike the common
milkwort and many of its kin that grow in clover-like heads, each
one of the gay wings has beauty enough to stand alone, Its oddity
of structure, its lovely color and enticing fringe, lead one to
suspect it of extraordinary desire to woo some insect that will
carry its pollen from blossom to blossom and so enable the plant
to produce cross-fertilized seed to counteract the evil
tendencies resulting from the more prolific self-fertilized
cleistogamous flowers buried in the ground below. It has been
said that the fringed polygala keeps "one flower for beauty and
one for use"; "one playful flower for the world, another for
serious use and posterity"; but surely the showy flowers, the
"giddy sisters," borne by all cleistogamous species to save them
from degenerating through close inbreeding, are no idle,
irresponsible beauties. Let us watch a bumblebee as she alights
on the convenient fringe which edges the lower petal of this
milkwort. Now the weight of her body so depresses the keel, or
tubular petals, wherein the stamens and pistil lie protected from
the rain and useless insects, that as soon as it is pressed
downward a spoon-tipped pistil pushes out the pollen through the
slit on the top on the bee's abdomen. The stigmatic surface of
the pistil is on the opposite side of the spoon, nearest the base
of the flower, to guard against self-pollination. After the
pollen has been removed, a bumblebee, already dusted from other
blossoms, must leave some on the stigma as she sucks the nectar.
Indeed, every feature possessed by this pretty flower has been
developed for the most serious purpose of life - the salvation of
the species.
Only locally common throughout a wide area, embracing the eastern
half of the United States and Canada, is the RACEMED MILKWORT (P.
polygama), whose small, purple-pink, but showy flowers, clustered
along the upper part of numerous leafy stems, are found in dry
soil during June and July. Like the fringed milkwort, this one
bears many cleistogamous, or blind flowers, on underground
branches, flowers that always set an abundance of fertile
self-planted seed in case of failure to form any on the part of
their showy sisters, which are utterly dependent upon the bee's
ministrations. During prolonged stormy weather few insects are
abroad.
SWAMP ROSE-MALLOW; MALLOW ROSE
(Hibiscus Moscheutos) Mallow family
Flowers - Very large, clear rose pink, sometimes white, often
with crimson center, 4 to 7 in. across, solitary, or clustered on
peduncles at summit of stems. Calyx 5-cleft, subtended by
numerous narrow bractlets; 5 large, veined petals; stamens united
into a valvular column bearing anthers on the outside for much of
its length; 1 pistil partly enclosed in the column, and with five
button-tipped stigmatic branches above. Stem: 4 to 7 ft. tall,
stout, from perennial root. Leaves: 3 to 7 in. long, tapering,
pointed, egg-shaped, densely white, downy beneath lower leaves,
or sometimes all, lobed at middle.
Preferred Habitat - Brackish marshes, riversides, lake shores,
saline situations.
Flowering Season - August-September.
Distribution - Massachusetts to the Gulf of Mexico, westward to
Louisiana; found locally in the interior, but chiefly along
Atlantic seaboard.
Stately ranks of these magnificent flowers, growing among the
tall sedges and "cat-tails" of the marshes, make the most
insensate traveler exclaim at their amazing loveliness. To reach
them one must don rubber boots and risk sudden seats in the
slippery ooze; nevertheless, with spade in hand to give one
support, it is well worthwhile to seek them out and dig up some
roots to transplant to the garden. Here, strange to say, without
salt soil or more water than the average garden receives from
showers and hose, this handsomest of our wild flowers soon makes
itself delightfully at home under cultivation. Such good, deep
earth, well enriched and moistened, as the hollyhock thrives in,
suits it perfectly. Now we have a better opportunity to note how
the bees suck the five nectaries at the base of the petals and
collect the abundant pollen of the newly opened flowers, which
they perforce transfer to the five button-shaped stigmas
intentionally impeding the entrance to older blossoms. Only its
cousin the hollyhock, a native of China, can vie with the
rose-mallow's decorative splendor among the shrubbery; and the
ROSE OF CHINA (Hibiscus Rosa-Sinensis), cultivated in greenhouses
here, eclipse it in the beauty of the individual blossom. This
latter flower, whose superb scarlet corolla stains black, is
employed by the Chinese married women, it is said, to discolor
their teeth; but in the West Indies it sinks to even greater
ignominy as a dauber for blacking shoes!
MARSH MALLOW (Althaea officinalis), a name frequently misapplied
to the swamp rose-mallow, is properly given to a much smaller
pink flower, measuring only an inch and a half across at the
most, and a far rarer one, being a naturalized immigrant from
Europe found only in the salt marshes from the Massachusetts
coast to New York. It is also known as WYMOTE. This is a bushy,
leafy plant, two to four feet high, and covered with velvety down
as a protection against the clogging of its pores by the moisture
arising from its wet retreats. Plants that live in swamps must
"perspire" freely and keep their pores open. From the marsh
mallow's thick roots the mucilage used in confectionery is
obtained, a soothing demulcent long esteemed in medicine. Another
relative, the OKRA or GUMBO PLANT of vegetable gardens (Hibiscus
esculentus), has mucilage enough in its narrow pods to thicken a
potful of soup. Its pale yellow, crimson-centered flowers are
quite as beautiful as any hollyhock, but not nearly so
conspicuous, because of the plant's bushy habit of growth. In
spite of its name, the ALTHAEA of our gardens, or ROSE OF SHARON
(Hibiscus Syriacus), is not so closely allied to Althaea
officinalis as to the swamp rose-mallow.
Another immigrant from Europe and Asia sparingly naturalized in
waste places and roadsides in Canada, the United States, and
Mexico is the COMMON HIGH MALLOW, CHEESEFLOWER, or ROUND DOCK
(Malva sylvestris). Its purplish-rose flowers, from which the
French have derived their word mauve, first applied to this
plant, appear in small clusters on slender pedicels from the leaf
axils along a leafy, rather weak, but ascending stem, maybe only
a foot high, or perhaps a yard, throughout the summer months. The
leaf, borne on a petiole two to six inches long, is divided into
from five to nine shallow, angular, or rounded saw-edged lobes.
Country children eat unlimited quantities of the harmless little
circular, flattened "cheeses" or seed vessels, a characteristic
of the genus Malva. Since the flower invites a great number of
insects to feast on its nectar, secreted in five little pits
(protected for them from the rain by hairs at the base of the
petals), and compels its visitors to wipe off pollen brought from
the pyramidal group of anthers in a newly opened blossom to the
exserted, radiating stigmas of older ones, the mallow produces
more cheeses than all the dairies of the world. So rich is its
store of nectar that the hive-bee, shut out from a legitimate
entrance to the flower when it closes in the late afternoon,
climbs up the outside of the calyx, and inserting his tongue
between the five petals, empties the nectaries one after another
- intelligent rogue that he is!
The LOW, DWARF, or RUNNING MALLOW (M. rotundifolia), a very
common little weed throughout our territory, Europe, and Asia,
depends scarcely at all upon insects to transfer its pollen, as
might be inferred from its unattractive pale blue to white
flowers, that measure only about half an inch across. In default
of visitors, its pollen-laden anthers, instead of drooping to get
out of the way of the stigmas, as in the showy high mallow,
remain extended so as to come in contact with the rough, sticky
sides of the long curling stigmas. The leaves of this spreading
plant, which are nearly round, with five to nine shallow,
saw-edged lobes, are thin, and furnished with long petioles;
whereas the flowers which spring from their axils keep close to
the main stem. Usually there are about fifteen rounded carpels
that go to make up the Dutch, doll, or fairy cheeses, as the seed
vessels are called by children. Only once is the mallow mentioned
in the Bible, and then as food for the most abject and despised
poor (Job 30: 4); but as eighteen species of mallow grow in
Palestine, who is the higher critic to name the species eaten?
Occasionally we meet by the roadside in Canada, the Eastern,
Middle, and Southern States pink, sometimes white, flowers, about
two inches across, growing in small clusters at the top of a stem
a foot or two high, the whole plant emitting a faint odor of
musk. If the stem leaves are deeply divided into several narrow,
much-cleft segments, and the little cheeses are densely hairy, we
may safely call the plant MUSK MALLOW (M. moschata), and expect
to find it blooming throughout the summer.
MARSH ST.-JOHN'S-WORT
(Triadenum Virginicum; Elodea Virginica of Gray)
St.-John's-wort family
Flowers - Pale magenta, pink, or flesh color, about 1/2 in.
across, in terminal clusters, or from leaf axils. Calyx of 5
equal sepals, persistent on fruit; 5 petals; 9 or more stamens
united in 3 sets; pistil of 3 distinct styles. Stem: to 1 1/2 ft.
high, simple, leafy. Leaves: Opposite, pale, with black,
glandular dots, broadly oblong, entire edged, seated on stem or
clasping by heart-shaped base. Fruit: An oblong, acute, deep red
capsule.
Preferred Habitat - Swamps and cranberry bogs.
Flowering Season - July-September.
Distribution - Labrador to the Gulf, and westward to Nebraska.
Late in the summer, after the rather insignificant pink flowers
have withered, this low plant, which almost never lacks some
color in its green parts, greatly increases its beauty by tinting
stems, leaves, and seed vessels with red. Like other members of
the family, the flower arranges its stamens in little bundles of
three, and when an insect comes to feast on the abundant pollen -
no nectar being secreted - he cannot avoid rubbing some off on
the stigmas that are on a level with the anthers. He may
sometimes carry pollen from blossom to blossom, it is true, but
certainly the St.-John's-wort takes no adequate precautions
against self-fertilization at any time. Toward the close of its
existence the flower draws its petals together toward the axils,
thus bringing anthers and stigmas in contact.
SPIKED WILLOW-HERB; LONG PURPLES; SPIKED or PURPLE LOOSESTRIFE
(Lythrum Salicaria) Loosestrife family
Flowers - Bright magenta (royal purple) or pinkish purple, about
1/2 in. broad, crowded in whorls around long bracted spikes.
Calyx tubular, ribbed, 5 to 7 toothed, with small projections
between. Corolla of 5 or 6 slightly wrinkled or twisted petals.
Stamens, in 2 whorls of 5 or 6 each, and 1 pistil, occurring in
three different lengths. Stem: 2 to 3 ft. high, leafy, branched.
Leaves: Opposite, or sometimes in whorls of 3; lance-shaped, with
heart-shaped base clasping stem.
Preferred Habitat - Wet meadows, watery places, ditches, and
banks of streams.
Flowering Season - June-August.
Distribution - Eastern Canada to Delaware, and westward through
Middle States; also in Europe.