Through Darwin's patient study of this trimorphic flower, it has

assumed so important a place in his theory of the origin of

species that its fertilization by insects deserves special

attention. On page 5, the method by which the pickerel weed,

another flower whose stamens and pistil occur in three different

lengths, should be read to avoid much repetition. Now the

loosestrife produces six different kinds of yellow and green

pollen on its two sets of three stamens; and when this pollen is

applied by insects to the stigmatic surface of three different

lengths of pistil, it follows that there are eighteen ways in

which it may be transferred. But Darwin proved that only pollen

brought from the shortest stamens to the shortest pistil, from

the middle-length stamens to the middle-length pistil, and from

the long stamens to the long pistil effectually fertilizes the

flower. And as all the flowers on any one plant are of the same

kind, we have here a marvelous mechanism to secure

cross-fertilization. His experiments with this loosestrife also

demonstrated that "reproductive organs, when of different length,

behave to one another like different species of the same genus in

regard both to direct productiveness and the character of the

offspring; and that consequently mutual barrenness, which was

once thought conclusive proof of difference of species, is

worthless as such, and the last barrier that was raised between

species and varieties is broken down." (Muller.)

Naturally the bright-hued, hospitable flower, which secretes

abundant nectar at the base of its tube, attracts many insects,

among others, bees of larger and middle size, and the butterflies

for which it is especially adapted. They alight on the stamens

and pistil on the upper side of the flower. Those with the

longest tongues stand on one blossom to sip from the next one:

this is the butterfly's customary attitude. But nearly every

visitor comes in contact with at least one set of organs. When

Darwin first interpreted the trimorphism of the loosestrife, we

can realize something of the enthusiasm such a man must have felt

in writing to Gray: "I am almost stark, staring mad over

lythrum.... For the love of Heaven have a look at some of your

species, and if you can get me some seed, do!"

Long ago this beautiful plant reached our shores from Europe, and

year by year is extending its triumphal march westward,

brightening its course of empire through low meadows and marshes

with torches that lengthen even as they glow. It is not a spring

flower, even in England; and so when Shakespeare, whose knowledge

of floral nature was second only to that of human nature, wrote

of Ophelia,

"With fantastic garlands did she come,

Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples,"

is it probable he so combined flowers having different seasons of

bloom? Dr. Prior suggests that the purple orchis (0. mascula)

might have been the flower Ophelia wore; but, as long purples has

been the folk name of this loosestrife from time immemorial in

England, it seems likely that Shakespeare for once may have made

a mistake.

BLUE WAX-WEED; CLAMMY CUPHEA; TAR-WEED

(Parsonia petiolata; Cuphea viscosissima of Gray) Loosestrife

family

Flowers - Purplish pink, about 1/4 in. across, on short peduncles

from leaf axils, solitary or clustered. Calyx sticky, tubular,

12-ribbed, with 6 primary teeth, oblique at mouth, extending into

a rounded swelling on upper side at base; 6 unequal, wrinkled

petals, on short claws; 11 or 12 stamens inserted on calyx

throat; pistil with 2-lobed stigma. Stem: 6 to 20 in. high,

branched, very sticky-hairy. Leaves: Opposite, on slender

petioles, lance-shaped, rounded at base, harsh to the touch.

Preferred Habitat - Dry soil, waste places, fields, roadsides.

Flowering Season - July-October.

Distribution - Rhode Island to Georgia, westward to Louisiana,

Kansas, and Illinois.

A first cousin of the familiar Mexican cigar plant, or

fire-cracker plant (Cuphea platycentra), whose abundant little

vermilion tubes, with black-edged lower lip tipped with white,

brighten the borders of so many Northern flower-beds. Kyphos, the

Greek for curved, from which cuphea was derived, has reference to

the peculiar, swollen little seedpod. From a slit on one side of

the clammy cuphea's capsule the placenta, set with tiny flattened

seeds, sticks out like a handle. Probably the flower has already

fertilized itself in the bud, although, from the fact that the

plant has taken such pains to punish crawling insect foes by

coating itself with sticky hairs, one might imagine it was wholly

dependent upon winged insects to transfer its pollen. What an

unworthy relative of the purple loosestrife, whose elaborate

scheme to insure cross-fertilization is one of the botanical

wonders!

MEADOW-BEAUTY; DEER GRASS

(Rhexia Virginica) Meadow-beauty family

Flowers - Purplish pink, 1 to 1 1/2 in. across, pedicelled,

clustered at top of stem. Calyx 4-lobed, tubular or urn-shaped,

narrowest at neck; 4 rounded, spreading petals, joined for half

their length; 8 equal, prominent stamens in 2 rows; pistil. Stem:

1 to 1 1/2 ft. high, square, more or less hairy, erect, sometimes

branching at top. Leaves: Opposite, ascending, seated on stem,

oval, acute at tip, mostly 5-nerved, the margins saw-edged.

Preferred Habitat - Sandy swamps or near water.

Flowering Season - July-September.

Distribution - United States, chiefly east of Mississippi.

Suggesting a brilliant magenta evening primrose in form, the

meadow-beauty is likewise a rather niggardly bloomer, only a few

flowers in each cluster opening at once; but where masses adorn

our marshes, we cannot wonder so effective a plant is exported to

European peat gardens. Its lovely sister, the MARYLAND

MEADOW-BEAUTY (R. Mariana), a smaller, less brilliant flower,

found no farther north than the swamps and pine barrens of New

Jersey, also goes abroad to be admired; yet neither is of any

value for cutting, for the delicate petals quickly discolor and

drop off when handled. Blossoms so attractively colored naturally

have many winged visitors to transfer their pollen. All too soon

after fertilization the now useless petals fall, leaving the

pretty urn-shaped calyx, with the large yellow protruding

stamens, far more conspicuous than some flowers. "Its

seed-vessels are perfect little cream pitchers of graceful form,"

said Thoreau. Within the smooth capsule the minute seeds are

coiled like snail-shells.

GREAT OR SPIKED WILLOW-HERB; FIRE-WEED

(Chamaenerion angustifolium; Epilobium angustifolium of Gray)

Evening Primrose family

Flowers - Magenta or pink, sometimes pale, or rarely white, more

or less than 1 in. across, in an elongated, terminal, spike-like

raceme. Calyx tubular, narrow, in 4 segments; 4 rounded,

spreading petals; 8 stamens; 1 pistil, hairy at base; the stigma

4-lobed. Stem: 2 to 8 ft. high, simple, smooth, leafy. Leaves:

Narrow, tapering, willow-like, 2 to 6 in. long. Fruit: A slender,

curved, violet-tinted capsule, from 2 to 3 in. long, containing

numerous seeds attached to tufts of fluffy, white, silky threads.

Preferred Habitat - Dry soil, fields, roadsides, especially in

burnt-over districts.

Flowering Season - June-September.

Distribution - From Atlantic to Pacific, with few interruptions;

British Possessions and United States southward to the Carolinas

and Arizona. Also Europe and Asia.

Spikes of these beautiful brilliant flowers towering upward above

dry soil, particularly where the woodsman's axe and forest fires

have devastated the landscape, illustrate Nature's abhorrence of

ugliness. Other kindly plants have earned the name of fire-weed,

but none so quickly beautifies the blackened clearings of the

pioneer, nor blossoms over the charred trail in the wake of the

locomotive. Beginning at the bottom of the long spike, the

flowers open in slow succession upward throughout the summer,

leaving behind the attractive seed-vessels, which, splitting

lengthwise in September, send adrift white silky tufts attached

to seeds that will one day cover far distant wastes with beauty.

Almost perfect rosettes, made by the young plants, are met with

on one's winter walks.

Epi, upon, and lobos, a pod, combine to make a name applicable to

many flowers of this family. In general structure the fire-weed

closely resembles its relative the evening primrose. Bees, not

moths, however, are its benefactors. Coming to a newly opened

flower, the bee finds abundant pollen on the anthers and a sip of

nectar in the cup below. At this stage the flower keeps its still

immature style curved downward and backward lest it should become

self-fertilized - an evil ever to be guarded against by ambitious

plants. In a few days, or after the pollen has been removed, up

stretches the style, spreading its four receptive stigmas just

where an incoming bee, well dusted from a younger flower, must

certainly leave some pollen on their sticky surfaces.

The GREAT HAIRY WILLOW-HERB (Epilobium hirsutum), whose white

tufted seeds came over from Europe in the ballast to be blown

over Ontario and the Eastern States, spreads also by underground

shoots, until it seems destined to occupy wide areas. In these

showy magenta flowers, about one inch across, the stigmas and

anthers mature simultaneously but cross-fertilization is usually

insured because the former surpass the latter, and naturally are

first touched by the insect visitor. In default of visits,

however, the stigmas, at length curling backward, come in contact

with the pollen-laden anthers. The fire-weed, on the contrary, is

unable to fertilize itself.

A pale magenta-pink or whitish, very small-flowered, branching

species, one to two feet high, found in swamps from New Brunswick

to the Pacific, and southward to Delaware, is the LINEAR-LEAVED

WILLOW-HERB (F. lineare), whose distinguishing features are its

very narrow, acute leaves, its hoariness throughout, the dingy

threads on its tiny seeds, and the occasional bulblets it bears

near the base of the stem. It is scarcely to be distinguished by

one not well up in field practice from another bog lover, the

DOWNY or SOFT WILLOW-HERB (F. strictum), which, however, is a

trifle taller, glandular throughout, and with sessile, not

petioled, leaves. The PURPLE-LEAVED WILLOW-HERB (E. coloratum),

common in low grounds, may best be named by the reddish-brown

coma to which its seeds are attached. Both leaves and stem are

often highly colored.

BOG WINTERGREEN

(Pyrola uliginosa; P. rotundifolia, var. uliginosa of Gray)

Wintergreen family

Flowers - Magenta pink, fragrant, about 1/2 in. across, 7 to 15

on a leafless scape 6 to 15 in. high. Calyx 5-parted; 5 concave

petals; 10 stamens; style curved upward, exserted. Leaves: From

the root, broadly oval or round, rather thick and dull, on

petioles.

Preferred Habitat - Swamps and bogs.

Flowering Season - June.

Distribution - Nova Scotia to British Columbia, southward to New

York and Colorado.

Fragrant colonies of this little plant cuddled close to the moss

of cool, northern peat bogs draw forth our admiration when we go

orchid hunting in early summer. A similar species, the LIVER-LEAF

WINTERGREEN (P. asarifolia), with shining, not dull, leaves and

rose-colored flowers, not to mention minor differences, is

likewise found in swamps and wet woods. These two wintergreens,

formerly counted mere varieties of the white-flowered

rotundifolia, a lover of dry woods, have now been given specific

individuality by later-day systematists. Short-lipped bees and

flies may be detected in the act of applying their mouths to the

orifices of the anthers through which pollen is shed, and some

must be carried to the stigma of another flower.

PIPSISSEWA; PRINCE'S PINE

(Chimaphila umbellata) Wintergreen family

Flowers - Flesh-colored, or pinkish, fragrant, waxy, usually with

deep pink ring around center, and the anthers colored; about 1/2

in. across; several flowers in loose, terminal cluster. Calyx

5-cleft; corolla of 5 concave, rounded, spreading petals; 10

stamens, the filaments hairy style short, conical, with a round

stigma. Stem: Trailing far along ground, creeping, or partly

subterranean, sending up sterile and flowering branches 3 to 10

in. high. Leaves: Opposite or in whorls, evergreen, bright,

shining, spatulate to lance-shaped, sharply saw-edged.

Preferred Habitat - Dry woods, sandy leaf-mould.

Flowering Season - June-August.

Distribution - British Possessions and the United States north of

Georgia from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Also Mexico, Europe,

and Asia.

A lover of winter indeed (cheima = winter and phileo = to love)

is the prince's pine, whose beautiful dark leaves keep their

color and gloss in spite of snow and intense cold. A few yards of

the trailing stem, easily ripped from the light soil of its

woodland home, make a charming indoor decoration, especially when

the little brown seed-cases remain. Few flowers are more

suggestive of the woods than these shy, dainty, deliciously

fragrant little blossoms.

The SPOTTED WINTERGREEN, or PIPSISSEWA (C. maculata), closely

resembles the prince's pine, except that its slightly larger

white or pinkish flowers lack the deep pink ring; and the

lance-shaped leaves, with rather distant saw-teeth, are

beautifully mottled with white along the veins. When we see

short-lipped bees and flies about these flowers, we may be sure

their pollen-covered mouths come in contact with the moist stigma

on the summit of the little top-shaped style, and so effect

cross-fertilization.

WILD HONEYSUCKLE; PINK, PURPLE, or WILD AZALEA; PINXTER-FLOWER

(Azalea nudiflora) Heath family

Flowers - Crimson pink, purplish or rose pink, to nearly white, 1

1/2 to 2 in. across, faintly fragrant, clustered, opening before

or with the leaves, and developed from cone-like, scaly brown

buds. Calyx minute, 5-parted; corolla funnel-shaped, the tube

narrow, hairy, with 5 regular, spreading lobes; 5 long red

stamens; 1 pistil, declined, protruding. Stem: Shrubby, usually

simple below, but branching above, 2 to 6 ft. high. Leaves:

Usually clustered, deciduous, oblong, acute at both ends, hairy

on midrib.

Preferred Habitat - Moist, rocky woods, or dry woods and

thickets.

Flowering Season - April-May.

Distribution - Maine to Illinois, and southward to the Gulf.

Woods and hillsides are glowing with fragrant, rosy masses of

this lovely azalea, the Pinxter-bloem or Whitsunday flower of the

Dutch colonists, long before the seventh Sunday after Easter.

Among our earliest exports, this hardy shrub, the swamp azalea,

and the superb flame-colored species of the Alleghanies, were

sent early in the eighteenth century to the old country, and

there crossed with A. Pontica of southern Europe by the Belgian

horticulturalists, to whom we owe the Ghent azaleas, the final

triumphs of the hybridizer, that glorify the shrubberies on our

own lawns to-day. The azalea became the national flower of

Flanders. These hardy species lose their leaves in winter,

whereas the hothouse varieties of A. Indica, a native of China

and Japan, have thickish leaves, almost if not quite evergreen. A

few of the latter stand our northern winters, especially the pure

white variety now quite commonly planted in cemetery lots. In

that delightfully enthusiastic little book, "The Garden's Story,"

Mr. Ellwanger says of the Ghent azalea "In it I find a charm

presented by no other flower. Its soft tints of buff, sulphur,

and primrose; its dazzling shades of apricot, salmon, orange, and

vermilion are always a fresh revelation of color. They have no

parallel among flowers, and exist only in opals, sunset skies,

and the flush of autumn woods." Certainly American

horticulturists were not clever in allowing the industry of

raising these plants from our native stock to thrive on foreign

soil.

Naturally the azalea's protruding style forms the most convenient

alighting place for the female bee, its chief friend; and there

she leaves a few grains of pollen, brought on her hairy underside

from another flower, before again dusting herself there as she

crawls over the pretty colored anthers on her way to the nectary.

Honey produced from azaleas by the hive bee is in bad repute. All

too soon after fertilization the now useless corolla slides along

to the tip of the pistil, where it swings a while before dropping

to earth.

Our beautiful wild honeysuckle, called naked (nudiflora), because

very often the flowers appear before the leaves, has a peculiar

Japanese grace on that account. Every farmer's boy's mouth waters

at sight of the cool, juicy May-apple, the extraordinary pulpy

growth on this plant and the swamp pink. This excrescence seems

to have no other use than that of a gratuitous, harmless gift to

the thirsty child, from whom it exacts no reward of carrying

seeds to plant distant colonies, as the mandrake's yellow,

tomato-like May-apple does. But let him beware, as he is likely

to, of the similar looking, but hollow, stringy apples growing on

the bushy Andromeda, which turn black with age.

>From Maine to Florida and westward to Texas, chiefly near the

coast, in low, wet places only need we look for the SWAMP PINK or

HONEYSUCKLE, WHITE or CLAMMY AZALEA (A. viscosa), a more hairy

species than the Pinxter-flower, with a very sticky, glandular

corolla tube, and deliciously fragrant blossoms, by no means

invariably white. John Burroughs is not the only one who has

passed "several patches of swamp honeysuckles, red with blossoms"

("Wake-Robin"). But as this species does not bloom until June and

July, when the sun quickly bleaches the delicate flowers, it is

true we most frequently find them white, merely tinged with pink.

The leaves are well developed before the blossoms appear.

Concerning azaleas' poisonous property, see the discussion under

mountain laurel that follows.

RHODORA

(Rhodora Canadensis; Rhododendron Rhodora of Gray) Heath

family

Flowers - Purplish pink, rose, or nearly white, 1 1/2 in. broad

or less, in clusters on short, stiff, hairy pedicels, and usually

appearing before the leaves, from scaly, terminal buds. Calyx

minute; corolla 2-lipped, upper lip unequally 2-3 lobed; lower

lip 2-cleft; 10 stamens; pistil, the style slightly protruding.

Stem: 1 to 3 ft. high, shrubby, branching. Leaves: Deciduous,

oval to oblong, dark green above, pale and hairy beneath.

Preferred Habitat - Wet hillsides, damp woods, beside sluggish

streams, cool bogs.

Flowering Season - May.

Distribution - Newfoundland to Pennsylvania mountains.

A superficial glance at this low, little, thin shrub might

mistake it for a magenta variety of the leafless Pinxter-flower.

It does its best to console the New Englanders for the scarcity

of the magnificent rhododendron, with which it was formerly

classed. The Sage of Concord, who became so enamored of it that

Massachusetts people often speak of it as "Emerson's flower,"

extols its loveliness in a sonnet:

"Rhodora! If the sages ask thee why

This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,

Tell them, dear, if eyes were made for seeing,

Then Beauty is its own excuse for being."

AMERICAN or GREAT RHODODENDRON; GREAT LAUREL; ROSE TREE, or BAY

(Rhododendron maximum) Heath family

Flowers - Rose pink, varying to white, greenish in the throat,

spotted with yellow or orange, in broad clusters set like a

bouquet among leaves, and developed from scaly, cone-like buds;

pedicels sticky-hairy. Calyx 5-parted, minute; corolla 5-lobed,

broadly bell-shaped, 2 in. broad or less usually 10 stamens,

equally spreading; pistil. Stem: Sometimes a tree attaining a

height of 40 ft., usually 6 to 20 ft., shrubby, woody. Leaves:

Evergreen, drooping in winter, leathery, dark green on both

sides, lance-oblong, 4 to 10 in. long, entire edged, narrowing

into stout petioles.

Preferred Habitat - Mountainous woodland, hillsides near streams.

Flowering Season - June-July.

Distribution - Uncommon from Ohio and New England to Nova Scotia;

abundant through the Alleghanies to Georgia.

When this most magnificent of our native shrubs covers whole

mountain sides throughout the Alleghany region with bloom, one

stands awed in the presence of such overwhelming beauty. Nowhere

else does the rhododendron attain such size or luxuriance. There

it produces a tall trunk, and towers among the trees; it spreads

its branches far and wide until they interlock and form almost

impenetrable thickets locally called "hells;" it glorifies the

loneliest mountain road with superb bouquets of its delicate

flowers set among dark, glossy foliage scarcely less attractive.

The mountain in bloom is worth travelling a thousand miles to

see.

Farther south the more purplish-pink or lilac-flowered CAROLINA

RHODODENDRON (R. Catawbiense) flourishes. This southern shrub,

which is perfectly hardy, unlike its northern sister, has been

used by cultivators as a basis for producing the fine hybrids now

so extensively grown on lawns in this country and Europe. Crossed

with the Nepal species (R. arboreum) the best results follow.

Americans, ever too prone to make the eagle scream on their trips

abroad, need not monopolize all the glory for the cultivated

rhododendron, as they are apt to do when they see it on fine

estates in England. The Himalayas, which are covered with

rhododendrons of brighter hue than ours, furnish many of the

shrubs of commerce. Our rhododendron produces one of the hardest

and strongest of woods, weighing thirty-nine pounds per cubic

foot.

Rhododendrons, azaleas, and laurels fall under a common ban

pronounced by bee-keepers. The bees which transfer pollen from

blossom to blossom while gathering nectar, manufacture honey said

to be poisonous. Cattle know enough to let all this foliage

alone. Apparently the ants fear no more evil results from the

nectar than the bees themselves; and were it not for the sticky

parts nearest the flowers, on which they crawl to meet their

death, the blossom's true benefactors would find little

refreshment left.

MOUNTAIN or AMERICAN LAUREL; CALICO BUSH; SPOONWOOD; CALMOUN;

BROAD-LEAVED KALMIA

(Kalmia latifolia) Heath family

Flowers - Buds and new flowers bright rose pink, afterward fading

white, and only lined with pink, 1 in. across, or less, numerous,

in terminal clusters. Calyx small, 5-parted, sticky corolla like

a 5-pointed saucer, with 10 projections on outside; 10 arching

stamens, an anther lodged in each projection; 1 pistil. Stem:

Shrubby, woody, stiffly branched, 2 to 20 ft. high. Leaves:

Evergreen, entire, oval to elliptic, pointed at both ends,

tapering into petioles. Fruit: A round, brown capsule, with the

style long remaining on it.

Preferred Habitat - Sandy or rocky woods, especially in hilly or

mountainous country.

Flowering Season - May-June.

Distribution - New Brunswick and Ontario, southward to the Gulf

of Mexico, and westward to Ohio.

It would be well if Americans, imitating the Japanese in making

pilgrimages to scenes of supreme natural beauty, visited the

mountains, rocky, woody hillsides, ravines, and tree-girt uplands

when the laurel is in its glory; when masses of its pink and

white blossoms, set among the dark evergreen leaves, flush the

landscape like Aurora, and are reflected from the pools of

streams and the serene depths of mountain lakes. Peter Kalm, a

Swedish pupil of Linnaeus, who traveled here early in the

eighteenth century, was more impressed by its beauty than that of

any other flower. He introduced the plant to Europe, where it is

known as kalmia, and extensively cultivated on fine estates that

are thrown open to the public during the flowering season. Even a

flower is not without honor, save in its own country. We have

only to prepare a border of leaf-mould, take up the young plant

without injuring the roots or allowing them to dry, hurry them

into the ground, and prune back the bush a little, to establish

it in our gardens, where it will bloom freely after the second

year.

All the kalmias resort to a most ingenious device for compelling

insect visitors to carry their pollen from blossom to blossom. A

newly opened flower has its stigma erected where the incoming bee

must leave on its sticky surface the four minute orange-like

grains carried from the anther of another flower on the hairy

underside of her body. Now, each anther is tucked away in one of

the ten little pockets of the saucer-shaped blossom, and the

elastic filaments are strained upward like a bow. After hovering

above the nectary, the bee has only to descend toward it, when

her leg, touching against one of the hair-triggers of the spring

trap, pop goes the little anther-gun, discharging pollen from its

bores as it flies upward. So delicately is the mechanism

adjusted, the slightest jar or rough handling releases the

anthers; but, on the other hand, should insects be excluded by a

net stretched over the plant, the flowers will fall off and

wither without firing off their pollen-charged guns. At least,

this is true in the great majority of tests. As in the case of

hothouse flowers no fertile seed is set when nets keep away the

laurel's benefactors. One has only to touch the hair-trigger with

the end of a pin to see how exquisitely delicate is this

provision for cross-fertilization.

However much we may be cautioned by the apiculturalists against

honey made from laurel nectar, the bees themselves ignore all

warnings and apparently without evil results - happily for

flowers dependent upon them and their kin. Mr. Frank R. Cheshire,

in "Bees and Bee-keeping," the standard English work on the

subject, writes: "During the celebrated Retreat of the Ten

Thousand, as recorded by Xenophon in his 'Anabasis,' the soldiers

regaled themselves upon some honey found near Trebizonde where

were many beehives. Intoxication with vomiting was the result.

Some were so overcome, he states, as to be incapable of standing.

Not a soldier died, but very many were greatly weakened for

several days. Tournefort endeavored to ascertain whether this

account was corroborated by anything ascertainable in the

locality, and had good reason to be satisfied respecting it. He

concluded that the honey had been gathered from a shrub growing

in the neighborhood of Trebizonde, which is well known there as

producing the before-mentioned effects. It is now agreed that the

plants were species of rhododendron and azaleas. Lamberti

confirms Xenophon's account by stating that similar effects are

produced by honey of Colchis, where the same shrubs are common.

In 1790, even, fatal cases occurred in America in consequence of

eating wild honey, which was traced to Kahmia latifolia by an

inquiry instituted under direction of the American government.

Happily, our American cousins are now never likely to thus

suffer, thanks to drainage, the plow, and the bee-farm."

One of the beautiful swallow-tail butterflies lays its eggs on

laurel leaves, that the larvae may feed on them later; yet the

foliage often proves deadly to more highly organized creatures.

Most cattle know enough to let it alone; nevertheless some fall

victims to it every year. Even the intelligent grouse, hard

pressed with hunger when deep snow covers much of their chosen

food are sometimes found dead and their crops distended by these

leaves. How far more unkind than the bristly armored thistle's is

the laurel's method of protecting itself against destruction!

Even the ant, intent on pilfering sweets secreted for bees, it

ruthlessly glues to death against its sticky stems and calices.

According to Dr. Barton the Indians drink a decoction of kalmia

leaves when they wish to commit suicide.

As laurel wood is very hard and solid, weighing forty-four pounds

to the cubic foot, it is in great demand for various purposes,

one of them indicated in the plant's popular name of Spoon-wood.

SHEEP-LAUREL, LAMB-KILL, WICKY, CALF-KILL, SHEEP-POISON

NARROW-LEAVED LAUREL (K. angustifolia), and so on through a list

of folk names testifying chiefly to the plant's wickedness in the

pasture, may be especially deadly food for cattle, but it

certainly is a feast to the eyes. However much we may admire the

small, deep crimson-pink flowers that we find in June and July in

moist fields or swampy ground or on the hillsides, few of us will

agree with Thoreau, who claimed that it is "handsomer than the

mountain laurel." The low shrub may be only six inches high, or

it may attain three feet. The narrow evergreen leaves, pale on

the underside, have a tendency to form groups of threes, standing

upright when newly put forth, but bent downward with the weight

of age. A peculiarity of the plant is that clusters of leaves

usually terminate the woody stem, for the flowers grow in whorls

or in clusters at the side of it below.

The PALE or SWAMP LAUREL (K. glauca), found in cool bogs from

Newfoundland to New Jersey and Michigan, and westward to the

Pacific Coast, coats the under side of its mostly upright leaves

with a smooth whitish bloom like the cabbage's. It is a

straggling little bush, even lower than the lamb-kill, and an

earlier bloomer, putting forth its loose, niggardly clusters of

deep rose or lilac-colored flowers in June.

TRAILING ARBUTUS; MAYFLOWER; GROUND LAUREL

(Epigaea repens) Heath family

Flowers - Pink, fading to nearly white, very fragrant about 1/2

in. across when expanded, few or many in clusters at ends of

branches. Calyx of 5 dry overlapping sepals; corolla

salver-shaped, the slender, hairy tube spreading into 5 equal

lobes; 10 stamens; 1 pistil with a column-like style and a

5-lobed stigma. Stem: Spreading over the ground (Epigaea = on the

earth); woody, the leafy twigs covered with rusty hairs. Leaves:

Alternate, oval, rounded at the base, smooth above, more or less

hairy below, evergreen, weather-worn, on short, rusty, hairy

petioles.

Preferred Habitat - Light sandy loam in woods, especially under

evergreen trees, or in mossy, rocky places.

Flowering Season - March-May.

Distribution - Newfoundland to Florida, west to Kentucky, and the

Northwest Territory.

Can words describe the fragrance of the very breath of spring -

that delicious commingling of the perfume of arbutus, the odor of

pines, and the snow-soaked soil just warming into life? Those who

know the flower only as it is sold in the city streets, tied with

wet, dirty string into tight bunches, withered and forlorn, can

have little idea of the joy of finding the pink, pearly blossoms

freshly opened among the withered leaves of oak and chestnut,

moss, and pine needles in which they nestle close to the cold

earth in the leafless, windy northern forest. Even in Florida,

where broad patches carpet the woods in February, one misses

something of the arbutus's accustomed charm simply because there

are no slushy remnants of snow drifts, no reminders of winter

hardships in the vicinity. There can be no glad surprise at

finding dainty spring flowers in a land of perpetual summer.

Little wonder that the Pilgrim Fathers, after the first awful

winter on the "stern New England coast," loved this early

messenger of hope and gladness above the frozen ground at

Plymouth. In an introductory note to his poem "The Mayflowers,"

Whittier states that the name was familiar in England, as the

application of it to the historic vessel shows; but it was

applied by the English, and still is, to the hawthorn. Its use in

New England in connection with the trailing arbutus dates from a

very early day, some claiming that the first Pilgrims so used it

in affectionate memory of the vessel and its English flower

association.

"Sad Mayflower I watched by winter stars,

And nursed by winter gales,

With petals of the sleeted spars,

And leaves of frozen sails!

"But warmer suns ere long shall bring

To life the frozen sod,

And through dead leaves of hope shall spring

Afresh the flowers of God!"

Some have attempted to show that the Pilgrims did not find the

flowers until the last month of spring, and that, therefore, they

were named Mayflowers. Certainly the arbutus is not a typical May

blossom even in New England. Bryant associates it with the

hepatica, our earliest spring flower, in his poem, "The,

Twenty-seventh of March":

"Within the woods

Tufts of ground laurel, creeping underneath

The leaves of the last summer, send their sweets

Upon the chilly air, and by the oak,

The squirrel cups, a graceful company

Hide in their bells a soft aerial blue."

There is little use trying to coax this shyest of sylvan flowers

into our gardens where other members of its family,

rhododendrons, laurels, and azaleas make themselves delightfully

at home. It is wild as a hawk, an untamable creature that slowly

pines to death when brought into contact with civilization.

Greedy street venders, who ruthlessly tear up the plant by the

yard, and others without even the excuse of eking out a paltry

income by its sale, have already exterminated it within a wide

radius of our Eastern cities. How curious that the majority of

people show their appreciation of a flower's beauty only by

selfishly, ignorantly picking every specimen they can find!

In many localities the arbutus sets no fruit, for it is still

undergoing evolutionary changes looking toward the perfecting of

an elaborate system to insure cross-fertilization. Already it has

attained to perfume, nectar, and color to attract quantities of

insects, chiefly flies and small female bees but in some flowers

the anthers produce no pollen for them to carry, while others are

filled with grains, yet all the stigmas in the neighboring

clusters may be defective. The styles and the filaments are of

several different lengths, showing a tendency toward trimorphism,

perhaps, like the wonderful purple loosestrife; but at present

the flower pursues a most wasteful method of distributing pollen,

and in different sections of the country acts so differently that

its phases are impossible to describe except to the advanced

student. They may, however, be best summarized in the words of

Professor Asa Gray: "The flowers are of two kinds, each with two

modifications; the two main kinds characterized by the nature and

perfection of the stigma, along with more or less abortion of the

stamens; their modifications by the length of the style."

When our English cousins speak of the arbutus, they have in mind

a very different species from ours. Theirs is the late flowering

strawberry-tree, an evergreen shrub with clustering white

blossoms and beautiful rough, red berries. Indeed, the name

arbutus is derived from the Celtic word Arboise, meaning rough

fruit.

LARGE or AMERICAN CRANBERRY

(Oxycoccus macrocarpus; Vaccinium macrocarpon of Gray)

Huckleberry family

Flowers - Light pink, about 1/2 in. across, nodding on slender

pedicels from sides and tips of erect branches. Calyx round, 4-or

5-parted; corolla a long cone in bud, its four or five nearly

separate, narrow petals turned far backward later; 8 or 10

stamens, the anthers united into a protruding cone, its hollow

tubes shedding pollen by a pore at tip. Stem: Creeping or

trailing, slender, woody, 1 to 3 ft. long, its leafy branches 8

in. high or less. Leaves: Small, alternate, oblong, evergreen,

pale beneath, the edges rolled backward. Fruit: An oblong or

ovoid, many seeded, juicy red berry (Oxycoccus = sour berry).

Preferred Habitat - Bogs; sandy, swampy meadows.

Flowering Season - June-August.

Distribution - North Carolina, Michigan, and Minnesota northward

and westward.

A hundred thousand people are interested in the berry of this

pretty vine to one who has ever seen its flowers. Yet if the

blossom were less attractive, to insects at least, and took less

pains to shake out its pollen upon them as they cling to the cone

to sip its nectar, few berries would accompany the festive

Thanksgiving turkey. Cultivators of the cranberry know how

important it is to have the flooded bogs well drained before the

flowering season. Water (or ice) may cover the plants to the

depth of a foot or more all winter and until the 10th of May; and

during the late summer it is often advisable to overflow the bogs

to prevent injury of the fine, delicate roots from drought, and

to destroy the worm that is the plant's worst enemy; but until

the flowers have wooed the bees, flies, and other winged

benefactors, and fruit is well formed, every cultivator knows

enough not to submerge his bog. With flowers under water there

are no insect visitors, consequently no berries. Dense mats of

the wiry vines should yield about one hundred and fifty bushels

of berries to the acre, under skilful cultivation - a most

profitable industry, since the cranberry costs less to cultivate,

gather, and market than the strawberry or any of the small

perishable fruits. Planted in muck and sand in the garden, the

vines yield surprisingly good results. The Cape Cod Bell is the

best known market berry. One of the interesting sights to the

city loiterer about the New England coast in early autumn is the

berry picking that is conducted on an immense scale. Men, women,

and children drop all other work; whole villages are nearly

depopulated while daylight lasts; temporary buildings set up on

the edges of the bogs contain throngs of busy people sorting,

measuring, and packing fruit; and lonely railroad stations, piled

high with crates, give the branch line its heaviest freight

business of the year.

SHOOTING STAR; AMERICAN COWSLIP; PRIDE OF OHIO

(Dodecatheon Meadia) Primrose family

Flowers - Purplish pink or yellowish white, the cone tipped with

yellow; few or numerous, hanging on slender, recurved pedicels in

an umbel at top of a simple scape 6 in. to 2 ft. high. Calyx

deeply 5-parted; corolla of 5 narrow lobes bent backward and

upward; the tube very short, thickened at throat, and marked with

dark reddish-purple dots; 5 stamens united into a protruding

cone; 1 pistil, protruding beyond them. Leaves: Oblong or

spatulate 3 to 12 in. long, narrowed into petioles, all from

fibrous roots. Fruit: A 5-valved capsule on erect pedicels.

Preferred Habitat - Prairies, open woods, moist cliffs. Flowering

Season - April-May.

Distribution - Pennsylvania southward and westward, and from

Texas to Manitoba.

Ages ago Theophrastus called an entirely different plant by this

same scientific name, derived from dodeka = twelve, and theos =

gods; and although our plant is native of a land unknown to the

ancients, the fanciful Linnaeus imagined he saw in the flowers of

its umbel a little congress of their divinities seated around a

miniature Olympus! Who has said science kills imagination? These

handsome, interesting flowers so familiar in the Middle West and

Southwest, especially, somewhat resemble the cyclamen in oddity

of form, indeed, these prairie wildflowers are not unknown in

florists' shops in Eastern cities.

Many flowers like the shooting star, cyclamen, and nightshade,

with protruding cones made up of united stamens, are so designed

that, as the bees must cling to them while sucking nectar, they

receive pollen jarred out from the end of the cone on their

undersides. The reflexed petals serve three purposes: First, in

making the flower more conspicuous; secondly, in facilitating

access to nectar and pollen; and, finally, in discouraging

crawling intruders. Where the short tube is thickened, the bee

finds her foothold while she forces her tongue between the anther

tips. The nectar is well concealed and quite deeply seated,

thanks to the rigid cone. Few bee workers are flying at the

shooting star's early blooming season. Undoubtedly the female

bumblebees, which, by striking the protruding stigma before they

jar out any pollen, cross-fertilize it, are the flower's

benefactors; but one frequently sees the little yellow puddle

butterfly clinging to the pretty blossoms.

Very different from the bright yellow cowslip of Europe is our

odd, misnamed blossom.

BITTER-BLOOM; ROSE-PINK; SQUARE-STEMMED SABBATIA; ROSY CENTAURY

(Sabbatia angularis) Gentian family

Flowers - Clear rose pink, with greenish star in center, rarely

white, fragrant, 1 1/2 in. broad or less, usually solitary on

long peduncles at ends of branches. Calyx lobes very narrow;

corolla of 5 rounded segments; stamens 5; style 2-cleft. Stem:

Sharply 4-angled, 2 to 3 ft. high, with opposite branches, leafy.

Leaves: Opposite, 5-nerved, oval, tapering at tip, and clasping

stem by broad base.

Preferred Habitat - Rich soil, meadows, thickets.

Flowering Season - July-August.

Distribution - New York to Florida, westward to Ontario,

Michigan, and Indian Territory.

During the drought of midsummer the lovely rose-pink blooms

inland with cheerful readiness to adapt itself to harder

conditions than most of its moisture-loving kin will tolerate;

but it may be noticed that although we may oftentimes find it

growing in dry soil, it never spreads in such luxuriant clusters

as when the roots are struck beside meadow runnels and ditches.

Probably the plant would be commoner than it is about populous

Eastern districts were it not so much sought after as a tonic

medicine.

It was the Centaurea, represented here by the blue ragged sailor

of gardens, and not our Centaury, a distinctly American group of

plants, which, Ovid tells us, cured a wound in the foot of the

Centaur Chiron, made by an arrow hurled by Hercules.

Three exquisite members of the Sabbatia tribe keep close to the

Atlantic coast in salt meadows and marshes, along the borders of

brackish rivers, and very rarely in the sand at the edges of

fresh-water ponds a little way inland. From Maine to Florida they

range, and less frequently are met along the shores of the Gulf

of Mexico so far as Louisiana. How bright and dainty and are!

Whole meadows are radiant with their blushing lovliness. Probably

if they consented to live far away from the sea, they would lose

some of the deep, clear pink from out their lovely petals, since

all flowers show a tendency to brighten their colors as they

approach the coast. In England some of the same wildflowers we

have here are far deeper-hued, owing, no doubt to the fact that

they live on a sea-girt, moisture-laden island, and also that the

sun never scorches and blanches at the far north as it does in

the United States.

As might be expected, blossoms so bright of hue as the marsh

pinks attract many insects. Guided by the yellow eye that serves

as a pathfinder to the nectary, they feast on the generour supply

of sweets; but all unwittingly they must pay for their

entertainment by carrying pollen from early to later flowers.

Like so many other blossoms, the sabbatias guard themselves

against the evils of self-fertilization by shedding their pollen

before they mature and spread their two-cleft style, which is now

ready to receive the golden, quickening dust on its stigmatic

inner surfaces.

The SEA or MARSH PINK, or ROSE OF PLYMOUTH (S. stellaris), whose

graceful alternate branching stem attains a height of two feet

only under most favorable conditions, from July to September

opens a succession of pink flowers that often fade to white. The

yellow eye is bordered with carmine. They measure about one inch

across, and are usually solitary at the ends of branches, or else

sway on slender peduncles from the axils. The upper leaves are

narrow and bract-like; those lower down gradually widen as they

approach the root.

Similar to the Rose of Plymouth is the even more graceful SLENDER

MARSH PINK (S. Campanulata - the S. gracilis of Gray), whose

upper leaves are almost thread-like in their narrowness. Its five

calyx lobes, too, are exceedingly slender, and often as long as

the corolla lobes. One of our soldiers in Cuba, during the

Spanish War, sent home to his sister in Massachusetts some of

these same little flowers in a letter. "You would just love to

see the marshes here," he wrote. "They are filled with beautiful

little pink flowers. I wish I knew their names." That soldier had

passed by New England marshes aglow with the blossoms all his

life, but he had never noticed them until all his perceptions

became quickened by the stimulus of travel and the excitement of

war. How blind and deaf we all are in some directions; having

eyes we see not, and ears we hear not, in the natural as in the

spiritual realm.

No danger of confusing the LARGE MARSH PINK (S. dodecandra - S.

chloroides of Gray) with its smaller, more branching relatives.

It displays few flowers to a plant, but each measures two and a

half inches or less across, and has from nine to twelve pink (or

rarely white) petals. This sabbatia often chooses the sandy

borders of ponds for its habitat.

SPREADING DOGBANE; FLY-TRAP DOGBANE; HONEY-BLOOM; BITTER-ROOT

(Apocynum androsaemifolium) Dogbane family

Flowers - Delicate pink, veined with a deeper shade, fragrant,

bell-shaped, about 1/3 in. across, borne in loose terminal cymes.

Calyx 5-parted; corolla of 5 spreading, recurved lobes united

into a tube; within the tube 5 tiny, triangular appendages

alternate with stamens; the arrow-shaped anthers united around

the stigma and slightly adhering to it. Stem: 1 to 4 ft. high,

with forking, spreading, leafy branches. Leaves: Opposite,

entire-edged, broadly oval, narrow at base, paler, and more or

less hairy below. Fruit: Two pods about 4 in. long.

Preferred Habitat - Fields, thickets, beside roads, lanes, and

walls.

Flowering Season - June-July.

Distribution - Northern part of British Possessions south to

Georgia, westward to Nebraska.

Everywhere at the North we come across this interesting, rather

shrubby plant, with its pretty but inconspicuous little

rose-veined bells suggesting pink lilies-of-the-valley. Now that

we have learned to read the faces of flowers, as it were, we

instantly suspect by the color, fragrance, pathfinders, and

structure that these are artful wilers, intent on gaining ends of

their own through their insect admirers. What are they up to?

Let us watch. Bees, flies, moths, and butterflies, especially the

latter, hover near. Alighting, the butterfly visitor unrolls his

long tongue and inserts it where the five pink veins tell him to,

for five nectar-bearing glands stand in a ring around the base of

the pistil. Now, as he withdraws his slender tongue through one

of the V-shaped cavities that make a circle of traps, he may

count himself lucky to escape with no heavier toll imposed than

pollen cemented to it. This granular dust he is required to rub

off against the stigma of the next flower entered. Some bees,

too, have been taken with the dogbane's pollen cemented to their

tongues. But suppose a fly call upon this innocent-looking

blossom? His short tongue, as well as the butterfly's, is guided

into one of the V-shaped cavities after he has sipped; but,

getting wedged between the trap's horny teeth, the poor little

victim is held a prisoner there until he slowly dies of

starvation in sight of plenty. This is the penalty he must pay

for trespassing on the butterfly's preserves! The dogbane, which

is perfectly adapted to the butterfly, and dependent upon it for

help in producing fertile seed, ruthlessly destroys all poachers

that are not big or strong enough to jerk away from its vise-like

grasp. One often sees small flies and even moths dead and

dangling by the tongue from the wicked little charmers. If the

flower assimilated their dead bodies as the pitcher plant, for

example, does those of its victims, the fly's fate would seem

less cruel. To be killed by slow torture and dangled like a

scarecrow simply for pilfering a drop of nectar is surely an

execution of justice medieval in its severity.

In July the most splendid of our native beetles, the green dandy

(Eumolpus auratus) fastens itself to the dogbane's foliage in

numbers until often the leaves appear to be studded with these

brilliant little jewels. "It is not easy," says William Hamilton

Gibson, "to describe its burnished hue, which is either

shimmering green, or peacock blue, or purplish-green, or

refulgent ruby, according to the position in which it rests." But

it is not golden, as its specific name would imply. It confines

itself exclusively to the dogbane. To prevent capture, it has a

trick of drawing up its legs and rolling off into the grass its

body so cleverly matches.

>From the silky coma on which the small seeds float away from long

pods to found new colonies, from the opposite leaves, milky

juice, and certain structural resemblances in the flowers, one

might guess this plant belonged to the milkweed tribe. Formerly

it was so classed; and although the botanists have now removed

its family one step away, the milkweed butterflies, especially

the Monarch (Anosia plexippus), ignoring the arbitrary dividing

line of man, still includes the dogbane on its visiting list. We

know that this plant derived its name from the fact that it was

considered poisonous to dogs; and we also know that all the tribe

of milkweed butterflies are provided with protective secretions

which are distasteful to birds and predaceous insects, enjoying

their immunity from attack, it is thought, from the acrid,

poisonous character of the foliage on which the caterpillars

feed.

COMMON MIIKWEED or SILKWEED

(Asclepias Syriaca; A. cornuti of Gray) Milkweed family

Flowers - Dull pale greenish purple pink, or brownish pink, borne

on pedicels, in many flowered, broad umbels. Calyx inferior,

5-parted; corolla deeply 5-cleft, the segments turned backward.

Above them an erect, 5-parted crown, each part called a hood,

containing a nectary, and with a tooth on either side, and an

incurved horn projecting from within. Behind the crown the short,

stout stamens, united by their filaments in a tube, are inserted

on the corolla. Broad anthers united around a thick column of

pistils terminating in a large, sticky, 5-angled disk. The anther

sacs tipped with a winged membrane; a waxy, pear-shaped

pollen-mass in each sac connected with the stigma in pairs or

fours by a dark gland, and suspended by a stalk like a pair of

saddle-bags. Stem: Stout, leafy, usually unbranched, 3 to 5 ft.

high, juice milky. Leaves: Opposite, oblong, entire-edged smooth

above, hairy below, 4 to 9 in. long. Fruit: 2 thick, warty pods,

usually only one filled with compressed seeds attached to tufts

of silky, white, fluffy hairs.

Preferred Habitat - Fields and waste places, roadsides.

Flowering Season - June-September

Distribution - New Brunswick, far westward and southward to North

Carolina and Kansas.

After the orchids, no flowers show greater executive ability,

none have adopted more ingenious methods of compelling insects to

work for them than the milkweeds. Wonderfully have they perfected

their mechanism in every part until no member of the family even

attempts to fertilize itself; hence their triumphal, vigorous

march around the earth, the tribe numbering over nineteen hundred

species located chiefly in those tropical and warm, temperate

regions that teem with insect life.

Commonest of all with us is this rank weed, which possesses the

dignity of a rubber plant. Much more attractive to human eyes, at

least, than the dull, pale, brownish-pink umbels of flowers are

its exquisite silky seed-tufts. But not so with insects. Knowing

that the slightly fragrant blossoms are rich in nectar, bees,

wasps, flies, beetles, and butterflies come to feast. Now, the

visitor finding his alighting place slippery, his feet claw about

in all directions to secure a hold, just as it was planned they

should for in his struggles some of his feet must get caught in

the fine little clefts at the base of the flower. His efforts to

extricate his foot only draw it into a slot at the end of which

lies a little dark-brown body. In a newly opened flower five of

these little bodies may be seen between the horns of the crown,

at equal distances around it. This tiny brown excrescence is hard

and horny, with a notch in its face. It is continuous with and

forms the end of the slot in which the visitor's foot is caught.

Into this he must draw his foot or claw, and finding it rather

tightly held, must give a vigorous jerk to get it free. Attached

to either side of the little horny piece is a flattened yellow

pollen-mass, and so away he flies with a pair of these pollinia,

that look like tiny saddle-bags, dangling from his feet. One

might think that such rough handling as many insects must submit

to from flowers would discourage them from making any more

visits; but the desire for food is a mighty passion. While the

insect is flying off to another blossom, the stalk to which the

saddlebags are attached twists until it brings them together,

that, when his feet get caught in other slots, they may be in the

position to get broken off in his struggles for freedom precisely

where they will fertilize the stigmatic chambers. Now the visitor

flies away with the stalks alone sticking to his claws.

Bumblebees and hive-bees have been caught with a dozen

pollen-masses dangling from a single foot. Outrageous imposition!

Does this wonderful mechanism always work to perfection? Alas!

no. It is a common thing to find dead hive-bees and flies hanging

from the flowers. While still struggling to escape, the unhappy

victims will be attacked by ants, beetles, and spiders, or killed

by heavy showers. Larger and stronger insects than honeybees are

required to regularly effect pollination and free themselves,

especially when they are so unfortunate as to catch several feet

in the grooves. Doubtless it is the bumblebee that can transfer

pollen with impunity; but very many other insects, not perfectly

adapted to the flowers, occasionally benefit them. Among the

large butterflies the Papilios, which suck with their wings in

motion, are the most useful, because in using their legs to

offset the motion of their wings they rapidly repeat those

movements which are necessary to draw the pollinia from the

anther cells and insert them in the stigmatic chambers of other

flowers. "Large butterflies like Danais," says Professor

Robertson, "hold their wings still in sucking, spending more time

on an umbel, but generally carrying pollinia. Small butterflies

are worse than useless. They remain long on the umbels sucking,

but resting their feet superficially on the flowers.

Since several moths were found entrapped, pollination must often

be brought about by night-flying Lepidoptera. As a rule, Diptera

(flies) either do not transfer pollinia at all, or become

hopelessly entangled when they do. "Occasionally pollen-masses

are found on the tongues of insects, especially on those of bees

and wasps, which move about with their unruly member sticking

out. Probably no one has ever made the exhaustive and absorbingly

interesting study of the milkweeds that Professor Robertson has.

Better than any written description of the milkweed blossom's

mechanism is a simple experiment. If you have neither time nor

patience to sit in the hot sun, magnifying glass in hand, and

watch for an unwary insect to get caught, take an ordinary

housefly, and hold it by the wings so that it may claw at one of

the newly opened flowers from which no pollinia have been

removed. It tries frantically to hold on, and with a little

direction it may be led to catch its claws in the slots of the

flower. Now pull it gently away, and you will find a pair of

saddlebags slung over his foot by a slender curved stalk. If you

are rarely skilful, you may induce your fly to withdraw the

pollinia from all five slots on as many of his feet. And they are

not to be thrown or scraped off, let the fly try as hard as he

pleases. You may now invite the fly to take a walk on another

flower in which he will probably leave one or more pollinia in

its stigmatic cavities.

Dr. Kerner thought the milky juice in milkweed plants, especially

abundant in the uppermost leaves and stems, serves to protect the

flowers from useless crawling pilferers. He once started a number

of ants to climb up a milky stalk. When they neared the summit,

he noticed that at each movement the terminal hooks of their feet

cut through the tender epiderm, and from the little clefts the

milky juice began to flow, bedraggling their feet and the hind

part of their bodies. "The ants were much impeded in their

movements," he writes, "and in order to rid themselves of the

annoyance, drew their feet through their mouths. Their movements

however, which accompanied these efforts, simply resulted in

making fresh fissures and fresh discharges of milky juice, so

that the position of the ants became each moment worse and worse.

Many escaped by getting to the edge of a leaf and dropping to the

ground. Others tried this method of escape too late, for the air

soon hardened the milky juice into a tough brown substance, and

after this, all the strugglings of the ants to free themselves

from the viscid matter were in vain." Nature's methods of

preserving a flower's nectar for the insects that are especially

adapted to fertilize it, and of punishing all useless intruders,

often shock us yet justice is ever stern, ever kind in the

largest sense.

If the asclepias really do kill some insects with their juice,

others doubtless owe their lives to it. Among the "protected"

insects are the milkweed butterflies and their caterpillars,

which are provided with secretions that are distasteful to birds

and predaceous insects. "These acrid secretions are probably due

to the character of the plants upon which the caterpillars feed,"

says Dr. Holland, in his beautiful and invaluable "Butterfly

Book." "Enjoying on this account immunity from attack, they have

all, in the process of time, been mimicked by species in other

genera which have not the same immunity." "One cannot stay long

around a patch of milkweeds without seeing the monarch butterfly.

(Anosia plexippus), that splendid, bright, reddish-brown winged

fellow, the borders and veins broadly black, with two rows of

white spots on the outer borders and two rows of pale spots

across the tip of the fore wings. There is a black scent-pouch on

the hind wings. The caterpillar, which is bright yellow or

greenish yellow, banded with shining black, is furnished with

black fleshy 'horns' fore and aft."

Like the dandelion, thistle, and other triumphant strugglers for

survival, the milkweed sends its offspring adrift on the winds to

found fresh colonies afar. Children delight in making pompons for

their hats by removing the silky seed-tufts from pods before they

burst, and winding them, one by one, on slender stems with fine

thread. Hung in the sunshine, how charmingly fluffy and soft they

dry!

Among the comparatively few butterfly flowers - although, of

course, other insects not adapted to them are visitors - is the

PURPLE MILKWEED (A. purpurasceus), whose deep magenta umbels are

so conspicuous through the summer months. Hummingbirds

occasionally seek it too. From Eastern Massachusetts to Virginia,

and westward to the Mississippi, or beyond, it is to be found in

dry fields, woods, and thickets.

The SWAMP MILKWEED (A. incarnata), on the other hand, rears its

intense purplish-red or pinkish hoods in wet places. Its leaves

are lance-shaped or oblong-lanceolate, whereas the purple

milkweed's leaves are oblong or ovate-oblong. This is a smooth

plant; and a similar species once reckoned as a mere variety (A.

pulchra) is the HAIRY MILKWEED. It differs chiefly in having some

hairs on the under side of its leaves, and a great many hairs on

its stem. Both plants bear erect, rather slender, tapering pods.

The POKE or TALL MILKWEED (A. exaltata - A. phytolaecoides of

Gray) may attain a height of six feet if the moist soil in which

it grows be exactly to its liking. Drooping or spreading umbels

of flowers whose corolla segments are pale purplish green, and

whose crown is clear ivory white or pink, appear from June to

August from Maine to Georgia and far westward. Sometimes the

tapering oblong leaves may be nine inches long. The erect

seedpods are drawn out to an unusually long point.

One may always distinguish the low-growing FOUR-LEAVED MILKWEED

(A. quadrifolia) from its relatives of ranker growth by its

general air of refinement, as well as by the two pairs of thin,

tapering leaves that grow in an upright whorl near the middle of

the slender stem. Usually there are no leaves on the lower part.

Small terminal umbels of delicate pink and white fragrant

flowers, which appear from May till July, give place to very

narrow pointed pods in late summer. From Maine to Ontario

southward to North Carolina and Arkansas is its range, in woods

and thickets chiefly.

HEDGE or GREAT BINDWEED; WILD MORNING-GLORY; RUTLAND BEAUTY;

BELL-BIND; LADY'S NIGHTCAP

(Convolvulus sepium; Calystegia sepium of Gray) Morning-glory

family

Flowers - Light pink, with white stripes or all white,

bell-shaped, about 2 in. long, twisted in the bud, solitary, on

long peduncles from leaf axils. Calyx of 5 sepals, concealed by 2

large bracts at base. Corolla 5-lobed, the 5 included stamens

inserted on its tube; style with 2 oblong stigmas. Stem: Smooth

or hairy, 3 to 10 ft. long, twining or trailing over ground.

Leaves: Triangular or arrow-shaped, 2 to 5 in. long, on slender

petioles.

Preferred Habitat - Wayside hedges, thickets, fields, walls.

Flowering Season - June-September.

Distribution - Nova Scotia to North Carolina, westward to

Nebraska. Europe and Asia.

No one need be told that the pretty, bell-shaped pink and white

flower on the vigorous vine clambering over stone walls and

winding about the shrubbery of wayside thickets in a suffocating

embrace is akin to the morning-glory of the garden trellis (C.

major). An exceedingly rapid climber, the twining stem often

describes a complete circle in two hours, turning against the

sun, or just contrary to the hands of a watch. Late in the

season, when an abundance of seed has been set, the flower can

well afford to keep open longer hours, also in rainy weather; but

early in the summer, at least, it must attend to business only

while the sun shines and its benefactors are flying. Usually it

closes at sundown. On moonlight nights, however, the hospitable

blossom keeps open for the benefit of certain moths. In Europe

the plant's range is supposed to be limited to that of a

crepuscular moth (Sphinx convolvuli), and where that benefactor

is rare, as in England, the bindweed sets few seeds where it does

not occur, as in Scotland, this convolvulus is seldom found wild;

whereas in Italy Delpino tells of catching numbers of the moths

in hedges overgrown with the common plant, by standing with thumb

and forefinger over a flower, ready to close it when the insect

has entered. We know that every floral clock is regulated by the

hours of flight of its insect friends. When they have retired,

the flowers close to protect nectar and pollen from useless

pilferers. In this country various species of bees chiefly

fertilize the bindweed blossoms. Guided by the white streaks, or

pathfinders, they crawl into the deep tube and sip through one of

the five narrow passages leading to the nectary. A transverse

section of the flower cut to show these five passages standing in

a circle around the central ovary looks like the end of a

five-barreled revolver. Insects without a suitably long proboscis

are, of course, excluded by this arrangement.

>From July until hard frost look for that exquisite little beetle,

Cassida aurichalcea, like a drop of molten gold, clinging beneath

the bindweed's leaves. The small perforations reveal his hiding

places. "But you must be quick if you would capture him," says

William Hamilton Gibson, "for he is off in a spangling streak of

glitter. Nor is this golden sheen all the resource of the little

insect; for in the space of a few seconds, as you hold him in

your hand, he has become a milky, iridescent opal, and now

mother-of-pearl, and finally crawls before you in a coat of dull

orange." A dead beetle loses all this wonderful luster. Even on

the morning-glory in our gardens we may sometimes find these

jeweled mites, or their fork-tailed, black larvae, or the tiny

chrysalids suspended by their tails, although it is the wild

bindweed that is ever their favorite abiding place.

The small FIELD BINDWEED (C. arvensis), a common immigrant from

Europe, which has taken up its abode from Nova Scotia and Ontario

southward to New Jersey, and westward to Kansas, trails over the

ground with a deathless persistency which fills farmers with

dismay. It is like a small edition of the hedge bind weed, only

its calyx lacks the leaf-like bracts at its base, its slender

stem rarely exceeds two feet in length, and the little pink and

white flowers often grow in pairs. Their habit of closing both in

the evening and in rainy weather indicates that they are adapted

for diurnal insects only; but if the bell hang down, or if the

corolla drop off, the pollen must fall on the stigma and effect

self-fertilization. Many more insects visit this flower than the

large bindweed, attracted by the peculiar fragrance, and led by

the white streaks to the orange-colored under surface of the

ovary, where the nectar lies concealed. Stigmas and anthers

mature at the same time; but as the former are slightly the

longer, they receive pollen brought from another flower before

the visitor gets freshly dusted.

GROUND OR MOSS PINK

(Phlox subulata) Phlox family

Flowers - Very numerous, small, deep purplish pink, lavender or

rose, varying to white, with a darker eye, growing in simple

cymes, or solitary in a Western variety. Calyx with 5 slender

teeth; corolla salver-form with 5 spreading lobes; 5 stamens

inserted on corolla tube; style 3-lobed. Stems: Rarely exceeding

6 in. in height, tufted like mats, much branched, plentifully set

with awl-shaped, evergreen leaves barely 1/2 in. long, growing in

tufts at joints of stem.

Preferred Habitat - Rocky ground, hillsides.

Flowering Season - April-June

Distribution - Southern New York to Florida, westward to Michigan

and Kentucky.

A charming little plant, growing in dense evergreen mats with

which Nature carpets dry, sandy, and rocky hillsides, is often

completely hidden beneath its wealth of flowers. Far beyond its

natural range, as well as within it, the moss pink glows in

gardens, cemeteries and parks, wherever there are rocks to

conceal or sterile wastes to beautify. Very slight encouragement

induces it to run wild. There are great rocks in Central Park,

New York, worth travelling miles to see in early May, when their

stern faces are flushed and smiling with these blossoms.

Another low ground species is the CRAWLING PHLOX (P. reptans). It

rarely exceeds six inches in height; nevertheless its larger

pink, purple, or white flowers, clustered after the manner of the

tall garden phloxes, are among the most showy to be found in the

spring woods. A number of sterile shoots with obovate leaves,

tapering toward the base, rise from the runners and set off the

brilliant blossoms among their neat foliage. From Pennsylvania

southward and westward is its range, especially in mountainous

regions; but this plant, too, was long ago transplanted from

Nature's gardens into man's.

Large patches of the DOWNY PHLOX (P. pilosa) brighten dry prairie

land with its pinkish blossoms in late spring. Britton and

Brown's botany gives its range as "Ontario to Manitoba, New

Jersey, Florida, Arkansas, and Texas." The plant does its best to

attain a height of two feet; usually its flowers are much nearer

the ground. Butterflies, the principal visitors of most phloxes,

although long-tongued bees and even flies can sip their nectar,

are ever seen hovering above them and transferring pollen,

although in this species the style is so short pollen must often

fall into the tube and self-fertilize the stigma. To protect the

flowers from useless crawling visitors, the calices are coated

with sticky matter, and the stems are downy.

OBEDIENT PLANT; FALSE DRAGONHEAD; LION'S HEART

(Physostegia Virginiana) Mint family

Flowers - Pale magenta, purplish rose, or flesh-colored, often

variegated with white, 1 in. long or over, in dense spikes from 4

to 8 in. long. Calyx a 5-toothed oblong bell, swollen and

remaining open in fruit, held up by lance-shaped bracts. Corolla

tubular and much enlarged where it divides into 2 lips, the upper

lip concave, rounded, entire, the lower lip 3 lobed. Stamens 4,

in two pairs under roof of upper lip, the filaments hairy; 1

pistil. Stem: 1 to 4 ft. high, simple or branched above, leafy.

Leaves: Opposite, firm, oblong to oblong-lanceolate, narrowing at

base, deeply saw-edged.

Preferred Habitat - Moist soil.

Flowering Season - July-September.

Distribution - Quebec to the Northwest Territory, southward to

the Gulf of Mexico as far west as Texas.

Bright patches of this curious flower enliven railroad ditches,

gutters, moist meadows and brooksides - curious, for it has the

peculiarity of remaining in any position in which it is placed.

With one puff a child can easily blow the blossoms to the

opposite side of the spike, there to stay in meek obedience to

his will. "The flowers are made to assume their definite

position," says Professor W. W. Bailey in the "Botanical

Gazette," "by friction of the pedicels against the subtending

bracts. Remove the bracts, and they at once fall limp."

Qf course the plant has some better reason for this peculiar

obedience to every breath that blows than to amuse windy-cheeked

boys and girls. Is not the ready movement useful during stormy

weather in turning the mouth of the flower away from driving

rain, and in fair days, when insects are abroad, in presenting

its gaping lips where they can best alight? We all know that

insects, like birds, make long flights most easily with the wind,

but in rising and alighting it is their practice to turn against

it. When bees, for example, are out for food on windy days, and

must make frequent stops for refreshment among the flowers, they

will be found going against the wind, possibly to catch the

whiffs of fragrance borne on it that guide them to feast, but

more likely that they may rise and alight readily. One always

sees bumblebees conspicuous among the obedient plant's visitors.

After the anthers have shed their pollen - and tiny teeth at the

edges of the outer pair aid its complete removal by insects - the

stigma comes up to occupy their place under the roof. Certainly

this flower; which is so ill-adapted to fertilize itself, has

every reason to court insect messengers in fair and stormy

'weather.

MOTHERWORT

(Leonurus Cardiaca) Mint family.

Flowers - Dull purple pink, pale purple, or white, small,

clustered in axils of upper leaves. Calyx tubular, bell-shaped,

with 5 rigid awl-like teeth; corolla 2-lipped, upper lip arched,

woolly without; lower lip 3-lobed, spreading, mottled; the tube

with oblique ring of hairs inside. Four twin-like stamens,

anterior pair longer, reaching under upper lip; style 2-cleft at

summit. Stem: 2 to 5 ft. tall, straight, branched, leafy,

purplish. Leaves: Opposite, on slender petioles; lower ones

rounded, 2 to 4 in. broad, palmately cut into 2 to 5 lobes; upper

leaves narrower, 3-cleft or 3- toothed.

Preferred Habitat - Waste places near dwellings.

Flowering Season - June-September.

Distribution - Nova Scotia southward to North Carolina, west to

Minnesota and Nebraska. Naturalized from Europe and Asia.

"One is tempted to say that the most human plants, after all, are

the weeds," says John Burroughs. "How they cling to man and

follow him around the world, and spring up wherever he sets foot

How they crowd around his barns and dwellings, and throng his

garden, and jostle and override each other in their strife to be

near him! Some of them are so domestic and familiar, and so

harmless withal, that one comes to regard them with positive

affection. Motherwort, catnip, plantain, tansy, wild mustard -

what a homely, human look they have! They are an integral part of

every old homestead. Your smart, new place will wait long before

they draw near it."

How the bees love this generous, old-fashioned entertainer! One

nearly always sees them clinging to the close whorls of flowers

that are strung along the stem, and of course transferring

pollen, in recompense, as they journey on. A more credulous

generation imported the plant for its alleged healing virtues.

What is the significance of its Greek name, meaning a lion's

tail? Let no one suggest, by a far-stretched metaphor, that our

grandmothers, in Revolutionary days, enjoyed pulling it to vent

their animosity against the British.

WILD BERGAMOT

(Monarda fisiulosa) Mint family

Flowers - Extremely variable, purplish, lavender, magenta, rose,

pink, yellowish pink, or whitish, dotted; clustered in a

solitary, nearly flat terminal head. Calyx tubular, narrow,

5-toothed, very hairy within. Corolla 1 to 1 1/2 in. long,

tubular, 2-lipped, upper lip erect, toothed; lower lip spreading,

3-lobed, middle lobe longest; 2 anther-bearing stamens

protruding; 1 pistil; the style 2-lobed. Stem: 2 to 3 ft. high,

rough, branched. Leaves: Opposite, lance-shaped, saw-edged, on

slender petioles, aromatic, bracts and upper leaves whitish or

the color of flower.

Preferred Habitat - Open woods, thickets, dry rocky hills.

Flowering Season - June-September.

Distribution - Eastern Canada and Maine, westward to Minnesota,

south to Gulf of Mexico.

Half a dozen different shades of bloom worn by this handsome,

robust perennial afford an excellent illustration of the trials

that beset one who would arbitrarily group flowers according to

color. If the capricious blossom shows a decided preference for

any shade, it is for magenta, the royal purple of the ancients,

scarcely tolerated now except by Hoboken Dutch and the belles of

the kitchen, whose Sunday hats are resplendent with intense

effects.

Only a few bergamot flowers open at a time; the rest of the

slightly rounded head, thickly set with hairy calices, looks as

if it might be placed in a glass cup and make an excellent pen

wiper. If the cultivated human eye (and stomach) revolt at

magenta, It is ever a favorite shade with butterflies. They

flutter in ecstasy over the gay flowers; indeed, they are the

principal visitors and benefactors, for the erect corollas,

exposed organs, and level-topped heads are well adapted to their

requirements. That exquisite little feathered jewel, the

ruby-throated hummingbird, flashes about the bright patches an

instant, and is gone; but he too has paid for his feast in

transferring pollen. Insects which land anywhere they please on

the flowers, receive pollen on various places, just as in the

case of the scarlet Oswego tea, of similar formation. Small bees,

which if unable to drain the brimming tubes of nectar, at least

sip from them and help themselves to pollen also, without paying

the flower's price; and certain mischievous wasps, forever bent

on nipping holes in tubes they cannot honestly drain, give a

score of other pilferers an opportunity to steal sweets.

SNAKE-HEAD; TURTLE-HEAD; BALMONY; SHELL-FLOWER; COD-HEAD

(Chelone glabra) Figwort family

Flowers - White tinged with pink, or all white, about 1 in. long,

growing in a dense terminal cluster. Calyx 5-parted, bracted at

base; corolla irregular, broadly tubular, 2-lipped; upper lip

arched, swollen, slightly notched; lower lip 3-lobed, spreading,

woolly within; 5 stamens, sterile, 4 in pairs, anther-bearing,

woolly; 1 pistil. Stem: 1 to 3 ft. high, erect, smooth, simple,

leafy. Leaves: Opposite, lance-shaped, saw-edged.

Preferred Habitat - Ditches, beside streams, swamps.

Flowering Season - July-September.

Distribution - Newfoundland to Florida, and half way across the

continent.

It requires something of a struggle for even so strong and

vigorous an insect as the bumblebee to gain admission to this

inhospitable-looking flower before maturity; and even he abandons

the attempt over and over again in its earliest stage before the

little heart-shaped anthers are prepared to dust him over. As

they mature, it opens slightly, but his weight alone is

insufficient to bend down the stiff, yet elastic, lower lip.

Energetic prying admits first his head, then he squeezes his body

through, brushing past the stamens as he finally disappears

inside. At the moment when he is forcing his way in, causing the

lower lip to spring up and down, the eyeless turtle seems to chew

and chew until the most sedate beholder must smile at the

paradoxical show. Of course it is the bee that is feeding, though

the flower would seem to be masticating the bee with the keenest

relish The counterfeit tortoise soon disgorges its lively

mouthful, however, and away flies the bee, carrying pollen on his

velvety back to rub on the stigma of an older flower. After the

anthers have shed their pollen and become effete, the stigma

matures, and occupies their place. By this time the flower

presents a wider entrance, and as the moisture-loving plant keeps

the nectaries abundantly filled, what is to prevent insects too

small to come in contact with anthers and stigma in the roof from

pilfering to their heart's content? The woolly throat discourages

many, to be sure; but the turtle-head, like its cousins the

beard-tongues, has a sterile fifth stamen, whose greatest use is

to act as a drop-bar across the base of the flower. The

long-tongued bumblebee can get his drink over the bar, but

smaller, unwelcome visitors are literally barred out.

If bees are the preferred visitors of the turtle-head, why do we

find the Baltimore butterfly, that very beautiful, but freaky,

creature (Melitaea phaeton) hovering near? - that is, when we

find it at all; for where it is present, it swarms, and keeps

away from other localities altogether. On the under side of the

leaves we shall often see patches of its crimson eggs. Later the

caterpillars use the plant as their main, if not exclusive, food

store. They are the innocent culprits which nine times out of ten

mutilate the foliage.

LARGE PURPLE GERARDIA

(Gerardia purpurea) Figwort family

Flowers - Bright purplish pink, deep magenta, or pale to whitish,

about 1 in. long and broad, growing along the rigid, spreading

branches. Calyx 5-toothed; corolla funnel-form, the tube much

inflated above and spreading into 5 unequal, rounded lobes,

spotted within, or sometimes downy; 4 stamens in pairs, the

filaments hairy; 1 pistil. Stem: 1 to 2 1/2 ft. high, slender,

branches erect or spreading. Leaves: Opposite, very narrow, 1 to

1 1/2 in. long.

Preferred Habitat - Low fields and meadows; moist, sandy soil.

Flowering Season - August-October.

Distribution - Northern United States to Florida, chiefly along

Atlantic coast.

Low-lying meadows gay with gerardias were never seen by that

quaint old botanist and surgeon, John Gerarde, author of the

famous "Herball or General Historie of Plants," a folio of nearly

fourteen hundred pages, published in London toward the close of

Queen Elizabeth's reign. He died without knowing how much he was

to be honored by Linnaeus in giving his name to this charming

American genus.

Large patches of the lavender-pink gerardia, peeping above the

grass, make the wayfarer pause to feast his eyes, while the

practical bee, meanwhile, takes a more substantial meal within

the spreading funnels. It is his practice to hang upside down

while sucking, using the hairs on the filaments as footholds.

Naturally he receives the pollen on his underside - just where it

will be rubbed off against the stigma impeding his entrance to

the next funnel visited. Any of the very dry pollen that may have

fallen on the hairy filaments drops upon him.

"And 'tis my faith that every flower

Enjoys the air it breathes,"

chanted Wordsworth. It is a special pity to gather the gerardias,

which, as they grow, seem to enjoy life to the full, and when

picked, to be so miserable they turn black as they dry. Like

their relatives the foxgloves, they are difficult to transplant,

because it is said they are more or less parasitic, fastening

their roots on those of other plants. When robbery becomes

flagrant, Nature brands sinners in the vegetable kingdom by

taking away their color, and perhaps their leaves, as in the case

of the broom-rape and Indian pipe; but the fair faces of the

gerardias and foxgloves give no hint of the petty thefts

committed under cover of darkness in the soil below.

The SMALL-FLOWERED GERARDIA (G. Paupercula) so like the preceding

species it was once thought to be a mere variety, ranges westward

as far as Wisconsin, especially about the Great Lakes. But it is

a lower plant, with more erect branches, smaller flowers, quite

woolly within, and with a decided preference for bogs as well as

low meadows.

In salt marshes along the Atlantic Coast and the Gulf of Mexico,

from Maine to Louisiana, the SEA-SIDE GERARDIA (G. maritima)

flowers in midsummer, or a few weeks ahead of the autumnal,

upland species. The plant, which rarely exceeds a foot in height,

is sometimes only four inches above ground; and although at the

North the paler magenta blossoms are only about half the length

of the purple gerardias, in the South they are sometimes quite as

long.

In dry woods and thickets, on banks and hills from Quebec to

Georgia, and westward to the Mississippi we find the SLENDER

GERARDIA (G. tenuifolia), its pale magenta, spotted, compressed

corolla about half an inch long; its very slender, low stem set

with exceedingly narrow leaves.

TWIN-FLOWER; GROUND VINE

(Linnaea borealis) Honeysuckle family

Flowers - Delicate pink or white tinged with rose, bell-shaped,

about 1/2 in. long, fragrant, nodding in pairs on slender, curved

pedicels from an erect peduncle, 2-bracted where they join. Calyx

5-toothed, sticky; corolla 5-lobed, bell-shaped, hairy within; 4

stamens in pairs inserted near base of tube; 1 pistil. Stem:

Trailing, 6 in. to 2 ft. long; the branches erect. Leaves:

Opposite, rounded, petioled, evergreen.

Preferred Habitat - Deep, cool, mossy woods.

Flowering Season - May-July.

Distribution - Northern parts of America, Europe, and Asia. In

the United States southward as far as the mountains of Maryland,

and the Sierra Nevadas in California.

With the consent of modest Linnaeus himself, Dr. Gronovius

selected this typical woodland blossom to transmit the great

master's flame to posterity -

"Monument of the man of flowers."

But small and shy as it is, does Nature's garden contain a

lovelier sight than scores of these deliciously fragrant pink

bells swaying above a carpet of the little evergreen leaves in

the dim aisle of some deep, cool, lonely forest? Trailing over

prostrate logs and mossy rocks, racing with the partridge vine

among the ferns and dwarf cornels, the plant sends up "twin-born

heads" that seem more fair and sweet than the most showy pampered

darlings of the millionaire's conservatory. Little wonder that

Linnaeus loved these little twin sisters, or that Emerson

enshrined them in his verse.

Contrary to popular impression, this vine, that suggests the dim

old forest and exhales the very breath of the spring woods, will

consent to run about our rock gardens, although it seems almost a

sacrilege to move it from natural surroundings so impressively

beautiful. Unlike the arbutus, which remains ever a wildling,

pining slowly to death on close contact with civilization, the

twin-flower thrives in light, moist garden soil where the sun

peeps for a little while only in the morning. By nodding its head

the flower protects its precious contents from rain, the hairs

inside exclude small pilferers; but bees, attracted by the

fragrance and color, are guided to the nectary by five dark lines

and a patch of orange color near it.

JOE-PYE WEED; TRUMPET WEED; PURPLE THOROUGHWORT; GRAVEL or

KIDNEY-ROOT; TALL or PURPLE BONESET

(Eupatorium purpureum) Thistle family

Flower-heads - Pale or dull magenta or lavender pink, slightly

fragrant, of tubular florets only, very numerous, in large,

terminal, loose, compound clusters, generally elongated. Several

series of pink overlapping bracts form the oblong involucre from

which the tubular floret and its protruding fringe of

style-branches arise. Stem: 3 to 10 ft. high, green or purplish,

leafy, usually branching toward top. Leaves: In whorls of 3 to 6

(usually 4), oval to lance-shaped, saw-edged, petioled, thin,

rough.

Preferred Habitat - Moist soil, meadows, woods, low ground.

Flowering Season - August-September.

Distribution - New Brunswick to the Gulf of Mexico, westward to

Manitoba and Texas.

Towering above the surrounding vegetation of low-lying meadows,

this vigorous composite spreads clusters of soft, fringy bloom

that, however deep or pale of tint, are ever conspicuous

advertisements, even when the goldenrods, sunflowers, and asters

enter into close competition for insect trade. Slight fragrance,

which to the delicate perception of butterflies is doubtless

heavy enough, the florets' color and slender tubular form

indicate an adaptation to them, and they are by far the most

abundant visitors, which is not to say that long-tongued bees and

flies never reach the nectar and transfer pollen, for they do.

But an excellent place for the butterfly collector to carry his

net is to a patch of Joe-Pye weed in September. As the spreading

style-branches that fringe each tiny floret are furnished with

hairs for three-quarters of their length, the pollen caught in

them comes in contact with the alighting visitor. Later, the

lower portion of the style-branches, that is covered with

stigmatic papillae along the edge, emerges from the tube to

receive pollen carried from younger flowers when the visitor sips

his reward. If the hairs still contain pollen when the stigmatic

part of the style is exposed, insects self-fertilize the flower;

and if in stormy, weather no insects are flying, the flower is

nevertheless able to fertilize itself, because the hairy fringe

must often come in contact with the stigmas of neighboring

florets. It is only when we study flowers with reference to their

motives and methods that we understand why one is abundant and

another rare. Composites long ago utilized many principles of

success in life that the triumphant Anglo-Saxon carries into

larger affairs today.

Joe-Pye, an Indian medicine-man of New England, earned fame and

fortune by curing typhus fever and other horrors with decoctions

made from this plant.

COMMON BURDOCK; COCKLE-BUR; BEGGARS BUTTONS; CLOT-BUR; CUCKOO

BUTTON

(Arctium minus; Lappa officinalis: var. minor of Gray) Thistle

family

Flower-heads - Composite of tubular florets only, about 1/2 in.

broad; magenta varying to purplish or white; the prominent round

involucre of many overlapping leathery bracts, tipped with hooked

bristles. Stem: 2 to 5 ft. high, simple or branching, coarse.

Leaves: Large, the lower ones often 1 ft. long, broadly ovate,

entire edged, pale or loosely cottony beneath, on hollow

petioles.

Preferred Habitat - Waste ground, waysides, fields, barnyards.

Flowering Season - July-October.

Distribution - Common throughout our area. Naturalized from

Europe.

A larger burdock than this (A. Lappa) may be more common in a few

localities of the East, but wherever one wanders, this plebeian

boldly asserts itself. In close-cropped pastures it still

flourishes with the well-armed thistles and mulleins, for the

great leaves contain an exceedingly bitter, sour juice,

distasteful to grazers. Nevertheless the unpaid cattle, like

every other beast and man, must nolens volens transplant the burs

far away from the parent plant to found new colonies. Literally

by hook or by crook they steal a ride on every switching tail,

every hairy dog and woolly sheep, every trouser-leg or petticoat.

Even the children, who make dolls and baskets of burdock burs,

aid them in their insatiate love of travel. Wherever man goes,

they follow, until, having crossed Europe - with the Romans? -

they are now at home throughout this continent. Their vitality is

amazing; persecution with scythe and plow may retard, but never

check their victorious march. Opportunity for a seed to germinate

may not come until late in the summer; but at once the plant sets

to work putting forth flowers and maturing seed, losing no time

in developing superfluous stalk and branches. Butterflies, which,

like the Hoboken Dutch, ever delight in magenta, and bees of

various kinds, find these flowers, with a slight fragrance as an

additional attraction, generous entertainers.

Pink, of all colors, is the most unstable in our flora, and the

most likely to fade. Magentas incline to purple, on the one hand,

or to pure pink on the other, and delicate shades quickly blanch

when long exposed to the sun's rays. Thus we frequently find

white blossoms of the once pink rhododendron, laurel, azalea,

bouncing Bet, and turtle-head. Albinos, too, regularly occur in

numerous species. Many colored flowers show a tendency among

individuals to revert to the white type of their ancestors. The

reader should bear these facts in mind, and search for his

unidentified flower in the previous section or in the following

one if this group does not contain it.