BULBOUS or SPRING CRESS

(Cardamine bulbosa; C. rhomboidea of Gray) Mustard family

Flowers - White, about 1/2 in. across, clustered in a simple

terminal raceme. Calyx of four sepals; corolla of 4 petals in

form of a cross; 6 stamens; 1 compound pistil with a 2-lobed

style. Stem: 6 to 18 in. high, erect, smooth, from a tuberous

base. Leaves: Basal ones rounded, on long petioles; upper leaves

oblong or lance-shaped, toothed or entire-edged, short petioled

or seated on stem. Fruit: Very slender, erect pods about 1 in.

long, tapering at each end, tipped with a slender style, the

stigma prominent; 1 row of seeds in each cell, the pods rapidly

following flowers up the stem and opening suddenly.

Preferred Habitat - Wet meadows, low ground, near springs.

Flowering Season - April-June.

Distribution - Nova Scotia to Florida, west to Minnesota and

Texas.

Pretty masses of this flower, that look like borders of garden

candy-tuft planted beside some trickling brook, are visited and

cross-fertilized by small bees, of the Andrena and Halictus clans

chiefly. How well the butterflies understand scientific

classification with instinct for their sure guide! The

caterpillar of that exquisite little white butterfly with a dark

yellow triangular spot across his wings, the fulcate orange-tip

(Euchloe genutia), a first-cousin of the common small white

cabbage butterfly, feeds on this plant and several of its kin,

knowing better than if the books had told it so, that all belong

to the same cross-bearing family. The watery, biting juice in the

Cruciferae - the radishes, nasturtiums, cabbage, peppergrass,

water-cress, mustards, and horseradish - by no means protects

them from preying worms and caterpillars; but ants, the worst

pilferers of nectar extant, let them alone. Authorities declare

that the chloride of potassium and iodine these plants contain

increase their food value to mankind.

The PURPLE CRESS (C. purpurea), formerly counted a mere variety

of the preceding, has now been ranked as a distinct species. Its

purplish-pink flowers, found about cold, springy places

northward, appear two or three weeks earlier than those of the

white spring cress.\

The MEADOW BITTER-CRESS (or CROSS), LADIES' SMOCK, OR

CUCKOO-FLOWER (C. pratensis), an immigrant from Europe and Asia

now naturalized here north of New Jersey from coast to coast,

lifts its larger and more showy white or purplish-pink flowers,

that stand well out from the stem on slender pedicels, in loose

clusters above watery low-lying ground in April and May.

"Lady-smocks all silver white"

now paint our meadows with delight, as they do Shakespeare's

England; but ours have quite frequently a decided pink tinge. The

light and graceful growth, and the pinnately divided foliage,

give the plant a special charm. In olden times, when it was

counted a valuable remedy in hysteria and epilepsy, Linnaeus gave

it its generic name Cardamine from two Greek words signifying

heart-strengthening.

More bees, flies, butterflies, and other insects visit the

ladies' smock than perhaps any other crucifer found here, since

it has showy flowers and so much nectar the long-persistent

sepals require little pouches to hold it. No wonder this plant

has triumphantly marched around the world, leaving its relatives

that take less pains to woo and work insects far behind in the

race. Owing to a partial revolution of the tall stamens away from

the stigmas, a visitor in sipping nectar must brush off some

pollen on his head or tongue, although in stormy weather, when

the movement of the stamens is incomplete, self-pollination may

occasionally occur, according to Muller.

TWO-LEAVED TOOTHWORT; CRINKLE-ROOT

(Dentaria diphylla) Mustard family

Flowers - White, about 1/2 in. across, in a terminal loose

cluster, the formation of each similar to that of bulbous cress.

Stem: 8 to 15 in. high. Root stock: Long, crinkled, toothed,

fleshy, crisp, edible. Leaves: 2, opposite or nearly so, on the

stem, compounded of 3 ovate and toothed leaflets; also larger,

broader leaves on larger petioles from the rootstock. Fruit:

Flat, lance-shaped pods, 1 in. long or over, tipped with the

slender style.

Perferred Habitat - Rich leaf mould in woods, sometimes in

thickets and meadows.

Flowering Season - May.

Distribution - Nova Scotia to the Carolinas, west to the

Mississippi.

Clusters of these pretty, white, cross-shaped flowers, found near

the bloodroot, claytonia, anemones, and a host of other delicate

spring blossoms, enter into a short but fierce competition with

them for the visits of the small Andrena and Halictus bees then

flying to collect nectar and pollen for a generation still

unborn. In tunnels underground, or in soft, partially decayed

wood, each busy little mother places the pellets of pollen and

nectar paste, then when her eggs have been laid on the food

supply in separate nurseries and sealed up, she dies from

exhaustion, leaving her grub progeny to eat its way through the

larva into the chrysalis state, and finally into that of a winged

bee that flies away to liberty. These are the little bees so

constantly seen about willow catkins.

Country children, on their way to school through the woods, often

dig up the curious, long crisp root of the toothwort, which

tastes much like the water-cress, to eat with their sandwiches at

the noon recess. Then, as they examine the little pointed

projections on the rootstock, they see why the plant received its

name.

Another toothwort found throughout a similar range, the

CUT-LEAVED TOOTHWORT, or PEPPER-ROOT (D. laciniata), has its

equally edible rootstock scarcely toothed, but rather constricted

in places, giving its little tubers the appearance of beads

strung into a necklace. Its white or pale purplish-pink

cross-shaped flowers, loosely clustered at the end of an

unbranched stem, rise by preference above moist ground in rich

woods, often beside a spring, from April to June - a longer

season for wooing and working its insect friends than the

two-leaved toothwort has attained to - hence it is the commoner

plant. Instead of having two leaves on its stem, this species

spreads whorls of three leaves, thrice divided, almost to the

base, the divisions toothed or lobed, and the side ones sometimes

deeply cleft. The larger, longer petioled leaves that rise

directly from the rootstock have scarcely developed at flowering

time.

SHEPHERD'S PURSE; MOTHER'S HEART

(Bursa Bursa-pastoris; Capsella Bursa-pastoris of Gray)

Mustard family

Flowers - Small, white, in a long loose raceme, followed by

triangular and notched (somewhat heart-shaped) pods, the valves

boat-shaped and keeled. Sepals and petals 4; stamens 6; 1 pistil.

Stem: 6 to 18 in. high, from a deep root. Leaves: Forming a

rosette at base, 2 to 5 in. long, more or less cut (pinnatifid),

a few pointed, arrow-shaped leaves also scattered along stem and

partly clasping it.

Preferred Habitat - Fields, roadsides, waste places.

Flowering Season - Almost throughout the year.

Distribution - Over nearly all parts of the earth.

>From Europe this little low plant found its way, to become the

commonest of our weeds, so completing its march around the globe.

At a glance one knows it to be related to the alyssum and

candy-tuft of our gardens, albeit a poor relation in spite of its

vaunted purses - the tiny, heart-shaped seed-pods that so rapidly

succeed the flowers. What is the secret of its successful march

over the face of the earth? Like the equally triumphant

chickweed, it is easily satisfied with unoccupied wasteland, it

avoids the fiercest competition for insect trade by prolonging

its season of bloom far beyond that of any native flower, for

there is not a month in the year when one may not find it even in

New England in sheltered places. Having vanquished in the fiercer

struggle for survival in the Old World, it finds life here one

long holiday; and finally, by clustering a large number of

relatively small flowers together, it attracts the insects that

this method of arrangement pleases best, the flies (Syrphidae and

Muscidae) which cross-fertilize it in fine weather, transferring

enough pollen from plant to plant to save the species from

degeneracy through close inbreeding. However, the long stamens

standing on a level with the stigma are well calculated to

self-pollenize the flowers, the flies failing them.

VERNAL WHITLOW-GRASS

(Draba verna) Mustard family

Flowers - Very small, white, distant, growing on numerous scapes

1 to 5 in. high; in formation each flower is similar to all the

mustards, except that the 4 petals are 2-cleft, destroying the

cross-like effect. Leaves: 1/2 to 1 in. long, in a tuft or

rosette on the ground, oblong or spatulate, covered with stiff

hairs.

Preferred Habitat - Waste lands, sandy fields, and roadsides.

Flowering Season - February-May.

Distribution - Throughout our area; naturalized from Europe and

Asia.

An insignificantly small plant, too common, however, to be wholly

ignored. Although each tiny flower secretes four drops of nectar

between the bases of the short stamens and the long ones next

them, it would be unreasonable to depend wholly upon insects to

carry pollen, since there is so little else to attract them.

Therefore the anthers of the four long stamens regularly shed

directly upon the stigma below them, leaving to the few visitors,

the small bees chiefly, the transferring from flower to flower of

pollen from the two short stamens which must be touched if they

would reach the nectar. In spite of the persistency with which

these little blossoms fertilize themselves, they certainly

increase at a prodigious rate; but how much larger and more

beautiful might they not be if they possessed more executive

ability

A similar but larger plant, with its hairy leaves not only tufted

at the base, but also alternating up the stiff stem, is the HAIRY

ROCK-CRESS (Arabis hirsuta), whose white or greenish flowers,

growing in racemes after the usual mustard fashion, are quickly

followed by very narrow, flattened pods two inches long or less.

Around the world this small traveler has likewise found its way,

choosing rocky places to display its insignificant flowers

throughout the entire summer to such small bees and flies as seek

the nectar in its two tiny glands. It is not to be confused with

the saxifrage or stone-breaker.

ROUND-LEAVED SUNDEW; DEW-PLANT

(Drosera rotundifolia) Sundew family

Flowers - Small, white, growing in a 1-sided, curved raceme of

buds chiefly. Calyx usually 5-parted; usually 5 petals, and as

many stamens as petals; usually 3 styles, but 2-cleft, thus

appearing to be twice as many. Scape: 4 to 10 in. high. Leaves:

Growing in an open rosette on the ground; round or broader,

clothed with reddish bristly hairs tipped with purple glands, and

narrowed into long, flat, hairy petioles; young leaves curled

like fern fronds.

Preferred Habitat - Bogs, sandy and sunny marshes.

Flowering Season - July-August.

Distribution - Labrador to the Gulf of Mexico and westward. From

Alaska to California. Europe and Asia.

Here is a bloodthirsty little miscreant that lives by reversing

the natural order of higher forms of life preying upon lower

ones, an anomaly in that the vegetable actually eats the animal!

The dogbane, as we have seen, simply catches the flies that dare

trespass upon the butterflies' preserves, for excellent reasons

of its own; the Silenes and phloxes, among others, spread their

calices with a sticky gum that acts as limed twigs do to birds,

in order to guard the nectar secreted for flying benefactors from

pilfering ants; the honey bee being an imported, not a native,

insect, and therefore not perfectly adapted to the milkweed,

occasionally gets entrapped by it; the big bumblebee is sometimes

fatally imprisoned in the moccasin flower's gorgeous tomb - the

punishment of insects that do not benefit the flowers is infinite

in its variety. But the local Venus's flytrap (Dionaea

muscipula), gathered only from the low savannas in North Carolina

to entertain the owners of hothouses as it promptly closes the

crushing trap at the end of its sensitive leaves over a hapless

fly, and the common sundew that tinges the peat-bogs of three

continents with its little reddish leaves, belong to a distinct

class of carnivorous plants which actually masticate their animal

food, depending upon it for nourishment as men do upon cattle

slaughtered in an abattoir. Darwin's luminous account of these

two species alone, which occupies over three hundred absorbingly

interesting pages of his "Insectivorous Plants" should be read by

everyone interested in these freaks of nature.

When we go to some sunny cranberry bog to look for these sundews,

nothing could be more innocent looking than the tiny plant, its

nodding raceme of buds, usually with only a solitary little

blossom (that opens only in the sunshine) at the top of the

curve, its leaves glistening with what looks like dew, though the

midsummer sun may be high in the heavens. A little fly or gnat,

attracted by the bright jewels, alights on a leaf only to find

that the clear drops, more sticky than honey, instantly glue his

feet, that the pretty reddish hairs about him act like tentacles,

reaching inward, to imprison him within their slowly closing

embrace. Here is one of the horrors of the Inquisition operating

in this land of liberty before our very eyes! Excited by the

struggles of the victim, the sensitive hairs close only the

faster, working on the same principle that a vine's tendrils do

when they come in contact with a trellis. More of the sticky

fluid pours upon the hapless fly, plastering over his legs and

wings and the pores on his body through which he draws his

breath. Slowly, surely, the leaf rolls inward, making a temporary

stomach; the cruel hairs bind, the glue suffocates and holds him

fast. Death alone releases him. And now the leafs orgy begins:

moistening the fly with a fresh peptic fluid, which helps in the

assimilation, the plant proceeds to digest its food. Curiously

enough, chemical analysis proves that this sundew secretes a

complex fluid corresponding almost exactly to the gastric juice

in the stomach of animals.

Darwin, who fed these leaves with various articles, found that

they could dissolve matter out of pollen, seeds, grass, etc.; yet

without a human caterer, how could a leaf turn vegetarian? When a

bit of any undesirable substance, such as chalk or wood, was

placed on the hairs and excited them, they might embrace it

temporarily; but as soon as the mistake was discovered, it would

be dropped! He also poisoned the plants by administering acids,

and gave them fatal attacks of indigestion by overfeeding them

with bits of raw beef!

Other common sundews, the SPATULATE-LEAVED SUNDEW (D. intermedia)

and the THREAD-LEAVED SUNDEW (D. filiformis) whose purplish-pink

flowers are reared above wet sand along the coast, possess

contrivances similar to the round-leaved plant's to pursue their

gruesome business. Why should these vegetables turn carnivorous?

Doubtless because the soil in which they grow can supply little

or no nitrogen. Very small roots testify to the small use they

serve. The water sucked up through them from the bog aids in the

manufacture of the fluid so freely exuded by the bristly glands,

but nitrogen must be obtained by other means, even at the

sacrifice of insect victims.

EARLY SAXIFRAGE

(Saxifraga Virginiensis) Saxifrage family

Flowers - White, small, numerous, perfect, spreading into a loose

panicle. Calyx 5-lobed; 5 petals; 10 stamens; 1 pistil with 2

styles. Scape: 4 to 12 in. high, naked, sticky-hairy. Leaves:

Clustered at the base, rather thick, obovate, toothed, and

narrowed into spatulate-margined petioles. Fruit: Widely spread,

purplish-brown pods.

Preferred Habitat - Rocky woodlands, hillsides.

Flowering Season - March-May

Distribution - New Brunswick to Georgia, and westward a thousand

miles or more.

Rooted in clefts of rock that, therefore, appears to be broken by

this vigorous plant, the saxifrage shows rosettes of fresh green

leaves in earliest spring, and soon whitens with its blossoms the

most forbidding niches. (Saxum = a rock; frango = 1 break.) At

first a small ball of green buds nestles in the leafy tuffet,

then pushes upward on a bare scape, opening its tiny, white,

five-pointed star flowers as it ascends, until, having reached

the allotted height, it scatters them in spreading clusters that

last a fortnight. Again we see that, however insignificantly

small nectar-bearing flowers may be, they are somehow protected

from crawling pilferers; in this case by the commonly employed

sticky hairs in which ants' feet become ensnared. As the anthers

mature before the stigmas are ready to receive pollen, certainly

the flowers cannot afford to send empty away the benefactors on

whom the perpetuation of their race depends; and must prevent it

even with the most heroic measures.

FALSE MITERWORT; COOLWORT; FOAM-FLOWER; NANCY-OVER-THE-GROUND

(Tiarella cordifolia) Saxifrage family.

Flowers - White, small, feathery, borne in a close raceme at the

top of a scape 6 to 12 in. high. Calyx white, 9-lobed; 5 clawed

petals; 10 stamens, long-exserted; 1 pistil with 2 styles.

Leaves: Long-petioled from the rootstock or runners, rounded or

broadly heart-shaped, 3 to 7-lobed, toothed, often downy along

veins beneath.

Preferred Habitat - Rich, moist woods, especially along

mountains.

Flowering Season - April-May.

Distribution - Nova Scotia to Georgia, and westward scarcely to

the Mississippi.

Fuzzy, bright white foam-flowers are most conspicuous in the

forest when seen against their unevenly colored leaves that

carpet the ground. A relative, the TRUE MITERWORT or BISHOP'S CAP

(Mittella diphylla), with similar foliage, except that two

opposite leaves may be found almost seated near the middle of its

hairy stem, has its flowers rather distantly scattered on the

raceme, and their fine petals deeply cut like fringe. Both

species may be found in bloom at the same time, offering an

opportunity for comparison to the confused novice. Now, tiarella,

meaning a little tiara, and mitella, a little miter, refer, of

course, to the odd forms of their seed-cases; but all of us are

not gifted with the imaginative eyes of Linnaeus, who named the

plants. Xenophon's assertion that the royal tiara or turban of

the Persians was encircled with a crown helps us no more to see

what Linnaeus saw in the one case than the fact that the papal

miter is encircled by three crowns helps in the other. And as for

the lofty, two-peaked cap worn by bishops in the Roman Church, a

dozen plants, with equal propriety, might be said to wear it.

CAROLINA GRASS OF PARNASSUS

(Parnassia Caroliniana) Saxifrage family

Flowers - Creamy white, delicately veined with greenish,

solitary, 1 in. broad or over, at the end of a scape 8 in. to 2

ft. high, 1 ovate leaf clasping it. Calyx deeply 5-lobed; corolla

of 5 spreading, parallel veined petals; 5 fertile stamens

alternating with them, and 3 stout imperfect stamens clustered at

base of each petal; 1 very short pistil with 4 stigmas. Leaves:

>From the root, on long petioles, broadly oval or rounded,

heart-shaped at base, rather thick.

Preferred Habitat - Wet ground, low meadows, swamps.

Flowering Season - July-September.

Distribution - New Brunswick to Virginia, west to Iowa.

What's in a name? Certainly our common grass of Parnassus, which

is no grass at all, never starred the meadows round about the

home of the Muses, nor sought the steaming savannas of the

Carolinas. The European counterpart (P. palustris), fabled to

have sprung up on Mount Parnassus, is at home here only in the

Canadian border States and northward.

At first analysis one is puzzled by the clusters of filaments at

the base of each petal. Of what use are they? We have seen in the

case of the beard-tongue and the turtle-head that even imperfect

stamens sometimes serve useful ends, or they would doubtless have

been abolished. A fly or bee mistaking, as he well may, the

abortive anthers for beads of nectar on this flower, alights on

one of the white petals, a convenient, spreading landing place;

but finding his mistake, and guided by the greenish lines, the

pathfinders to the true nectaries situated on the other side of

the curious fringy structures, he must, because of their

troublesome presence, climb over them into the center of the

flower to suck its sweets from the point where he will dust

himself with pollen in young blossoms. Of course he will carry

some of their vitalizing powder to the late maturing stigmas of

older ones. Without the fringe of imperfect stamens, that serves

as a harmless trellis easily climbed over, the visitor might

stand on the petals and sip nectar without rendering any

assistance in cross-fertilizing his entertainers.

NINEBARK

(Opulaster opulifolius; Spiraea opulifolia of Gray) Rose

family

Flowers - White or pink, small, in numerous rounded terminal

clusters to 2 in. broad. Calyx 5-lobed; 5 rounded petals inserted

in its throat; 20 to 40 stamens; several pistils. Stem: Shrubby,

3 to 10 ft. high, with long, recurved branches, the loose bark

peeling off annually in thin strips. Leaves: Simple, heart-shaped

or rounded, 3-lobed, toothed. Fruit: 3 to 5 smooth, shining,

reddish, inflated, pointed pods.

Preferred Habitat - Rocky banks, riversides.

Flowering Season - June.

Distribution - Canada to Georgia, west to Kansas.

Whether the nurserymen agree with Dr. Gray or not when he says

these balls of white flowers possess "no beauty," the fact

remains that numbers of the shrubs are sold for ornament,

especially a golden-leaved variety. But the charm certainly lies

in their fruit. (Opulus = a wild cranberry tree.) When this is

plentifully set at the ends of long branches that curve backward,

and the bladder-like pods have taken on a rich purplish or

reddish hue, the shrub is undeniably decorative. Even the old

flowers, after they have had their pollen carried away by the

small bees and flies, show a reddish tint on the ovaries which

deepens as the fruit forms; and Ludwig states that this is not

only to increase the conspicuousness of the shrubs, but to entice

unbidden guests away from the younger flowers. Who will tell us

why the old bark should loosen every year and the thin layers

separate into not nine, but dozens of ragged strips?

MEADOW-SWEET; QUAKER LADY; QUEEN-OF-THE-MEADOW

(Spiraea salicifolia) Rose family

Flowers - Small, white or flesh pink, clustered in dense

pyramidal terminal panicles. Calyx 5 cleft; carolla of 5 rounded

petals; stamens numerous; pistils 5 to 8. Stem: 2 to 4 ft. high,

simple or bushy, smooth, usually reddish. Leaves: Alternate, oval

or oblong, saw-edged.

Preferred Habitat - Low meadows, swamps, fence-rows, ditches.

Flowering Season - June-August.

Distribution - Newfoundland to Georgia, west to Rocky Mountains.

Europe and Asia.

Fleecy white plumes of meadow-sweet, the "spires of closely

clustered bloom" sung by Dora Read Goodale, are surely not

frequently found near dusty "waysides scorched with barren heat,"

even in her Berkshires; their preference is for moister soil,

often in the same habitat with a first cousin, the pink

steeple-bush. But plants, like humans, are capricious creatures.

If the meadow-sweet always elected to grow in damp ground whose

rising mists would clog the pores of its leaves, doubtless they

would be protected with a woolly absorbent, as its cousins are.

Inasmuch as perfume serves as an attraction to the more highly

specialized, aesthetic insects, not required by the spiraeas, our

meadow-sweet has none, in spite of its misleading name. Small

bees (especially Andrenidae), flies (Syrphidae), and beetles,

among other visitors, come in great numbers, seeking the

accessible pollen, and, in this case, nectar also, secreted in a

conspicuous orange-colored disk. When a floret first opens, or

even before, the already mature stigmas overtop the incurved,

undeveloped stamens, so that any visitor dusted from other

clusters cross-fertilizes it; but as the stigmas remain fresh

even after the stamens have risen and shed their abundant pollen,

it follows that in long-continued stormy weather, when few

insects are flying, the flowers fertilize themselves.

Self-fertilization with insect help must often occur in the

flower's second stage. The fragrant yellowish-white ENGLISH

MEADOW-SWEET (S. ulmaria), often cultivated in old-fashioned

gardens here, has escaped locally.

In long, slender, forking spikes the GOAT'S-BEARD (Aruncus

Aruncus - Spiraea aruncus of Gray) lifts its graceful panicles of

minute whitish flowers in May and June from three to seven feet

above the rich soil of its woodland home. The petioled, pinnate

leaves are compounded of several leaflets like those on its

relative the rose-bush. From New York southward and westward to

Missouri, also on the Pacific Coast to Alaska, is its range on

this Continent. Very many more beetles than any other visitors

transfer pollen from the staminate flowers on one plant to the

pistillate ones on another; other plants produce only perfect

flowers - the reason different panicles vary so much in

appearance.

Another herbaceous perennial once counted a spiraea is the common

INDIAN PHYSIC or BOWMAN'S-ROOT (Porteranthus trifoliatus -

Gillensia trifoliata of Gray) found blooming in the rich woods

during June and July from western New York southward and

westward. Two to four feet high, it displays its very loose,

pretty clusters of white or pale pink flowers, comparatively few

in the whole panicle, each blossom measuring about a half inch

across and borne on a slender pedicel. A tubular, 5-toothed calyx

has the long slender petals inserted within. Owing to the depth

and narrowness of the tube, the small, long-tongued bees cannot

reach the nectar without dusting their heads with pollen from the

anthers inserted in a ring around the entrance or leaving some on

the stigmas of other blossoms. Later, the five carpels make as

many hairy, awl-tipped little pods within the reddish cup. The

leaves may be compounded of three oblong or ovate, saw-edged

leaflets, or merely three-lobed, and with small stipules at their

base.

WILD RED RASPBERRY

(Rubus strigosus) Rose family

Flowers - White, about 1/2 in. across, on slender, bristly

pedicels, in a loose cluster. Calyx deeply 5-parted, persistent

in fruit; 5 erect, short-lived petals, about the length of the

sepals; stamens numerous; carpels numerous, inserted on a convex

spongy receptacle, and ripening into drupelets. Stem: 3 to 6 ft.

high, shrubby, densely covered with bristles; older, woody stems

with rigid, hooked prickles. Leaves: Compounded of 3 to 5 ovate,

pointed, and irregularly saw-edged leaflets, downy beneath, on

bristly petioles. Fruit: A light red, watery, tender,

high-flavored, edible berry; ripe July-September.

Preferred Habitat - Dry soil, rocky hillsides, fence-rows,

hedges.

Flowering Season - May-July.

Distribution - Labrador to North Carolina, also in Rocky Mountain

region.

Who but the bees and such small visitors care about the raspberry

blossoms? Notwithstanding the nectar secreted in a fleshy ring

for their benefit, comparatively few insects enter the flowers,

whose small, erect petals imply no hospitable welcome.

Occasionally a visitor laden with pollen from another plant

alights in the center of a blossom, and leaves some on the

stigmas in bending his head down between them and the stamens to

reach the refreshment; but inasmuch as the erect petals allow no

room for the stamens to spread out and away from the stigmas, it

follows that self-fertilization very commonly occurs.

Of course, men and children, bears and birds, are vastly more

interested in the delicious berries; men for the reason that

several excellent market varieties, some white or pale red, the

Cuthbert and Hansall berries among others, owe their origin to

this hardy native. Many superior sorts derived from its European

counterpart (R. Idaeus) cannot well endure our rigorous northern

climate. As in the case of most berry-bearing species, the

raspberry depends upon the birds to drop its undigested seeds

over the country, that new colonies may arise under freer

conditions. Indeed, one of the best places for the budding

ornithologist to take opera-glasses and notebook is to a

raspberry patch early in the morning.

The BLACK RASPBERRY, BLACK CAP or SCOTCH CAP or THIMBLE-BERRY (R.

occidentalis), common in such situations as the red raspberry

chooses, but especially in burned-over districts from Virginia

northward and westward, has very long, smooth, cane-like stems,

often bending low until they root again at the tips. These are

only sparingly armed with small, hooked prickles, no bristles.

The flowers, which are similar to the preceding, but clustered

more compactly, are sparingly visited by insects; nevertheless

when self-fertilized, as they usually are, abundant

purplish-black berries, hollow like a thimble where they drop

from the spongy receptacle, ripen in July. Numerous garden

hybrids have been derived from this prolific species also. Indeed

its offspring are the easiest raspberries to grow, since they

form new plants at the tips of the branches, yet do not weaken

themselves with suckers, and so, even without care, yield immense

crops. One need not stir many feet around a good raspberry patch

to enjoy a Transcendental feast.

HIGH BUSH BLACKBERRY; BRAMBLE

(Rubus villosus) Rose family

Flowers - White, 1 in. or less across, in terminal raceme-like

clusters. Calyx deeply 5-parted, persistent; 5 large petals;

stamens and carpels numerous, the latter inserted on a pulpy

receptacle. Stem: 3 to 10 ft. high, woody, furrowed, curved,

armed with stout, recurved prickles. Leaves: Compounded of 3 to 5

ovate, saw-edged leaflets, the end one stalked, all hairy

beneath. Fruit: Firmly attached to the receptacle; nearly black,

oblong juicy berries 1 in. long or less, hanging in clusters.

Ripe, July-August.

Preferred Habitat - Dry soil, thickets, fence-rows, old fields,

waysides. Low altitudes.

Flowering Season - May-June.

Distribution - New England to Florida, and far westward.

"There was a man of our town,

And he was wondrous wise,

He jumped into a bramble bush" -

If we must have poetical associations for every flower, Mother

Goose furnishes several.

But for the practical mind this plant's chief interest lies in

the fact that from its wild varieties the famous Lawton and

Kittatinny blackberries have been derived. The late Peter

Henderson used to tell how the former came to be introduced. A

certain Mr. Secor found an unusually fine blackberry growing wild

in a hedge at New Rochelle, New York, and removed it to his

garden, where it increased apace. But not even for a gift could

he induce a neighbor to relieve him of the superfluous bushes, so

little esteemed were blackberries in his day. However, a shrewd

lawyer named Lawton at length took hold of it, exhibited the

fruit, advertised it cleverly, and succeeded in pocketing a snug

little fortune from the sale of the prolific plants. Another fine

variety of the common wild blackberry, which was discovered by a

clergyman at the edge of the woods on the Kittatinny Mountains in

New Jersey, has produced fruit under skilled cultivation that

still remains the best of its class. When clusters of blossoms

and fruit in various stages of green, red, and black hang on the

same bush, few ornaments in Nature's garden are more decorative.

Because bramble flowers show greater executive ability than the

raspberries do, they flaunt much larger petals, and spread them

out flat to attract insect workers as well as to make room for

the stamens to spread away from the stigmas - an arrangement

which gives freer access to the nectar secreted in a fleshy ring

at the base. Heavy bumblebees, which require a firm support,

naturally alight in the center, just as they do in the wild

roses, and deposit on the early maturing stigmas some imported

pollen. They may therefore be regarded as the truest benefactors,

and it will be noticed that for their special benefit the nectar

is rather deeply concealed, where short-tongued insects cannot

rob them of it. Small bees, which come only to gather pollen from

first the outer and then the inner rows of stamens, and a long

list of other light-weight visitors, too often alight on the

petals to effect cross-fertilization regularly, but they usually

self-fertilize the blossoms. Competition between these flowers

and the next is fierce, for their seasons overlap.

The DEWBERRY or LOW RUNNING BLACKBERRY (R. Canadensis), that

trails its woody stem by the dusty roadside, in dry fields, and

on sterile, rocky hillsides, calls forth maledictions from the

bare-footed farmer's boy, except during June and July, when its

prickles are freely forgiven it in consideration of the

delicious, black, seedy berries it bears. He is the last one in

the world to confuse this vine with the SWAMP BLACKBERRY (R.

hispidus), a smaller flowered runner, slender and weakly prickly

as to its stem, and insignificant and sour as to its fruit. Its

greatest charm is when we come upon it in some low meadow in

winter, when its still persistent, shining, large leaves, that

have taken on rich autumnal reds, glow among the dry, dead weeds

and grasses.

CREEPING DALIBARDA

(Dalibarda repens) Rose family

Flowers - White, solitary, or 2 at end of a scape 2 to 5 in.

high. Calyx deeply, unevenly 5 or 6 parted, the larger divisions

toothed; 5 petals falling early; numerous stamens; 5 to 10

carpels forming as many dry drupelets within the persistent

calyx. Stem: Creeping, slender, no prickles. Leaves: Long

petioled, in tufts from the runner, almost round, heart-shaped at

base, crenate-edged, both sides hairy.

Preferred habitat - Woods and wooded hillsides.

Flowering Season - June-September.

Distribution - Nova Scotia to Pennsylvania, and westward to the

Mississippi.

This delicate blossom, which one might mistake for a white violet

among a low tuft of violet-like leaves, shows its rose kinship by

its rule of five and its numerous stamens. Like the violet again,

however, it bears curious little economical flowers near the

ground - flowers which never open, and so save pollen. These,

requiring no insects to fertilize them, waste no energy in

putting forth petals to advertise for visitors. Nevertheless, to

save the species from degeneracy from close inbreeding, this

little plant needs must display a few showy blossoms to insure

cross-fertilized seed; for the offspring of such defeats the

offspring of self-fertilized plants in the struggle for

existence.

VIRGINIA STRAWBERRY

(Fragaria Virginiana) Rose family

Flowers - White, loosely clustered at summit of an erect hairy

scape usually shorter than the leaves. Calyx persistent in fruit,

deeply 5-cleft, with 5 bracts between the divisions; 5 petals;

stamens and pistils numerous, the latter inserted on a

cushion-like receptacle becoming fleshy in fruit. Staminate and

pistillate flowers, from separate roots. Stem: Running, and

forming new plants. Leaves: Tufted from the root, on hairy

petioles 2 to 6 in. tall, compounded of 3 broadly oval, saw-edged

leaflets. Fruit. An ovoid, glistening red berry, the minute

achenes imbedded in pits on its surface. Ripe, June-July. (Latin,

fragum = fragrant fruit, the strawberry.)

Preferred Habitat - Dry fields, banks, roadsides, woodlands.

Flowering Season - April-June.

Distribution - New Brunswick to the Gulf of Mexico, and westward

to Dakota.

"Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God

never did." Whether one is kneeling in the fields, gathering the

sun-kissed, fragrant, luscious, wet scarlet berries nodding among

the grass, or eating the huge cultivated fruit smothered with

sugar and cream, one fervently quotes Dr. Boteler with dear old

lzaak Walton. Shakespeare says : "My lord of Ely, when I was last

in Holborn, I saw good strawberries in your garden there." Is not

this the first reference to the strawberry under cultivation?

Since the time of Henry V, what multitudes of garden varieties

past the reckoning have been evolved from the smooth, conic

EUROPEAN WOOD STRAWBERRY (F. vesca) now naturalized in our

Eastern and Middle States, as well as from our own precious

pitted native! Some authorities claim the berry received its name

from the straw laid between garden rows to keep the fruit clean,

but in earliest Anglo-Saxon it was called streowberie, and later

straberry, from the peculiarity of its straying suckers lying as

if strewn on the ground; and so, after making due allowance for

the erratic, go-as-you-please spelling of early writers, it would

seem that there might be two theories as to the origin of the

name.

Since the different sexes of these flowers frequently occur on

separate plants, good reason have they to woo insect messengers

with a showy corolla, a ring of nectar, and abundant pollen to be

transferred while they are feasted. Lucky is the gardener who

succeeds in keeping birds from pecking their share of the berries

which, of course, were primarily intended for them. In English

gardens one is almost certain to find a thrush or two imprisoned

under the nets so futilely spread over strawberry beds, just as

their American cousin, the robin, is caught here in June.

A young botanist may be interested to note the difference in the

formation of the raspberry or blackberry and the strawberry: in

the former it is the carpels (ovaries) that swell around the

spongy receptacle into numerous little fruits (drupelets) united

into one berry, whereas it is the cushion-like receptacle itself

in the strawberry blossom that swells and reddens into fruit,

carrying with it the tiny yellow pistils to the surface.

The NORTHERN WILD STRAWBERRY (F. Canadensis), with clusters of

elongated, oblong little berries delightful to three senses,

comes over the Canadian border no farther south than the

Catskills. Nearly all strawberry plants show the useless but

charming eccentricity of bursting into bloom again in autumn, the

little white-petaled blossoms coming like unexpected flurries of

snow.

No one will confuse our common, fruiting species with the small,

yellow-flowered DRY or BARREN STRAWBERRY (Waldsteinia

fragarioides), more nearly related to the cinquefoils. Tufts of

its pretty trefoliate leaves, sent up from a creeping rootstock,

carpet the woods and hillsides from New England and along the

Alleghanies to Georgia, and westward a thousand miles or more.

Flowers in May and June.

WHITE AVENS

(Geum Canadense; G. album of Gray) Rose family

Flowers - White or pale greenish yellow, about 1/2 in. across,

loosely scattered in small clusters on slender peduncles. Calyx

persistent, 5-cleft, with little bracts between the reflexed

divisions; 5 petals, equaling or shorter than the sepals; stamens

and carpels numerous, the latter collected on a short,

bristly-hairy receptacle; styles smooth below, hairy above,

jointed. Stem: 2 1/2 ft. high or less, slender, branching above.

Leaves: Seated on stem or short petioled, of 3 to 5 divisions, or

lobed, toothed small stipules; also irregularly divided large

root-leaves on long petioles, 3-foliate, usually the terminal

leaflet large, broadly ovate side leaflets much smaller, all more

or less lobed and toothed. Fruit: A ball of achenes, each ending

in an elongated, hooked style.

Preferred Habitat - Woodland borders, shady thickets and

roadsides.

Flowering Season - June-September.

Distribution - Nova Scotia to Georgia, west to the Mississippi or

beyond.

Small bees and flies attracted to sheltered, shady places by

these loosely scattered flowers at the ends of zig-zagged stems,

pay for the nectar they sip from the disk where the stamens are

inserted, by carrying some of the pollen lunch on their heads

from the older to the younger flowers, which mature stigmas

first. But saucy bumblebees, undutiful pilferers from the purple

avens, rarely visit blossoms so inconspicuous. Insects failing

these, they are well adapted to pollenize themselves. Most of us

are all too familiar with the seeds, clinging by barbed styles to

any garment passing their way, in the hope that their stolen ride

will eventually land them in good colonizing ground. Whoever

spends an hour patiently picking off the various seed tramps from

his clothes after a walk through the woods and fields in autumn,

realizes that the by hook or by crook method of scattering

offspring is one of Nature's favorites. Simpler plants than those

with hooked achenia produce enormous numbers of spores so light

and tiny that the wind and rain distribute them wholesale.

RED CHOKE-BERRY; DOGBERRY TREE

(Aronia arbutifolia; Pyrus arbutifolia of Gray) Apple family

Flowers - White or magenta tinged, 1/2 in. across or less, in

terminal, compound cymes, finally overtopped by young sterile

shoots. Calyx 5-lobed, hairy; 5 concave, spreading petals;

stamens numerous; 3 to 5 styles united at base; ovary woolly.

Stem: Shrubby, branching, usually low, rarely 12 ft. high.

Leaves: Alternate, petioled, oval to oblong, finely cut-edged,

smooth above, matted with woolly hairs underneath. Fruit: Small,

round or top-shaped, bright red berries.

Preferred Habitat - Swamps, low ground, wet thickets.

Flowering Season - March-May.

Distribution - Nova Scotia to Gulf of Mexico, westward to the

Mississippi.

Another common species often found in the same haunts, the BLACK

CHOKE-BERRY (A. nigra), with similar flowers, the berries very

dark purple, was formerly confounded with the red choke-berry.

But because it sometimes elects to live in dry ground its leaves

require no woolly mat on the underside to absorb vapors arising

from wet retreats. No wonder that the insipid little berries.

related to apples, pears, and other luscious fruits, should share

with a cousin, the mountain ash, or rowan, the reproachful name

of dogberry.

JUNEBERRY; SERVICEBERRY; MAY-CHERRY

(Amelanchier Canadensis) Apple family

Flowers - Pure white, over 1 in. across, on long, slender

pedicels, in spreading or drooping racemes, with silky, reddish

bracts, early falling, among them. Calyx persistent, 5-parted; 5

long, narrow, tapering petals, 3 or 4 times the length of calyx;

numerous stamens inserted on calyx throat; 2 to 5 styles, hairy

at base. Stem: A large shrub or tree, usually much less than 25

ft. high, rarely twice that height, wood very hard and heavy.

Leaves: Alternate, oval, tapering at tip, finely saw-edged,

smooth (like the pear tree's), often hairy when young. Fruit.

Round, crimson, sweet, edible, seedy berries, ripe in June and

July.

Preferred Habitat - Woodland borders, pasture thickets, dry soil.

Flowering Season - March-May.

Distribution - Newfoundland to the Gulf of Mexico, westward over

a thousand miles.

Silvery-white chandeliers, hanging from the edges of the woods,

light Flora's path in earliest spring, before the trees and

shrubbery about them have begun to put forth foliage, much less

flowers. Little plants that hug the earth for protection while

rude winds rush through the forest and across the hillsides, are

already starring her way with fragile, dainty blossoms; but what

other shrub, except the serviceberry's twin sister the shadbush,

or perhaps the spicebush, has the temerity to burst into bloom

while March gusts howl through the naked forests? Little female

bees of the Andrena tribe, already at work collecting pollen and

nectar for generations yet unborn, buzz their gratitude about the

beautiful feathery clusters that lean away from the crowded

thicket with a wild, irregular grace. Nesting birds have abundant

cause for gratitude also, for the attractive, sweet berries, that

ripen providentially early; but, of course, the bees which

transfer pollen from flower to flower, and the birds which drop

the seeds far and wide, are not the receivers of wholly

disinterested favors.

The SHADBUSH or SWAMP SUGAR-PEAR (A. Botryapium), because it was

formerly accounted a mere variety (oblongifolia) of the preceding

species, still shares with it its popular names; but swamps,

river banks, brook sides, and moist thickets are its habitat.

Consequently both its inflorescence and pale green, glossy

foliage are covered with a sort of whitish cotton, absorbent when

young, to prevent the pores from clogging with vapors arising

from its damp retreats. Late in the season, when streams narrow

or dry up altogether, and the air becomes drier, as the sun rises

higher in the heavens, the foliage is usually quite smooth. It

will be noticed that, lovely as the shadbush is, its smaller

flowers have shorter pedicels than the serviceberry's;

consequently its feathery sprays, which are flung outward to the

sunshine in April and May, lack something of the grace for which

its sister stands preeminent. Under cultivation both species

assume conventional form, and lose the wild irregularities of

growth that charm us in Nature's garden. Indians believed, what

is an obvious fact, that when this bush whitens the swampy river

banks, shad are swimming up the stream from the sea to spawn.

Then, too, the nighthawk, returning from its winter visit south,

booms forth its curious whirring, vibrating, jarring sound as it

drops through the air at unseen heights, a dismal, weird noise

which the red man thought proceeded from the shad spirits come to

warn the schools of fish of their impending fate.

COMMON HAWTHORN: WHITE THORN; SCARLET-FRUITED THORN; RED HAW;

MAYFLOWERS

(Cratoegus coccinea) Apple family

Flowers - White, rarely pinkish, usually less than 1 in. across,

numerous, in terminal corymbs. Calyx 5-lobed; 5 spreading petals

inserted in its throat numerous stamens; styles 3 to 5. Stem: A

shrub or small tree, rarely attaining 30 ft. in height (Kratos =

strength, in reference to hardness and toughness of the wood);

branches spreading, and beset with stout spines (thorns) nearly 2

in. long. Leaves: Alternate, petioled, 2 to 3 in. long, ovate,

very sharply cut or lobed, the teeth glandular-tipped. Fruit:

Coral red, round or oval; not edible.

Preferred Habitat - Thickets, fence-rows, woodland borders.

Flowering Season - May.

Distribution - Newfoundland and Manitoba southward to the Gulf of

Mexico.

"The fair maid who, the first of May,

Goes to the fields at break of day

And washes in dew from the hawthorn tree

Will ever after handsome be."

Here is a popular recipe omitted from that volume of

heart-to-heart talks entitled "How to Be Pretty though Plain"!

The sombre-thoughted Scotchman, looking for trouble, tersely

observes:

"Mony haws,

Mony snaws."

But in delicious, blossoming May, when the joy of living fairly

intoxicates one, and every bird's throat is swelling with happy

music, who but a Calvinist would croak dismal prophecies? In

Ireland, old crones tell marvelous tales about the hawthorns, and

the banshees which have a predilection for them. So much for

folklore.

As one might suspect from the rather disagreeable odor of these

blossoms, they are most attractive to flies and beetles, which,

carrying pollen from older flowers, leave some on the stigmas

that are already mature in newly-opened ones. A concave

nectar-secreting disk, not concealed by the filaments in this

case, is eagerly pilfered by numerous little short-lipped insects

which render no benefit in return; but many others assist in

self-pollination after the anthers ripen. The splendid monarch

butterfly (Anosia plexippus), the banded purple (Basilarchia

arthemis), whose caterpillar feeds on hawthorn foliage, and the

light brown hunter's butterfly [American painted lady] (Pyrameis

huntera [Vanessa virginiensis]) are, among the visitors seen

flitting about this exquisite little tree in early May, when it

is fairly white with bloom.

The RED-FRUITED THORN (C. mollis), more hairy on its twigs,

petioles, calices, and fruit than the preceding, but so like it

in most respects it was formerly accounted a mere variety, is an

earlier and even more prolific bloomer, the generous, large

clusters of malodorous flowers coming with the leaves in April,

and lasting until the common hawthorn starts into lively

competition with it for insect trade.

Numerous long, slender thorns, often measuring a finger-length,

distinguish the COCKSPUR or NEWCASTLE THORN (C. Crus-Galli),

whose abundant small flowers and shining, leathery leaves, dull

underneath, are conspicuous in thickets from Quebec to the Gulf.

Immense numbers of little bees, among many other visitors, may be

noted on a fine day in May and early June about this showy shrub

or tree. Because it blooms later than its rival sisters, it has

the insect wooers then abroad all to itself.

While most of our beautiful native hawthorns have been introduced

to European gardens, it is the WHITE THORN or MAY (C. Oxyacantha)

of Europe and Asia which is most commonly cultivated here. Truly

a shrub, like a prophet, is not without honor save in its own

country.

WHITE SWEET CLOVER; BOKHARA or TREE CLOVER; WHITE MELILOT; HONEY

LOTUS

(Melilotus alba) Pea family

Flowers - Small, white, fragrant, papilionaceous, the standard

petal a trifle longer than the wings; borne in slender racemes.

Stem: 3 to 10 ft. tall, branching. Leaves: Rather distant,

petioled, compounded of 3 oblong, saw-edged leaflets; fragrant,

especially when dry.

Preferred Habitat - Wastelands, roadsides.

Flowering Season - June-November.

Distribution - United States, Europe, Asia.

Happy must the honeybees have been to find that the sweet clover,

one of their dearest delights in the Old World, had preceded them

in immigrating to the New. Immense numbers of insects - bees in

great variety, wasps, flies, moths, and beetles - visit the

little blossoms that provide entertainment so generous and

accessible; but honey-bees are ever especially abundant. Slight

weight depresses the keel, releasing the stigma and anthers

therefore, so soon as a bee alights and opens the flower, he is

hit below the belt by the projecting stigma. Pollen carried by

him there from other clovers comes off on its sticky surface

before his abdomen gets freshly dusted from the anthers, which

are necessarily rubbed against while he sips nectar. On the

removal of his pressure, the floret springs back to its closed

condition, to protect the precious nectar and pollen from rain

and pilferers. As the stigma projects too far beyond the anthers

to be likely to receive any of the flower's own pollen, good

reason is there for the blossoms guarding their attractions for

the benefit of their friends, which transfer the vitalizing dust

from one floret to another. By clustering its small flowers in

spikes, to make them conspicuous, as well as to facilitate dining

for its benefactors; by prolonging its season of bloom, to get

relief from the fiercest competition for insect trade, and so to

insure an abundance of vigorous cross-fertilized seed, this plant

reveals at a glance some of the reasons why it has been able to

establish itself so quickly throughout our vast area.

Both the white and the yellow sweet clover put their leaves to

sleep at night in a remarkable manner: the three leaflets of each

leaf twist through an angle of 90 degrees, until one edge of each

vertical blade is uppermost. The two side leaflets, Darwin found,

always tend to face the north with their upper surface, one

facing north-northwest and the other north-northeast, while the

terminal leaflet escapes the chilling of its sensitive upper

surface through radiation by twisting to a vertical also, but

bending to either east or west, until it comes in contact with

the vertical upper surface of either of the side leaflets. Thus

the upper surface of the terminal and of at least one of the side

leaflets is sure to be well protected through the night; one is

"left out in the cold."

The dried branches of sweet clover will fill a room with

delightful fragrance; but they will not drive away flies, nor

protect woolens from the ravages of moths, as old women once

taught us to believe.

The ubiquitous WHITE or DUTCH CLOVER (Trifolium repens), whose

creeping branches send up solitary round heads of white or

pinkish flowers on erect, leafless stems, from May to December,

in fields, open waste land, and cultivated places throughout our

area, Europe, and Asia, devotes itself to wooing bees, since

these are the only insects that effect cross-fertilization

regularly, other visitors aiding it only occasionally. When nets

are stretched over these flowers to exclude insects, only

one-tenth the normal quantity of fertile seed is set. Therefore,

for the bee's benefit, does each little floret conceal nectar in

a tube so deep that small pilferers cannot reach it; but when a

honeybee, for example, depresses the keel of the papilionaceous

blossom, abundant reward awaits him in consideration of his

services in transferring pollen. After the floret which he has

been the means of fertilizing closes over its seed-vessel on his

departure, it gradually withers, grows brown, and hangs downward,

partly to indicate to the next bee that comes along which fords

in the head still contain nectar, and which are done for; partly

to hide the precious little vigorous green seed-pod in the center

of each withered, papery corolla from the visitation of certain

insects whose minute grubs destroy countless millions of the

progeny of less careful plants. Thus the erect florets in a head

stand awaiting their benefactors; those drooping around the outer

edge are engaged in the most serious business of life. Sometimes

a solitary old maid remains standing, looking anxiously for a

lover, at the end of the season. Usually all the florets are then

bent down around the stem in a brown and crumpled mass. But

however successfully the clover guards its seeds from

annihilation, its foliage is the favorite food of very many

species of caterpillars and of all grazing cattle the world

around. This is still another plant frequently miscalled

shamrock. Good luck or bad attends the finding of the leaves,

when compounded of an even or an odd number of leaflets more than

the normal count, according to the saying of many simple-minded

folk.

The little RABBIT'S-FOOT, PUSSY, OLD-FIELD, or STONE CLOVER (T.

arvense) has silky plumed calices to hold its minute whitish

florets, giving the dense, oblong heads a charming softness and

dove color after it has gone to seed. Like most other clovers, it

has come to us from the Old World.

FLOWERING SPURGE

(Euphorbia corollata) Spurge family

Flowers - (Apparently) white, small, borne in forked,

long-stalked umbels, subtended by green bracts; but the true

flowers are minute, and situated within the white cup-shaped

involucre, usually mistaken for a corolla. Staminate flowers

scattered over inner surface of involucre, each composed of a

single stamen on a thread-like pedicel with a rudimentary calyx

or tiny bract below it. A solitary pistillate flower at bottom of

involucre, consisting of 3-celled ovary; 3 styles, 2-cleft, at

length forming an erect 3-lobed capsule separating into 3

2-valved carpels. Stem: 1 to 3 ft. high, often brightly spotted,

simple below, umbellately 5-branched above (usually). Leaves:

Linear, lance-shaped or oblong, entire; lower ones alternate,

upper ones whorled.

Preferred Habitat - Dry soil, gravelly or sandy.

Flowering Season - April-October.

Distribution - From Kansas and Ontario to the Atlantic.

A very commonplace and uninteresting looking weed is this spurge,

which no one but a botanist would suspect of kinship with the

brilliant vermilion poinsettia, so commonly grown in American

greenhouses. Examination shows that these little bright white

cups of the flowering spurge, simulating a five-cleft corolla,

are no more the true flowers in the one case than the large red

bracts around the poinsettia's globular greenish blossom

involucres are in the other. From the milky juice alone one might

guess the spurge to be related to the rubber plant. Still another

familiar cousin is the stately castor-oil plant; and while the

common dull purplish IPECAC SPURGE (E. Ipecacuanhae) also

suggests unpleasant doses, it is really a member of quite another

family that furnishes the old-fashioned emetic. The flowering

spurge, having its staminate and pistillate flowers distinct,

depends upon flies, its truest benefactors, to transfer pollen

from the former to the latter.

STAGHORN SUMAC; VINEGAR TREE

(Rhus hirta; R. typhina of Gray) Sumac family

Flowers - Greenish or yellowish white, very small, usually

5-parted, and borne in dense upright, terminal, pyramidal

clusters. Stem: A shrub or small tree, 6 to 40 ft. high, the ends

of branches forked somewhat like a stag's horns. Leaves.

Compounded of 11 to 31 lance-shaped, saw-edged leaflets, dark

green above, pale below; the petioles and twigs often

velvety-hairy. Fruit: Small globules, very thickly covered with

crimson hairs.

Preferred Habitat - Dry, rough or rocky places, banks, roadsides.

Flowering Season - June.

Distribution - Nova Scotia to Georgia, and westward 1500 miles.

Painted with glorious scarlet, crimson, and gold, the autumnal

foliage of the sumacs, and even the fruit, so far eclipse their

inconspicuous flowers in attractiveness that one quite ignores

them. Not so the small, short-tongued bees (chiefly Andrenidae)

and flies (Dipteria) seeking the freely exposed nectar secreted

in five orange-colored glands in the shallow little cups. As some

of the flowers are staminate and some pistillate, although others

show a tendency to revert to the perfect condition of their

ancestors, it behooves them to entertain their little

pollen-carrying visitors generously, otherwise no seed can

possibly be set. And how the autumnal landscape would suffer from

the loss of the decorative, dark-red, velvety panicles! Beware

only of the poison sumac's deadly, round grayish-white berries.

Most sumacs contain more or less tannin in their bark and leaves,

that are therefore eagerly sought by agents for the leather

merchants. The beautiful SMOKE or MIST TREE (R. cotinus),

commonly imported from southern Europe to adorn our lawns

(although a similar species grows wild in the Southwest), serves

a more utilitarian purpose in supplying commerce with a rich

orange-yellow dye-wood known as young fustic. All this tribe of

shrubs and trees contain resinous, milky juice, drying dark like

varnish, which in a Japanese species is transformed by the clever

native artisans into their famous lacquer. With a commercial

instinct worthy of the Hebrew, they guard this process as a

national secret.

The SMOOTH, UPLAND, or SCARLET SUMAC (R. glabra), similar to the

staghorn, but lacking its velvety down, and usually of much lower

growth, is the very common and widely distributed shrub of dry

roadsides, railroad banks, and barren fields. Another

low-growing, but more or less downy upland sumac, the DWARF,

BLACK, or MOUNTAIN SUMAC (R. copallina), may be known by its

dark, glossy green foliage, pale on the underside, and by the

broadening of the stem into wings between the leaflets. Hungry

migrating birds alight to feast on the harmless acid red fruit

when the gorgeous autumnal foliage illuminates their route

southward. But while they are, of course, the natural agents for

distributing the plants over the country, men find that by

cutting bits of any sumac root and planting them in good garden

soil, strong specimens are secured within a year. An exquisite

cut-leaved variety of the smooth sumac adorns many fine lawns.

Everyone should know the POISON SUMAC (R. Vernix - R. venenata of

Gray) as the shrub above all others to avoid. Like its cousin,

the POISON or THREE-LEAVED IVY (R. radicans), which once had the

specific name Toxicodendron, although Linnaeus applied that title

to a hairy shrub of the Southern States, the poison sumac causes

most painful swelling and irritation to the skin of some people,

though they do nothing more than pass it by when the wind is

blowing over it. Others may handle both these plants with

impunity. In spring they are especially noisome; but when the

pores of the skin are opened by perspiration, people who are at

all sensitive should give them a wide berth at any season.

Usually the poison sumac grows in wet or swampy ground; its bark

is gray, its leaf-stalks are red; the leaves are compounded, of

fewer leaflets than those of the innocent sumacs - that is, of

from seven to thirteen - which are green on both sides; the

flowers, which are dull whitish-green, grow in loose panicles

from the axils of the leaves, and naturally the berries follow

them in the same unusual situation. "By their fruits ye shall

know them:" all the harmless sumacs have red fruit clusters at

the ends of the branches, whereas both the poison sumac's and the

poison ivy's axillary clusters are dull grayish-white.

AMERICAN HOLLY

(Ilex opaca) Holly family

Flowers - Very small, greenish or yellowish white, from 3 to 10

staminate ones in a short cyme; fertile flowers usually solitary,

scattered. Stem: A small tree of very slow growth, rarely

attaining any great height. Leaves: Evergreen, thick, rigid,

glossy, elliptical, scalloped edged, spiny-tipped. Fruit: Round,

red berries.

Preferred Habitat - Moist woods and thickets.

Flowering Season - April-June.

Distribution - Maine to the Gulf of Mexico, west to Texas,

chiefly near the coast and south of New York.

Happily we continue to borrow all the beautiful Old World

associations, poetical and legendary, that cluster about the

holly at Christmas time, although our native tree furnishes most

of our holiday decorations. So far back as Pliny's day, the

European holly had all manner of supernatural qualities

attributed to it: its insignificant little flowers caused water

to freeze, he tells us; because it was believed to repel

lightning, the Romans planted it near their houses; and a branch

of it thrown after any refractory animal, even if it did not hit

him, would subdue him instantly, and cause him to lie down meekly

beside the stick! Can it be that the Italian peasants, who still

believe cattle kneel in their stalls at midnight on the

anniversary of Jesus' birth, decorate the mangers on Christmas

eve with holly, among other plants, because of a survival of this

old pagan notion about its subduing effect on animals?

Would that the beautiful holly of English gardens (I.

Aquifolium), more glossy and spiny of leaf and redder of berry

than our own, might live here; but it is too tender to withstand

New England winters, and the hot, dry summers farther south soon

prove fatal. Ilex was the ancient name, not of these plants, but

of the holly oak.

The MOUNTAIN HOLLY (Ilicioides mucronata - Nemopanthes Canadensis

of Gray) a shrub of the northern swamps, about six feet high, and

by no means confined to mountainous regions, since it is also

abundant in the middle West, has smooth-edged, elliptic, petioled

leaves, ash-colored bark, small, solitary, narrow-petalled

staminate and pistillate flowers on long, threadlike pedicels

from the leaf-axils in May. In August dull pale-red berries

appear. Darwin proved that seed set with the help of pollen

brought from distinct plants produces offspring that vanquishes

the offspring of seed set with pollen brought from another flower

on the same plant in the struggle for existence. Thus we see, in

very many ambitious plants besides those of the holly tribe, a

tendency to separate the male and the female flowers as widely as

possible.

BLACK ALDER; WINTERBERRY FEVER-BUSH

(Ilex verticillata) Holly family

Flowers - Small, greenish white, the staminate clusters 2 to 10

flowered the fertile ones 1 to 3 flowered. Stem: A shrub 6 to 25

ft. high. Leaves: Oval, tapering to a point, about 1 in. wide,

saw-edged, dark green, smooth above, hairy, especially along

veins underneath. Fruit: Bright red berries, about the size of a

pea, apparently whorled around the twigs.

Preferred Habitat - Swamps, ditches, fencerows, and low thickets.

Flowering Season - June-July.

Distribution - Nova Scotia to Florida, west to Missouri.

Beautiful bright red berries, dotted or clustered along the naked

twigs of the black alder, add an indispensable cheeriness to the

somber winter landscape. Bunches of them, commonly sold in the

city streets for household decoration, bring twenty-five cents

each; hence the shrubs within a large radius of each market get

ample pruning every autumn. The leaves turn black before dropping

off.

The SMOOTH WINTERBERRY (I. laevigata), a similar species, but of

more restricted range, ripens its larger, orange-red berries

earlier than the preceding, and before its leaves, which turn

yellow, not black, in autumn, have fallen. Another distinguishing

feature is that its small, greenish-white staminate flowers grow

on long, very slender pedicels; whereas the solitary fertile

flowers are much nearer the stern.

BITTERSWEET; WAX-WORK; STAFF-TREE

(Celastrus scandens) Staff-tree family

Flowers - Small, greenish-white, 5-parted, some staminate, some

pistillate only; in terminal compound racemes 4 in. long or less.

Stem: Woody, twining. Leaves: Alternate, oval, tapering, finely

toothed, thin, with a tendency to show white variations. Fruit: A

yellow-orange berry-like capsule, splitting at maturity and

curling back to display the scarlet, pulpy coating of the seeds

within.

Preferred Habitat - Rich soil of thickets, fence rows, and

wayslde tangles.

Flowering Season - June.

Distribution - North Carolina, New Mexico, and far north.

Not to be hung above mirror and picture frames in farmhouse

parlors, as we have been wont to think, do the brilliant clusters

of orange-red wax-work berries attract the eye, where they

brighten old walls, copses, and fence rows in autumn; but to

advertise their charming wares to hungry migrating birds, which

will drop the seeds concealed within the red berry perhaps a

thousand miles away, and so plant new colonies. On the smaller,

less specialized bees and flies the vine depends in June to carry

pollen from its staminate flowers to the fertile ones, whose

thick, erect pistil would wither without fruiting without their

help.

But the best laid plans of other creatures than mice and men

"gang aft a-gley." What mean the little cottony tufts all along

the stems of so very many bittersweet vines, but that these have

foes as well as friends? Curious little parasitic tree-hoppers

(Membracis binotata), which spend their entire lives on the

stems, sucking the juices through their little beaks, just as the

aphids moor themselves to the tender rose-twigs, might be

mistaken for thorns during one of their protective masquerades.

Again they look like diminutive flocks of fowl, their heads ever

pointing in one direction, no matter how the vine may twist and

turn - always toward the top of the branch, that they may the

better siphon the sap down their tiny throats. Toward the end of

summer the females, which have a sharp instrument at the rear of

their bodies, cut deeply into the juicy food-store, the cambium

layer of bark, and there deposit their eggs. Presently, a nest

being filled, the mother emits a substantial froth at the end of

her ovipositor, and proceeds to construct the cottony, corrugated

dome over her nursery which first attracted our attention. This

is especially skilful work, for she works behind her, evidently

not from sight, but from instinct only. Inasmuch as the young

hoppers will not come forth until the following summer, some such

snug protection is required during winter's cold and snows. With

hordes of little parasites constantly preying on its juices, is

it any wonder the vine is often too enfeebled to produce seed, or

that the leaves lose part of their color and become, as we say,

variegated? Occasionally one finds the cottony nursery domes of

this little hopper on the locust tree - the favorite home of its

big, noisy relative, the so-called locust, or cicada.

NEW JERSEY TEA; WILD SNOWBALL; RED-ROOT

(Ceanothus Americanus) Buckthorn family

Flowers - Small, white, on white pedicels, crowded in dense,

oblong, terminal clusters. Calyx white, hemispheric, 5-lobed;

petals, hooded and long-clawed; 5 stamens with long filaments;

style short, 3-cleft. Stems: Shrubby, 1 to 3 ft. high, usually

several, from a deep reddish root. Leaves: Alternate,

ovate-oblong, acute at tip, finely saw-edged, 3-nerved, on short

petioles.

Preferred Habitat - Dry, open woods and thickets.

Flowering Season - May-July.

Distribution - Ontario south and west to the Gulf of Mexico.

Light, feathery clusters of white little flowers crowded on the

twigs of this low shrub interested thrifty colonial housewives of

Revolutionary days not at all; the tender, young, rusty, downy

leaves were what they sought to dry as a substitute for imported

tea. Doubtless the thought that they were thereby evading George

the Third's tax and brewing patriotism in every kettleful added a

sweetness to the homemade beverage that sugar itself could not

impart. The American troops were glad enough to use New Jersey

tea throughout the war. A nankeen or cinnamon-colored dye is made

from the reddish root.

NORTHERN, WILD, FOX, or PLUM GRAPE

(Vitis Labrusca) Grape family

Flowers - Greenish, small, deliciously fragrant, some staminate,

some pistillate, rarely perfect; the fertile flowers in more

compact panicles than the sterile ones. Stem: Climbing with the

help of tendrils; woody, bark loose. Leaves: Large, rounded or

lobed, toothed, rusty-hairy underneath, especially when young,

each leathery leaf opposite a tendril or a flower cluster. Fruit:

Clusters containing a few brownish, purple, musky-scented grapes,

3/4 in. across. Ripe, August-September.

Preferred Habitat - Sunny thickets, loamy or gravelly soil.

Flowering Season - June.

Distribution - New England to Georgia, west to Minnesota and

Tennessee.

Aesop's fox may never have touched the grapes of fable, but this,

our wild species, certainly retains a strong foxy odor, which at

least suggests that he came very near them. Tough pulp and thick

skin by no means deter birds and beasts from feasting on this

fruit, and so dispersing the seeds; but mankind prefers the

tender, delightful flavored Isabella, Catawba, and Concord grapes

derived from it. The Massachusetts man who produced the Concord

variety in the town whose name he gave it, declares he would be a

millionaire had he received only a penny royalty on every Concord

grapevine planted.

What fragrance is more delicious than that of the blossoming

grape? To swing in a loop made by some strong old vine, when the

air almost intoxicates one with its sweetness on a June evening,

is many a country child's idea of perfect bliss. Not until about

nine o'clock do the leaves "go to sleep" by becoming depressed in

the center like saucers. This was the signal for bedtime that one

child, at least, used to wait for. We have seen in the clematis

how its sensitive leafstalks hook themselves over any support

they rub against; but the grapevine has gone a step farther, and

by discarding an occasional flower cluster and prolonging the

flower stalk into a coiling, forking tendril it moors itself to

the thicket. We know that all tendrils are either transformed

leaves, as in the case of the pea vine, where each branch of its

tendril represents a modified leaflet; or they are transformed

flower stalks or other organs. Occasionally the tendril of a

grapevine reveals its ancestry by bearing a blossom or a cluster

of flowers, and sometimes even fruit, about midway on the coil,

which attempts to fill all offices at once like Pooh Bah.

The phylloxera having destroyed many of the finest vineyards in

Europe, it would seem that Americans have the best of chances to

supply the world with high-class wines, for there is not a State

in the Union where the vine will not flourish. Here its worst

enemy is mildew, a parasitical fungus which attacks the leaves,

revealing itself in yellowish-brown patches on the upper side,

and thin, frosty patches underneath. Soon the leaves become sere,

and then they fall. The microscope reveals a miniature forest of

growth in each leaf, with the threadlike roots of the fungi

searching about the leaf cells for food. To burn old leaves, and

to blow sulphur over the vine while it is wet, are efficacious

remedies. Bees and wasps which puncture grapes to feast on them,

are the innocent means of destroying quantities.

Both the RIVERSIDE or SWEET-SCENTED GRAPE (V. vulpina; formerly

V. cordifolia, var. riparia) - whose bluish-black, bloom-covered

fruit begins to ripen in July; and the FROST, CHICKEN, POSSUM, or

WINTER GRAPE (V. cordifolia), whose smaller, shining black

berries are not at their best till after frost, grow along

streams and preferably in rocky situations. The shining, light

green, thin leaves of the sweet-scented species are sharply

lobed, the three to seven lobes have acute teeth, and the

tendrils are intermittent. The frost grape's leaves, which are

commonly three or four inches wide, are deeply heart-shaped,

entire (rarely slightly three-lobed), tapering to a long point

and acutely toothed.

Another familiar member of the Grape family, the VIRGINIA

CREEPER, FALSE GRAPE, AMERICAN or FIVE-LEAVED IVY, also

erroneously called WOODBINE (Parthenocissus quinquefolia;

formerly Ampelopsis quinquefolia) - is far more charming in its

glorious autumnal foliage, when its small dark blue berries hang

from red peduncles, than when its insignificant greenish flower

clusters appear in July. The leaves, compounded of five leaflets,

should sufficiently distinguish the harmless vine from the

three-leaved poison ivy, sometimes confounded with it. From

Manitoba and Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean, and even in Cuba, the

Virginia creeper rambles over thickets, fences, and walls,

ascends trees, festoons rocky woodlands, drapes our verandas,

making its way with the help of modified flower stalks that are

now branching tendrils, each branch bearing an adhesive disk at

the end. "In the course of about two days after a tendril has

arranged its branches so as to press upon any surface," says

Darwin, "its curved tips swell, become bright red, and form on

their undersides little disks or cushions with which they adhere

firmly." It is supposed that these disks secrete a cement. At any

rate, we know that they have a very tenacious hold, because often

one contracting tendril, as elastic as a steel spring, supports,

by means of these little disks, the entire weight of the branch

it lifts up. Darwin concluded that a tendril with five

disk-bearing branches, on which he experimented, would stand a

strain of ten pounds, even after ten years' exposure to high

winds and softening rains.

WHITE VIOLETS

(Viola) Violet family

Three small-flowered, white, purple-veined, and almost beardless

species which prefer to dwell in moist meadows, damp, mossy

places, and along the borders of streams, are the LANCE-LEAVED

VIOLET (V. lanceolata), the PRIMROSE-LEAVED VIOLET (V.

prirnulaefolia), and the SWEET WHITE VIOLET (V. blanda), whose

leaves show successive gradations from the narrow, tapering,

smooth, long-petioled blades of the first to the oval form of the

second and the almost circular, cordate leaf of the delicately

fragrant, little white blanda, the dearest violet of all.

Inasmuch as these are short-spurred species, requiring no effort

for bees to drain their nectaries, no footholds in the form of

beards on the side petals are provided for them. The purple

veinings show the stupidest visitor the path to the sweets.

The sprightly CANADA VIOLET (V. Canadensis), widely distributed

in woodlands, chiefly in hilly and mountainous regions, rears

tall, leafy stems terminated by faintly fragrant white or pale

lavender blossoms, purple-tinged without and purple veined, the

side petals bearded, the long sepals tapering to sharp points.

Here we see a violet in the process of changing from the white

ancestral type to the purple color which Sir John Lubbock, among

other scientists, considers the highest step in chromatic

evolution. This species has heart-shaped, saw-edged leaves which

taper acutely. From May even to July is its regular blooming

season; but the delightful family eccentricity of flowering again

in autumn appears to be a confirmed habit with the Canada violet.

ENCHANTER'S NIGHTSHADE

(Circaea Lutetiana) Evening Primrose family

Flowers - Very small, white, slender pedicelled, in terminal and

lateral racemes. Calyx 2-parted, hairy 2 petals, 2 alternate

stamens. Stem: 1 to 2 ft. high, slender, branching, swollen at

nodes. Leaves: Opposite, tapering to a point, distantly toothed,

2 to 4 in. long, slender petioled. Fruit: Pear-shaped, 2-celled,

densely covered with stiff, hooked hairs.

Preferred Habitat - Woods; shady roadsides.

Flowering Season - June-August.

Distribution - Nova Scotia to Georgia, westward to Nebraska.

Europe and Asia.

Why Circe, the enchantress, skilled in the use of poisonous

herbs, should have had her name applied to this innocent and

insignificant looking little plant is not now obvious; neither is

the title of nightshade any more appropriate.

Each tiny flower having a hairy calyx, that acts as a stockade

against ants and other such crawling pilferers, we suspect there

are abundant sweets secreted in the fleshy ring at the base of

the styles for the benefit of the numerous flies seen hovering

about. Among other visitors, watch the common housefly alighting

on the knobby stigma, a most convenient landing place, where he

leaves some pollen carried on his underside from other nightshade

blossoms. In clasping the bases of the two pliable stamens, his

only available supports as he sucks, he will surely get well

dusted again, that he may fertilize the next blossom he flies to

for refreshment. The nightshade's little pear-shaped seed

vessels, armed with hooked bristles by which they steal a ride on

any passing petticoat or trouser leg, reveal at a glance how this

plant has contrived to travel around the globe.

A smaller, weaker species (Circaea alpina), found in cool, moist

woods, chiefly north, has thin, shining leaves and soft, hooked

hairs on its vagabond seeds. Less dependence seems to be placed

on these ineffective hooks to help perpetuate the plant than on

the tiny pink bulblets growing at the end of an exceedingly

slender thread sent out by the parent roots.

AMERICAN SPIKENARD; INDIAN ROOT; SPIGNET

(Aralia racemosa) Ginseng family

Flowers - Greenish white, small, 5-parted, mostly imperfect, in a

drooping compound raceme of rounded clusters. Stem: 3 to 6 ft.

high, branches spreading. Roots: Large, thick, fragrant. Leaves:

Compounded of heart-shaped, sharply tapering, saw-edged leaflets

from 2 to 5 in. long, often downy underneath. Lower leaves often

enormous. Fruit: Dark reddish-brown berries.

Preferred Habitat - Rich open woods, wayside thickets, light

soil.

Flowering Season - July-August.

Distribution - New Brunswick to Georgia, west to the Mississippi.

A striking, decorative plant, once much sought after for its

medicinal virtues - still another herb with which old women

delight to dose their victims for any malady from a cold to a

carbuncle. Quite a different plant, but a relative, is the one

with hairy, spike-like shoots from its fragrant roots, from which

the "very precious" ointment poured by Mary upon the Saviour's

head was made. The nard, an Indian product from that plant, which

is still found growing on the distant Himalayas, could then be

imported into Palestine only by the rich.

The wild spikenard, or false Solomon's seal, has not the remotest

connection with this tribe of plants. Inasmuch as some of the

American spikenard's tiny flowers are staminate and some

pistillate, while others again are perfect, they depend upon

flies chiefly - but on some wasps and beetles, too - to transfer

pollen and enable the fertile ones to set seed. How certain of

the winter birds gormandize on the resinous, spicy little

berries! A flock of juncos will strip the fruit from every

spikenard in the neighborhood the first day it arrives from the

North.

The WILD or FALSE SARSAPARILLA (A. nudicaulis), so common in

woods, hillsides, and thickets, shelters its three spreading

umbels of greenish-white flowers in May and June beneath a canopy

formed by a large, solitary, compound leaf. The aromatic roots,

which run horizontally sometimes three feet or more through the

soil, send up a very short, smooth proper stem which lifts a tall

leafstalk and a shorter, naked flower stalk. The single large

leaf, of exquisite bronzy tints when young, is compounded of from

three to five oval, toothed leaflets on each of its three

divisions. The tiny five-parted flowers have their petals curved

backward over the calyx to make their refreshments more

accessible for the flies, on which they chiefly rely for aid in

producing those close clusters of dark-purple berries on which

migrating birds feast in early autumn. By these agents the plant

has been distributed from Newfoundland to the Carolinas, westward

from Manitoba to Missouri, which is not surprising when we

remember that certain birds travel from the Gulf of Mexico to the

Great Lakes in a single night. While the true sarsaparilla of

medicine should come from a quite different herb that flourishes

in Mexico and South America, this one furnishes a commercial

substitute enormously used as a blood purifier and cooling summer

drink. Burrowing rabbits delight to nibble the long, slender,

fragrant roots.

The GINSENG (Panax quinquefolium; Aralia quinquefolia of Gray)

found in rich woods from Quebec to Alabama, and westward to

Nebraska - that is, where found at all, for much hunting has all

but exterminated it in many regions - bears a solitary umbel of

small yellowish-green, five-parted, polygamous flowers in July

and August at the end of a smooth stem about a foot high. Bright

crimson berries follow the clusters on the female plants in early

autumn. Three long-petioled leaves, which grow in a whorl at the

top of the low stem, are palmately divided into five thin, ovate,

pointed, and irregularly toothed leaflets. But it is the deep

fusiform root, simple or branched, about which the Americanized

Chinese, at least, are most concerned. For centuries Chinese

physicians have ascribed miraculous virtues to the Manchurian

ginseng. Not only can it remove fatigue and restore lost powers,

but by its use veterans became frisky youths again according to

these wise men of the East. In short, they consider it the

panacea for all ills (Panax: pan = all, akos = remedy) - the

source of immortality. Naturally the roots were and are in great

demand, especially such as branch so as to resemble the human

form. (Both the Chinese name Schin-sen, and Garan-toguen, the

Indian one, are said to mean like a man. Here is an interesting

clue for the ethnologists to follow !) Imperial edict prohibited

the Chinese from digging up their native plant lest it be

exterminated. So Jesuit missionaries, who discovered our similar

ginseng, were not slow in exporting it to China when it was

literally worth its weight in gold. Indeed, it is always sold by

weight - a fact on which the heathen Chinee "with ways that are

dark and tricks that are vain" not infrequently relies. Chinamen,

who gather large quantities in our Western States to sell to the

wholesale druggists for export, sometimes drill holes into the

largest roots, pour in melted lead, and plug up the drills so

ingeniously that druggists refuse to pay for a Chinaman's

diggings until they have handled and weighed each root

separately.

The DWARF GINSENG, OR GROUND NUT (P. trifolium; Aralia trifolia

of Gray) whose little white flowers are clustered in feathery,

fluffy balls above the whorl of three compound leaves in April

and May, chooses low thickets and moist woods for its habitat -

often in the same neighborhood with its larger relative.

Yellowish berries follow the fragrant white pompons. One must

burrow deep, like the rabbits, to find its round, pungent, sweet,

nut-like root, measuring about half an inch across, which few

have ever seen.

WILD CARROT; QUEEN ANNE'S LACE; BIRD'S-NEST

(Daucus Carota) Carrot family

Flowers - Small, of unequal sizes (polygamous), white, rarely

pinkish gray, 5-parted, in a compound, flat, circular umbel, the

central floret often dark crimson; the umbels very concave in

fruit. An involucre of narrow, pinnately cut bracts. Stem: 1 to 3

ft. high, with stiff hairs; from a deep, fleshy, conic root.

Leaves: Cut into fine, fringy divisions; upper ones smaller and

less dissected.

Preferred Habitat - Wastelands, fields, roadsides. Flowering

Season - June-September.

Distribution - Eastern half of United States and Canada. Europe

and Asia.

A pest to farmers, a joy to the flower lover, and a welcome

signal for refreshment to hosts of flies, beetles, bees, and

wasps, especially to the paper-nest builders, the sprangly wild

carrot lifts its fringy foliage and exquisite lacy, blossoms

above the dry soil of three continents. From Europe it has come

to spread its delicate wheels over our summer landscape, until

whole fields are whitened by them east of the Mississippi. Having

proved fittest in the struggle for survival in the fiercer

competition of plants in the over-cultivated Old World, it takes

its course of empire westward year by year, Finding most

favorable conditions for colonizing in our vast, uncultivated

area; and the less aggressive, native occupants of our soil are

only too readily crowded out. Would that the advocates of

unrestricted immigration of foreign peasants studied the parallel

examples among floral invaders!

What is the secret of the wild carrots' triumphal march? As

usual, it is to be sought chiefly in the flower's scheme to

attract and utilize visitors. Nectar being secreted in open disks

near to one another, the shortest-tongued insects can lick it up

from the Umbelliferae with even less loss of time than from the

tubular florets of the Cornpositae. Over sixty distinct species

of insects may be taken on the wild carrot by any amateur, since

it blooms while insect life is at its height but, as might be

expected, the long-tongued and color-loving, specialized bees and

butterflies do not often waste time on florets so easily drained

by the mob. Ants find the stiff hairs on the stem disagreeable

obstacles to pilfering; but no visitors seem to object to the

flowers' suffocating odor.

One of these lacy, white umbels must be examined under a lens

before its delicate structure and perfection of detail can be

appreciated. Naturally a visitor is attracted first by the

largest, most showy florets situated around the outer edge of the

wheel, on which he leaves pollen, brought from another umbel; and

any vitalizing dust remaining on his under side may be left on

the less conspicuous hermaphrodite blossoms as he makes his way

toward the center, where the tiny, pollen-bearing florets are

grouped. From the latter, as he flies away, he will carry fresh

pollen to the outer row of florets on another umbel, and so on -

at least this is the usual and highly advantageous method. After

general fertilization, the slender flower-stalks curl inward, and

the umbel forms a hollow nest that gradually contracts as it

dries, almost, if not quite, closing at the top, albeit the

fiction that bees and spiders make their home in the seeding

umbels circulates freely.