"I want the inner meaning and the understanding of the
wildflowers in the meadow. Why are they? What end? What purpose?
The plant knows, and sees, and feels; where is its mind when the
petal falls? Absorbed in the universal dynamic force, or what?
They make no shadow of pretence, these beautiful flowers, of
being beautiful for my sake; of bearing honey for me; in short,
there does not seem to be any kind of relationship understood
between us, and yet . . . language does not express the dumb
feelings of the mind any more than the flower can speak. I want
to know the soul of the flowers! . . . All these life-laboured
monographs, these classifications, works of Linnaeus, and our own
classic Darwin, microscope, physiology - and the flower has not
given us its message yet.' ' - Richard Jeffries.
JACK-IN-THE-PULPIT; INDIAN TURNIP
(Arisaema triphyllum) Arum family
Flowers - Minute, greenish yellow, clustered on the lower part of
a smooth, club-shaped, slender spadix within a green and maroon
or whitish-striped spathe that curves in a broad-pointed flap
above it. Leaves: 3-foliate, usually overtopping the spathe,
their slender petioles 9 to 30 in. high, or as tall as the scape
that rises from an acrid corm. Fruit: Smooth, shining red berries
clustered on the thickened club.
Preferred Habitat - Moist woodland and thickets.
Flowering Season - April-June.
Distribution - Nova Scotia westward to Minnesota, and southward
to the Gulf States.
A jolly looking preacher is Jack, standing erect in his
particolored pulpit with a sounding-board over his head; but he
is a gay deceiver, a wolf in sheep's clothing,, literally a
"brother to dragons," an arrant upstart, an ingrate, a murderer
of innocent benefactors! "Female botanizing classes pounce upon
it as they would upon a pious young clergyman," complains Mr.
Ellwanger. A poor relation of the stately calla lily one knows
Jack to be at a glance, her lovely white robe corresponding to
his striped pulpit, her bright yellow spadix to his sleek
reverence. In the damp woodlands where his pulpit is erected
beneath leafy cathedral arches, minute flies or gnats, recently
emerged from maggots in mushrooms, toadstools, or decaying logs,
form the main part of his congregation.
Now, to drop the clerical simile, let us peep within the
sheathing spathe, or, better still, strip it off altogether. Dr.
Torrey states that the dark-striped spathes are the fertile
plants, those with green and whitish lines, sterile. Within are
smooth, glossy columns, and near the base of each we shall find
the true flowers, minute affairs, some staminate; others, on
distinct plants, pistillate, the berry bearers; or rarely both
male and female florets seated on the same club, as if Jack's
elaborate plan to prevent self-fertilization were not yet
complete. Plants may be detected in process of evolution toward
their ideals: just as nations and men are. Doubtless, when Jack's
mechanism is perfected, his guilt will disappear. A little way
above the florets the club enlarges abruptly, forming a
projecting ledge that effectually closes the avenue of escape for
many a guileless victim. A fungus gnat, enticed perhaps by the
striped house of refuge from cold spring winds, and with a
prospect of food below, enters and slides down the inside walls
or the slippery colored column: in either case descent is very
easy; it is the return that is made so difficult, if not
impossible, for the tiny visitors. Squeezing past the projecting
ledge, the gnat finds himself in a roomy apartment whose floor -
the bottom of the pulpit - is dusted over with fine pollen; that
is, if he is among staminate flowers already mature. To get some
of that pollen, with which the gnat presently covers himself,
transferred to the minute pistillate florets waiting for it in a
distant chamber is, of course, Jack's whole aim in enticing
visitors within his polished walls; but what means are provided
for their escape? Their efforts to crawl upward over the slippery
surface only land them weak and discouraged where they started.
The projecting ledge overhead prevents them from using their
wings; the passage between the ledge and the spathe is far too
narrow to permit flight. Now, if a gnat be persevering, he will
presently discover a gap in the flap where the spathe folds
together in front, and through this tiny opening he makes his
escape, only to enter another pulpit, like the trusted, but too
trusting, messenger he is, and leave some of the vitalizing
pollen on the fertile florets awaiting his coming.
But suppose the fly, small as he is, is too large to work his way
out through the flap, or too bewildered or stupid to find the
opening, or too exhausted after his futile efforts to get out
through the overhead route to persevere, or too weak with hunger
in case of long detention in a pistillate trap where no pollen
is, what then? Open a dozen of Jack's pulpits, and in several, at
least, dead victims will be found - pathetic little corpses
sacrificed to the imperfection of his executive system. Had the
flies entered mature spathes, whose walls had spread outward and
away from the polished column, flight through the overhead route
might have been possible. However glad we may be to make every
due allowance for this sacrifice of the higher life to the lower,
as only a temporary imperfection of mechanism incidental to the
plant's higher development, Jacks present cruelty shocks us no
less. Or, it may be, he will become insectivorous like the
pitcher plant in time. He comes from a rascally family, anyhow.
(See cuckoo pint.)
In June and July the thick-set club, studded over with bright
berries, becomes conspicuous, to attract hungry woodland rovers
in the hope that the seeds will be dropped far from the parent
plant. The Indians used to boil the berries for food. The
farinaceous root (corm) they likewise boiled or dried to extract
the stinging, blistering juice, leaving an edible little
"turnip," however insipid and starchy.
The GREEN DRAGON, or DRAGON-ROOT (A. Dracontium), to which Jack
is brother, is found in similar situations or beside streams in
wet, shady ground, and sends up a narrow greenish or whitish
tapering spathe, one or two inches long, enwrapping a slender,
pointed spadix, that projects sometimes seven inches beyond its
tip. Within, tiny pistillate florets are seated around the base,
while on the staminate plants the inflorescence extends higher. A
large, solitary, dark green leaf, divided into from five to
seventeen oblong, pointed segments, spreads above. Large ovoid
heads of reddish-orange berries are the plant's most conspicuous
feature.
SKUNK OR SWAMP CABBAGE
(Spathyema fetida; Symplocarpus fetidus of Gray) Arum family
Flowers - Minute, perfect, fetid; many scattered over a thick,
rounded, fleshy spadix, and hidden within a swollen,
shell-shaped, purplish-brown to greenish-yellow, usually mottled,
spathe, close to the ground, that appears before the leaves.
Spadix much enlarged and spongy in fruit, the bulb-like berries
imbedded in its surface. Leaves: In large crowns like cabbages,
broadly ovate, often 1 ft. across, strongly nerved, their
petioles with deep grooves, malodorous.
Preferred Habitat - Swamps, wet ground.
Flowering Season - February-April.
Distribution - Nova Scotia to Florida, and westward to Minnesota
and Iowa.
This despised relative of the stately calla lily proclaims spring
in the very teeth of winter, being the first bold adventurer
above ground. When the lovely hepatica, the first flower worthy
the name to appear, is still wrapped in her fuzzy furs, the skunk
cabbage's dark incurved horn shelters within its hollow, tiny,
malodorous florets. Why is the entire plant so fetid that one
flees the neighborhood, pervaded as it is with an odor that
combines a suspicion of skunk, putrid meat, and garlic? After
investigating the carrion-flower (q.v.) and the purple trillium,
among others, we learned that certain flies delight in foul odors
loathsome to higher organisms; that plants dependent on these
pollen carriers woo them from long distances with a stench, and
in addition sometimes try to charm them with color resembling the
sort of meat it is their special mission, with the help of
beetles and other scavengers of Nature, to remove from the face
of the earth. In such marshy ground as the skunk cabbage lives
in, many small flies and gnats live in embryo under the fallen
leaves during the winter. But even before they are warmed into
active life, the hive-bees, natives of Europe, and with habits
not perfectly adapted as yet to our flora (nor our flora's habits
to theirs - see milkweed), are out after pollen. Where would they
find any so early, if not within the skunk cabbage's livid horn
of plenty? Not even an alder catkin or a pussy willow has
expanded yet. In spite of the bee's refined taste in the matter
of perfume and color, she has no choice, now, but to enter so
generous an entertainer. At the top of the thick rounded spadix
within, the skunk cabbage florets there first mature their
stigmas, and pollen must therefore be carried to them on the
bodies of visitors. Later these stigmas wither, and abundant
pollen is shed from the now ripe anthers. Meantime the lower,
younger florets having matured their stigmas, some pollen may
fall directly on them from the older flowers above. A bee
crawling back and forth over the spadix gets thoroughly dusted,
and flying off to another cluster of florets cross-fertilizes
them - that is, if all goes well. But because the honeybee never
entered the skunk cabbage's calculations, useful as the immigrant
proved to be, the horn that was manifestly designed for smaller
flies often proves a fatal trap. Occasionally a bee finds the
entrance she has managed to squeeze through too narrow and
slippery for an exit, and she perishes miserably.
"A couple of weeks after finding the first bee," says Mr. William
Trelease in the "American Naturalist," "the spathes will be found
swarming with the minute black flies that were sought in vain
earlier in the season, and their number is attested not only by
the hundreds of them which can be seen, but also by the many
small but very fat spiders whose webs bar the entrance to
three-fourths of the spathes. During the present spring a few
specimens of a small scavenger beetle have been captured within
the spathes of this plant.... Finally, other and more attractive
flowers opening, the bees appear to cease visiting those of this
species, and countless small flies take their place, compensating
for their small size by their great numbers." These, of course,
are the benefactors the skunk cabbage catered to ages before the
honeybee reached our shores.
After the flowering time come the vivid green crowns of leaves
that at least please the eye. Lizards make their home beneath
them, and many a yellowthroat, taking advantage of the plant's
foul odor, gladly puts up with it herself and builds her nest in
the hollow of the cabbage as a protection for her eggs and young
from four-footed enemies. Cattle let the plant alone because of
the stinging, acrid juices secreted by it, although such tender,
fresh, bright foliage must be especially tempting, like the
hellebore's, after a dry winter diet. Sometimes tiny insects are
found drowned in the wells of rain water that accumulate at the
base of the grooved leafstalks.
RED, WOOD, FLAME, or PHILADELPHIA LILY
(Lilium Philadelphicum) Lily family
Flowers - Erect, tawny or red-tinted outside; vermilion, or
sometimes reddish orange, and spotted with madder brown within; 1
to 5, on separate peduncles, borne at the summit. Perianth of 6
distinct, spreading, spatulate segments, each narrowed into a
claw, and with a nectar groove at its base; 6 stamens; 1 style,
the club-shaped stigma 3-lobed. Stem: 1 to 3 ft. tall, from a
bulb composed of narrow, jointed, fleshy scales. Leaves: In
whorls of 3's to 8's, lance-shaped, seated at intervals on the
stem.
Preferred Habitat - Dry woods, sandy soil, borders, and thickets.
Flowering Season - June-July.
Distribution - Northern border of United States, westward to
Ontario, south to the Carolinas and West Virginia.
Erect, as if conscious of its striking beauty, this vivid lily
lifts a chalice that suggests a trap for catching sunbeams from
fiery old Sol. Defiant of his scorching rays in its dry habitat,
it neither nods nor droops even during prolonged drought; and vet
many people confuse it with the gracefully pendent, swaying bells
of the yellow Canada lily, which will grow in a swamp rather than
forego moisture. Li, the Celtic for white, from which the family
derived its name, makes this bright-hued flower blush to own it.
Seedmen, who export quantities of our superb native lilies to
Europe, supply bulbs so cheap that no one should wait four years
for flowers from seed, or go without their splendor in our
over-conventional gardens. Why this early lily is radiantly
colored and speckled is told in the description of the Canada
lily (q.v.).
The WESTERN RED LILY (L. umbellatum), that takes the place of the
Philadelphia species from Ohio, Minnesota, and the Northwest
Territory, southward to Missouri, Arkansas, and Colorado, lifts
similar but smaller red, orange, or yellow flowers on a more
slender stem, two feet high or less, set with narrow, linear,
alternate leaves, or perhaps the upper ones in whorls. It blooms
in June or July, in dry soil, preferably in open, sandy
situations.
LARGE CORAL-ROOT
(Corallorhiza multiflora) Orchid family
Flowers - Dull brownish purple, about 1/2 in. high; 10 to 30
borne in a raceme 2 to 8 in. long. Petals about the length of
sepals, and somewhat united at the base; spur yellowish, the oval
lip white, spotted and lined with purplish; 3-lobed, wavy edged.
Scape, 8 to 20 in. tall, colored, furnished with several flat
scales. Leaves: None. Root: A branching, coral-like mass.
Preferred Habitat - Dry woods.
Flowering Season - July-September.
Distribution - Nova Scotia, westward to British Columbia; south
to Florida, Missouri, and California.
To the majority of people the very word orchid suggests a
millionaire's hothouse, or some fashionable florist's show
window, where tropical air plants send forth gorgeous blossoms,
exquisite in color, marvelous in form; so that when this
insignificant little stalk pokes its way through the soil at
midsummer and produces some dull flowers of indefinite shades and
no leaves at all to help make them attractive, one feels that the
coral-root is a very poor relation of theirs indeed. The prettily
marked lower lip, at once a platform and nectar guide to the
insect alighting on it, is all that suggests ambition worthy of
an orchid.
If poverty of men and nations can be traced to certain radical
causes by the social economist, just as surely can the botanist
account for loss of leaves - riches - by closely examining the
poverty-stricken plant. Every phenomenon has its explanation. A
glance at the extraordinary formation under ground reveals the
fact that the coral-roots, although related to the most
aristocratic and highly organized plants in existence, have
stooped to become ghoulish saprophytes. An honest herb abounds in
good green coloring matter (chlorophyll), that serves as a light
screen to the cellular juices of leaf and stem. It also forms
part of its digestive apparatus, aiding a plant in the
manufacture of its own food out of the soil, water, and gases;
whereas a plant that lives by piracy - a parasite - or a
saprophyte, that sucks up the already assimilated products of
another's decay, loses its useless chlorophyll as surely as if it
had been kept in a cellar. In time its equally useless leaves
dwindle to bracts, or disappear. Nature wastes no energy. Fungi,
for example, are both parasites and saprophytes; and so when
plants far higher up in the evolutionary scale than they lose
leaves and green color too, we may know they are degenerates
belonging to that disreputable gang of branded sinners which
includes the Indian-pipe, broom-rape, dodder, pine-sap, and
beech-drops. Others, like the gerardias and foxgloves, may even
now be detected on the brink of a fall from grace.
The EARLY CORAL-ROOT (C. Corallorhiza; C. innata of Gray)
- a similar but smaller species, whose loose spike of dull
purplish flowers likewise terminates a scaly purplish or
yellowish scape arising from a mass of short, thick, whitish,
fleshy, blunt fibers, may be found in the moist woods blooming in
May or June. It has a more northerly range, however, extending
from the mountains of Georgia, it is true, but chiefly from the
northern boundary of the United States, from New England westward
to the State of Washington, and northward to Nova Scotia and
Alaska.
ADAM AND EVE; PUTTY-ROOT
(Aplectrum spicatum; A. hyemale of Gray)) Orchid family
Flowers - Dingy yellowish brown and purplish, about 1 in. long,
each on a short pedicel, in a few-flowered, loose, bracted raceme
2 to 4 in. long. No spur; sepals and petals similar, small and
narrow, the lip wavy-edged. Scape: to 2 ft. high, smooth, with
about 3 sheathing scales. Leaf: Solitary, rising from the corm in
autumn, elliptic, broad, plaited-nerved, 4 to 6 in. long. Root: A
corm usually attached to one of the preceding season.
Preferred Habitat - Moist woods or swamps.
Flowering Season - May-June.
Distribution - Georgia, Missouri, and California northward, into
British Possessions.
More curious than beautiful is this small orchid whose dingy
flowers of indefinite color and without spurs interest us far
less than the two corms barely hidden below ground. These
singular solid bulbs, about an inch thick, are connected by a
slender stalk, suggesting to the imaginative person who named the
plant our first parents standing hand in hand in the Garden of
Eden.
But usually several old corms - not always two, by any means -
remain attached to the nearest one, a bulb being produced each
year until Cain and Abel often join Adam and Eve to make up quite
a family group. A strong, glutinous matter within the corms has
been used as a cement, hence the plant's other popular name. From
the newest bulb added, a solitary large leaf arises in late
summer or autumn, to remain all winter. The flower stalk comes up
at one side of it the following spring. Meantime the old corms
retain their life, apparently to help nourish the young one still
joined to them, while its system is taxed with flowering.
WILD GINGER; CANADA SNAKEROOT; ASARABACCA
(Asarum Canadense) Birthwort family
Flower - Solitary, dull purplish brown, creamy white within,
about 1 in. broad when expanded, borne on a short peduncle close
to or upon the ground. Calyx cup-shaped, deeply cleft, its 3
acutely pointed lobes spreading, curved; corolla wanting; 12
short, stout stamens inserted on ovary; the thick style 6-lobed,
its stigmas radiating on the lobes. Leaves: A single pair, dark
green, reniform, 4 to 7 in. broad, on downy petioles 6 to 12 in.
high, from a creeping, thick, aromatic, pungent rootstock.
Preferred Habitat - Rich, moist woods; hillsides.
Flowering Season - March-May.
Distribution - North Carolina, Missouri, and Kansas, northward,
to New Brunswick and Manitoba.
Like the wicked servant who buried the one talent entrusted to
his care, the wild ginger hides its solitary flower if not
actually under the dry leaves that clothe the ground in the still
leafless woodlands, then not far above them. Why? When most
plants flaunt their showy blossoms aloft, where they may be seen
of all, why should this one bear only one dull, firm cup,
inconspicuous in color as in situation? In early spring - and it
is one of the earliest flowers - gnats and small flies are
warming into active life from the maggots that have lain under
dead leaves and the bark of decaying logs all winter. To such
guests a flower need offer few attractions to secure them in
swarms. Bright, beautiful colors, sweet fragrance, luscious
nectar, with which the highly specialized bees, butterflies, and
moths are wooed, would all be lost on them, lacking as they do
esthetic taste. For flies, a snug shelter from cold spring winds
such as Jack-in-the-pulpit, the marsh calla, the pitcher-plant,
or the skunk cabbage offers; sometimes a fetid odor like the
latter's, or dull purplish red or brownish color resembling stale
meat, which the purple trillium likewise wears as an additional
attraction, are necessary when certain carrion flies must be
catered to; and, above all, an abundance of pollen for food -
with any or all of these seductions a flower dependent on flies
has nothing to fear from neglect. Therefore the wild ginger does
not even attempt to fertilize itself. Within the cozy cup one can
usually find a contented fly seeking shelter or food. Close to
the ground it is warm and less windy. When the cup first opens,
only the stigmas are mature and sticky to receive any pollen the
visitors may bring in on their bodies from other asylums where
they have been hiding. These stigmas presently withering, up rise
the twelve stamens beside them to dust with pollen the flies
coming in search of it. Only one flower from a root compels
cross-fertilizing between flowers of distinct plants - a means to
insure the most vigorous seed, as Darwin proved. Evidently the
ginger is striving to attain some day the ambitious mechanism for
temporarily imprisoning its guests that its cousin the Dutchman's
pipe has perfected. After fertilization the cup nods, inverted,
and the leathery capsule following it bursts irregularly,
discharging many seeds.
No ruminant will touch the leaves, owing to their bitter juices,
nor will a grub or nibbling rodent molest the root, which bites
like ginger; nevertheless credulous mankind once utilized the
plant as a tonic medicine.
DUTCHMAN'S PIPE; PIPE-VINE
(Aristolochia macrophylla; A. Sipho of Gray))
Flower - An inflated, curved, yellowish-green, veiny tube
(calyx), pipe-shaped, except that it abruptly broadens beyond the
contracted throat into 3 flat, spreading, dark purplish or
reddish-brown lobes; pipe 1 to 1 1/2 in. long, borne on a long,
drooping peduncle, either solitary or 2 or 3 together, from the
bracted leaf-axils; 6 anthers, without filaments, in united pairs
under the 3 lobes of the short, thick stigma. Stem: A very long,
twining vine, the branches smooth and green. Leaves: Thin,
reniform to heart-shaped, slender petioled, downy underneath when
young; 6 to 15 in. broad when mature. Fruit: An oblong, cylindric
capsule, containing quantities of seeds within its six sections.
Preferred Habitat - Rich, moist woods.
Flowering Season - May-June.
Distribution - Pennsylvania, westward to Minnesota, south to
Georgia and Kansas. Escaped from cultivation further north.
After learning why the pitcher plant, Jack-in-the-pulpit, and
skunk cabbage are colored and shaped as they are, no one will be
surprised on opening this curious flower to find numbers of
little flies within the pipe. Certain relatives of this vine
produce flowers that are not only colored like livid, putrid meat
around the entrance, but also emit a fetid odor to attract
carrion flies especially. (See purple trillium.)
In May, when the pipe-vine blooms, gauzy-winged small flies and
gnats gladly seek food and shelter from the wind within so
attractive an asylum as the curving tube offers. They enter
easily enough through the narrow throat, around which fine hairs
point downward - an entrance resembling an eel trap's. Any pollen
they may bring in on their bodies now rubs off on the sticky
stigma lobes, already matured at the bottom of a newly opened
flower, in which they buzz, crawl, slide, and slip, seeking an
avenue of escape. None presents itself: they are imprisoned. The
hairs at the entrance, approached from within, form an
impenetrable stockade. Must the poor little creatures perish? Is
the flower heartless enough to murder its benefactors, on which
the continuance of its species depends? By no means is it so
shortsighted! A few tiny drops of nectar exuding from the center
table prevent the visitors from starving. Presently the
fertilized stigmas wither, and when they have safely escaped the
danger of self-fertilization, the pollen hidden under their lobes
ripens and dusts afresh the little flies so impatiently awaiting
the feast. Now, and not till now, it is to the advantage of the
species that the prisoners be released, that they may carry the
vitalizing dust to stigmas waiting for it in younger flowers.
Accordingly, the slippery pipe begins to shrivel, thus offering a
foothold; the once stiff hairs that guarded its exit grow limp,
and the happy gnats, after a generous entertainment and snug
protection, escape uninjured, and by no means unwilling to repeat
the experience. Evidently the wild ginger, belonging to a genus
next of kin, is striving to perfect a similar prison. In the
language of the street, the ginger flower does not yet "work"
its.visitors "for all they are worth."
Later, when we see the exquisite dark, velvety, blue-green,
pipe-vine, swallow-tail butterfly (Papilio philenor) hovering
about verandas or woodland bowers that are shaded with the
pipe-vine's large leaves, we may know she is there only to lay
eggs that her caterpillar descendants may find themselves on
their favorite food store.
The VIRGINIA SNAKEROOT or SERPENTARY (A. serpentaria), found in
dry woods, chiefly in the Middle States and South, although its
range extends northward to Connecticut, New York, and Michigan,
is the species whose aromatic root is used in medicine. It is a
low-growing herb, not a vine; its heart-shaped leaves, which are
narrow and tapering to a point, are green on both sides, and the
curious, greenish, S-shaped flower, which grows alone at the tip
of a scaly footstalk from the root, appears in June or July.
Sometimes the flowers are cleistogamous (see violet wood-sorrel).
FIRE PINK; VIRGINIA CATCHFLY
(Silene Virginica) Pink family
Flowers - Scarlet or crimson, 1 1/2 in. broad or less, a few on
slender pedicels from the upper leaf-axils. Calyx sticky,
tubular, bell-shaped, 5-cleft, enlarged in fruit; corolla of 5
wide-spread, narrow, notched petals, sometimes deeply 2-cleft; 10
stamens; 3 styles. Stem: 1 to 2 ft. high; erect, slender, sticky.
Leaves: Thin, spatulate, 3 to 5 in. long; or upper ones oblong to
lance-shaped.
Preferred Habitat - Dry, open woodland.
Flowering Season - May-September.
Distribution - Southern New Jersey to Minnesota, south to Georgia
and Missouri.
The rich, glowing scarlet of these pinks that fleck the Southern
woodland as with fire, will light up our Northern rock gardens
too, if we but sow the seed under glass in earliest spring, and
set out the young plants in well-drained, open ground in May.
Division of old perennial roots causes the plants to sulk;
dampness destroys them.
To the brilliant blossoms butterflies chiefly come to sip (see
wild pink), and an occasional hummingbird, fascinated by the
color that seems ever irresistible to him, hovers above them on
whirring wings. Hapless ants, starting to crawl up the stem,
become more and more discouraged by its stickiness, and if they
persevere in their attempts to steal from the butterfly's
legitimate preserves, death overtakes their erring feet as
speedily as if they ventured on sticky fly paper. How humane is
the way to protect flowers from crawling thieves that has been
adopted by the high-bush cranberry and the partridge pea (q.v.),
among other plants! These provide a free lunch of sweets in the
glands of their leaves to satisfy pilferers, which then seek no
farther, leaving the flowers to winged insects that are at once
despoilers and benefactors.
WILD COLUMBINE
(Aquilegia Canadensis) Crowfoot family
Flower - Red outside, yellow within, irregular, 1 to 2 in. long,
solitary, nodding from a curved footstalk from the upper
leaf-axils. Petals 5, funnel-shaped, but quickly narrowing into
long, erect, very slender hollow spurs, rounded at the tip and
united below by the 5 spreading red sepals, between which the
straight spurs ascend; numerous stamens and 5 pistils projecting.
Stem: 1 to 2 ft. high; branching, soft-hairy or smooth. Leaves:
More or less divided, the lobes with rounded teeth; large lower
compound leaves on long petioles. Fruit: An erect pod, each of
the 5 divisions tipped with a long, sharp beak.
Preferred Habitat - Rocky places, rich woodland.
Flowering Season - April-July.
Distribution - Nova Scotia to the Northwest Territory; southward
to the Gulf States. Rocky Mountains.
Although under cultivation the columbine nearly doubles its size,
it never has the elfin charm in a conventional garden that it
possesses wild in Nature's. Dancing in red and yellow petticoats
to the rhythm of the breeze, along the ledge of overhanging
rocks, it coquettes with some Punchinello as if daring him to
reach her at his peril. Who is he? Let us sit a while on the
rocky ledge and watch for her lovers.
Presently a big muscular bumblebee booms along. Owing to his
great strength, an inverted, pendent blossom, from which he must
cling upside down, has no more terrors for him than a trapeze for
the trained acrobat. His long tongue - if he is one of the
largest of our sixty-two species of Bombus - can suck almost any
flower unless it is especially adapted to night-flying sphinx
moths, but can he drain this? He is the truest benefactor of the
European columbine (q.v.), whose spurs suggested the talons of an
eagle (aquila) to imaginative Linnaeus when he gave this group of
plants its generic name. Smaller bumblebees, unable through the
shortness of their tongues to feast in a legitimate manner, may
be detected nipping holes in the tips of all columbines, where
the nectar is secreted, just as they do in larkspurs, Dutchman's
breeches, squirrel corn, butter and eggs, and other flowers whose
deeply hidden nectaries make dining too difficult for the little
rogues. Fragile butterflies, absolutely dependent on nectar,
hover near our showy wild columbine with its five tempting horns
of plenty, but sail away again, knowing as they do that their
weak legs are not calculated to stand the strain of an inverted
position from a pendent flower, nor are their tongues adapted to
slender tubes unless these may be entered from above. The tongues
of both butterflies and moths bend readily only when directed
beneath their bodies. It will be noticed that our columbine's
funnel-shaped tubes contract just below the point where the
nectar is secreted - doubtless to protect it from small bees.
When we see the honeybee or the little wild bees - Haliclus
chiefly - on the flower, we may know they get pollen only.
Finally a ruby-throated hummingbird whirs into sight. Poising
before a columbine, and moving around it to drain one spur after
another until the five are emptied, he flashes like thought to
another group of inverted red cornucopias, visits in turn every
flower in the colony, then whirs away quite as suddenly as he
came. Probably to him, and no longer to the outgrown bumblebee,
has the flower adapted itself. The European species wears blue,
the bee's favorite color according to Sir John Lubbock; the
nectar hidden in its spurs, which are shorter, stouter, and
curved, is accessible only to the largest humblebees. There are
no hummingbirds in Europe. (See jewel-weed.) Our native
columbine, on the contrary, has longer, contracted, straight,
erect spurs, most easily drained by the ruby-throat which, like
Eugene Field, ever delights in "any color at all so long as it's
red."
To help make the columbine conspicuous, even the sepals become
red; but the flower is yellow within, it is thought to guide
visitors to the nectaries. The stamens protrude like a golden
tassel. After the anthers pass the still immature stigmas, the
pollen of the outer row ripens, ready for removal, while the
inner row of undeveloped stamens still acts as a sheath for the
stigmas. Owing to the pendent position of the flower, no pollen
could fall on the latter in any case. The columbine is too highly
organized to tolerate self-fertilization. When all the stamens
have discharged their pollen, the styles then elongate; and the
feathery stigmas, opening and curving sidewise, bring themselves
at the entrance of each of the five cornucopias, just the
position the anthers previously occupied. Probably even the small
bees, collecting pollen only, help carry some from flower to
flower but perhaps the largest bumblebees, and certainly the
hummingbird, must be regarded as the columbine's legitimate
benefactors. Caterpillars of one of the dusky wings (Papilio
lucilius) feed on the leaves.
Very rarely is the columbine white, and then its name, derived
from words meaning two doves, does not seem wholly misapplied.
"O Columbine, open your folded wrapper
Where two twin turtle-doves dwell,"
lisp thousands of children speaking the "Songs of Seven" as a
first "piece" at school. How Emerson loved the columbine! Dr.
Prior says the flower was given its name because "of the
resemblance of the nectaries to the heads of pigeons in a ring
around a dish - a favorite device of ancient artists."
This exquisite plant was forwarded from the Virginia colony to
England for the gardens of Hampton Court by a young kinsman of
Tradescant, gardener and herbalist to Charles I.
PITCHER-PLANT; SIDE-SADDLE FLOWER; HUNTSMAN'S CUP; INDIAN DIPPER
(Sarracenea purpurea) Pitcher-plant family
Flower - Deep reddish purple, sometimes partly greenish, pink, or
red, 2 in. or more across, globose; solitary, nodding from scape
1 to 2 ft. tall. Calyx of 5 sepals, with 3 or 4 bracts at base; 5
overlapping petals, enclosing a yellowish, umbrella-shaped
dilation of the style, with 5 rays terminating in 5-hooked
stigmas; stamens indefinite. Leaves: Hollow, pitcher-shaped
through the folding together of their margins, leaving a broad
wing; much inflated, hooded, yellowish green with dark maroon or
purple lines and veinings, 4 to 12 in. long, curved, in a tuft
from the root.
Preferred Habitat - Peat bogs; spongy, mossy swamps.
Flowering Season - May-June.
Distribution - Labrador to the Rocky Mountains, south to Florida,
Kentucky, and Minnesota.
"What's this I hear
About the new carnivora?
Can little piants
Eat bugs and ants
And gnats and flies? -
A sort of retrograding:
Surely the fare
Of flowers is air
Or sunshine sweet
They shouldn't eat
Or do aught so degrading!"
There must always be something shocking in the sacrifice of the
higher life to the lower, of the sensate to what we are pleased
to call the insensate, although no one who has studied the
marvelously intelligent motives that impel a plant's activities
can any longer consider the vegetable creation as lacking
sensibility. Science is at length giving us a glimmering of the
meaning of the word universe, teaching, as it does, that all
creatures in sharing the One Life share in many of its powers,
and differ from one another only in degree of possession, not in
kind. The transition from one so-called kingdom into another
presumably higher one is a purely arbitrary line marked by man,
and often impossible to define. The animalcule and the
insectivorous plant know no boundaries between the animal and the
vegetable. And who shall say that the sun-dew or the bladderwort
is not a higher organism than the amoeba? Animated plants, and
vegetating. animals parallel each other. Several hundred
carnivorous plants in all parts of the world have now been named
by scientists.
It is well worth a journey to some spongy, sphagnum bog to gather
clumps of pitcher-plants which will furnish an interesting study
to an entire household throughout the summer while they pursue
their nefarious business in a shallow bowl on the veranda. A
modification of the petiole forms a deep hollow pitcher having
for its spout a modification of the blade of the leaf. Usually
the pitchers are half filled with water and tiny drowned victims
when we gather them. Some of this fluid must be rain, but the
open pitcher secretes much juice too. Certain relatives, whose
pitchers have hooded lids that keep out rain, are nevertheless
filled with fluid. On the Pacific Coast the golden jars of
Darlingtonia Californica, with their overarching hoods, are often
so large and watery as to drown small birds and field mice. Note
in passing that these otherwise dark prisons have translucent
spots at the top, whereas our pitcher-plant is lighted through
its open transom.
A sweet secretion within the pitcher's rim, which some say is
intoxicating, others, that it is an anaesthetic, invites insects
to a fatal feast. It is a simple enough matter for them to walk
into the pitcher over the band of stiff hairs, pointing downward
like the withes of a lobster pot, that form an inner covering, or
to slip into the well if they attempt crawling over its polished
upper surface. To fly upward in a perpendicular line once their
wings are wet is additionally hopeless, because of the hairs that
guard the mouth of the trap; and so, after vain attempts to fly
or crawl out of the prison, they usually sink exhausted into a
watery grave.
When certain plants live in soil that is so poor in nitrogen
compounds that protein formation is interfered with, they have
come to depend more or less on a carnivorous diet. The sundew
(q.v.) actually digests its prey with the help of a gastric juice
similar to what is found in the stomach of animals; but the
bladderwort (q.v.) and pitcher-plants can only absorb in the form
of soup the products of their victims' decay. Flies and gnats
drowned in these pitchers quickly yield their poor little bodies;
but owing to the beetle's hard-shell covering, many a rare
specimen may be rescued intact to add to a collection.
A similar ogre plant is the YELLOW-FLOWERED TRUMPET-LEAF (S.
flava) found in bogs in the Southern States.
GROUND-NUT
(Apios Apios; A. tuberosa of Gray) Pea family
Flowers - Fragrant, chocolate brown and reddish purple, numerous,
about 1/2 in. long, clustered in racemes from the leaf-axils.
Calyx 2-lipped, corolla papilionaceous, the broad standard petal
turned backward, the keel sickle-shaped; stamens within it 9 and
1. Stem: From tuberous, edible rootstock; climbing, slender,
several feet long, the juice milky. Leaves: Compounded of 5 to 7
ovate leaflets. Fruit: A leathery, slightly curved pod, 2 to 4
in. long.
Preferred Habitat - Twining about undergrowth and thickets in
moist or wet ground.
Flowering Season - July-September.
Distribution - New Brunswick to Ontario, south to the Gulf States
and Kansas.