change, or been deprived of some of its rays, so that the wood flowers
are nourished by a finer food than the rest, as with ambrosia. It is
perhaps the subdued light which inspires a certain solemn and hymn-like
quality in the notes of wood birds, as in the thrushes and the
altogether didactic tone of the redeye. There is here none of that
self-assertiveness among the flowers that is to be observed among
certain groups of plants; the competitive spirit is lacking.
Solomon's-seal, bellworts and twisted-stalk, like medeola, are rather
at pains to conceal themselves. There is no self-advertising among
them. What could be more unassuming than goldthread and wood-sorrel?
They live close to the soil of which they are the offspring--a rich,
odorous soil, black with the accumulated nutriment of centuries. He
must be in hot haste indeed who treads on a patch of mountain
wood-sorrel, such is its mute, appealing beauty. It holds the eye and
stays the foot of every saunterer in the woods.
But follow the by-roads in early summer and you shall have very
different company. It is here you will find the sturdy travelers, who
will go the length of any road in all weathers; and there are none more
cheerful and uncomplaining. They have no fault to find; the world suits
them very well. You must be prepared to greet mullein and burdock as
equals. Here on the road they are as good as any; they hobnob with the
rose. Wild carrot borders the dusty lanes with a fringe of lacework--a
real lace from the deft hand of Nature. There is no brighter gold than
the St.-John's-wort, albeit it will not pass current in the town.
The winds sow the fairest hedge by the roadside--the winds and the
birds; it seems that they take kindly to these wayfarers. They are the
good fairies who plant elder and blackberry and scatter the wild rose.
Timothy and redtop and witch-grass are the very children of Æolus. The
pollen-bearing wind mothers the grass and plantain; the seed-carrying
wind distributes the thistle and willow. Birds are very willing to
carry cherry-pits provided they may have the cherry for their trouble.
The breeze comes laden with thistle-down, such fragile craft embark on
these untried seas with all sails set. The story of such a seed would
read like a fairy tale. Has not the wind whispered daily to it as its
silken sail was spread? And the seed has tugged at its moorings like
any boat till these were loosed and she was off, beating in and out
among the high blueberries and shadbushes of the pastures, at last
sailing clear of all such reefs and ascending in air to drift out into
the open. How it rises and falls on the currents, like a ship riding
the long swells of the sea; again it drives free before the wind to
settle down at last in some pasture. If, perchance, such a seed fall on
stony ground it is no great matter. The marvelous silken sail will now
fall away, for the craft has reached port, no more forever to sail
these seas. On occasion one is caught in a spider's web, whereupon the
spider comes out to see what luck. Evidently all is not fish that comes
to her net. But the self-reliant crane's bill looks neither to bird nor
beast nor again to the winds of heaven, for it does its own planting,
flinging the seeds away with almost an intelligent and conscious
action.
This relation between the wind and the plants of the field is an
agreeable stimulus to the imagination, in a matter-of-fact day when
fairies are not so common as of old. Consider how the breezes have
blown the pollen of the pine and later are to help carry the seed. They
thus serve the trees of the forest and the grass of the prairie. These
same winds urge the fruit that it should leave the parent tree. "Come,
follow us!" say they, and first gently draw, then roughly compel, till
the apple falls. They whisper all through the summer to the leaves so
green, and at length, on October days, draw them irresistibly.
Verily of wild gardens there is no end; our estates are without number.
But among them all the mountain is unique, for to ascend is like going
northward, and at the same time to reverse the season. One, which I
climbed the middle of June, is little more than four thousand feet, and
yet, whereas in the valley there were daisies and wild carrot, on the
summit the wild red cherry was just in bloom. In that short distance
one walked upward--or rather backward--from the middle of June to late
April. Another four thousand feet would have carried one back into the
depths of winter. The seasons are thus with us throughout the summer;
we have only to go up in the air after them.
Warblers were nesting on the mountain slopes which would otherwise
hardly have been found at that season this side of Canada, such as the
black-throated blue, the magnolia and myrtle. The winter wren was
fairly abundant, and on the very summit a snowbird had her nest. About
half way up, the butternuts of the ravine gave way to spruce and
balsam. As the ascent continued, mountain-maple and mountain-ash
suggested higher latitudes. But what impressed one most was the subtle
recession to the early year. The seasons having fairly begun to
revolve, it was as though some power were slowly turning them back
again.
Some hundred feet or more up the face of an overhanging cliff, a bower
of columbines hung out into the grim ravine. They were clustered just
under the brink, gems of the first water in a rude setting. The red
blossoms glowed faintly against the bald cliff like rubies set in the
walls of a rock temple. From under the roots of the clinging spruce a
small stream slid like molten glass over the escarpment above and burst
into spray, gently undulating like a fine veil, as it descended to the
pool below with the dominant and strenuous song of the waterfall.
Probably honey bees do not leave their mountain meadows for this dim
twilight region, though they may possibly become acquainted with these
hanging gardens on their way to some bee-tree in the woods. It is left
to the wandering bumblebee to fertilize most woodland flowers, and in
the case of the columbine, perhaps to the humming-bird. On the same
cliff were tufts of the alpine woodsia and dense patches of
rock-brake--but these stand in no need of the bee.
When, at some three thousand feet, wood-anemones were blooming, summer
slipped gently away and April took its place. It seemed quite natural
then to find adder's-tongue and to see wake-robins and bunchberry
everywhere. The last part of the ascent might have been through a
swamp, so strong was the suggestion of swamp life. Spagnum grew in
places along the trail, and the fern moss was in evidence on the rocks.
False hellebore was abundant, and on the very top stood a poison
sumac--a typical bog plant. Yet the summit was rocky and covered for
the most part with stunted balsam as thickly matted together as a
hedge. The mountain pokes its cold head up into the clouds, and is
continually refreshed by the dews of heaven. In some unaccountable
manner the swamp plants, as if guided by instinct, ascend and find
their natural environment at the top.
When I descended, it was to leave spring behind with every step, not
again to meet her in that year.
WEEDS
A strange analogy exists between plant life and some aspects of human
life. The same stern necessity of the survival of the fittest--physical
in one, and in the other mental and spiritual--seems to inhere in both.
Among the weeds, competition is the dominant note, as it is in our
world. In some higher circles it is sounded faintly, while untold
legions of the more delicate plants--like sensitive natures--are driven
to the wall, unequal to the struggle.
There are weeds whose ways suggest the arrogant monopoly, and others
which recall the parasites of society. The dodder fastens upon its
victim and the bindweed throttles the innocent. To withstand the severe
competition of pigweed and ragweed, the garden patch requires your
energy, plus its own; and the more war is waged upon these, the more
does it seem to encourage the purslane, which thrives like a freebooter
in this sort of warfare.
One can imagine no more irrepressible rabble than these weeds of the
garden. They seem possessed almost of a conscious life, and to push and
shove and scramble for place like a hard-headed, thick-skinned,
piratical crew. Many of them are immigrants, the riffraff of Europe,
who have found their way to our shores, some to become good citizens,
and others to remain pestilent anarchists, opposed to the law and order
of the kitchen-garden and rebelling against all government by the hoe.
Yet how happy are the bob-whites and the tree-sparrows for the poor
seeds of the ragweed when the snow lies deep. They repair to these as
to an unfailing larder, which may lie between them and starvation at
such times. Through some kind providence, the seeds remain into the
winter to be shaken down upon the snow. The obnoxious weed of summer
rises to the dignity of usefulness and becomes a food plant--grain and
corn to the hungry birds.
There are weeds and there are weeds. So much depends upon the point of
view; is it a weed on the lawn, or is the lawn but a background for the
dandelions which star the grass? What bright day-stars are these which
beam upon us from the orchards and by-roads with cheerful golden
radiance! And when these shining stars have grown dim and faded from
their firmament of green, there appear in their place such white
wraiths of their former selves as resemble the moon seen by the light
of day. They are now so many extinct suns, so many ghosts of the
dandelions, soon dissolving into still less substantial state, to be
spirited away on the winds.
During the summer the common dandelions gradually disappear, and at
length the fall dandelions suddenly spring into prominence, poking
their flower-heads up on long scapes. With commendable thrift these are
closed every night, that a little pollen may not be wet by the dew.
These fall flowers appear to be more numerous even than the early
species. They can sustain themselves in tall grass where the latter
could not, keeping their flower-heads always floating on the rising
tide of green. You may see fields of red clover mixed with dandelions,
while the Virginia creeper lies in scarlet splendor along stone walls,
and goldenrod and asters are massed on the borders--Elysian fields
surely. The play of light and color is a kind of music, and stimulates
one to some inner hearing. The deaf could hear this. And were the
blind to listen to the crickets' reverie, they might see these fields.
Is there anywhere a more audacious beauty than the pokeweed in autumn?
It flaunts itself in your face--one of the respectable _bourgeoisie_ of
weeds, now suddenly arrayed in this regal fashion and mocking you with
its splendid beauty. A weed! Why are not roses weeds as they stand all
forlorn before this voluptuous child of the people? Out of the plebeian
rabble there comes here and there such a superb creature as this.
Consider the milkweeds,--a family of beauties. Something luxuriant and
sensuous there is in their ample proportions. They have an excessive
health, an exuberance of vitality; a full-blooded race, if you so much
as break a leaf from one it bleeds like a wounded creature. From the
mud, the swamp-milkweed has derived some rich hue, while the
butterfly-weed in the pasture has caught the very sunshine itself and
become a living flame. The great pod of the milkweed is the luxuriant
fruit of this fine plant, as tropical in appearance as any mango or
cocoa bean. When it is ripe, in place of a luscious flavor, it
discloses a mass of finest silk, a fluffy ball. Who would guess the
treasure within these grotesque pods with their long beaks, their
spines and wrinkles? They are like curious old junks with a cargo of
rich stuffs of the East, which children--young pirates that they
are--overhaul on the high seas of the pasture and despoil of their
treasure.
It is the sturdy character, if nothing more, of some weeds which
constitutes their charm, for health is beautiful everywhere. Ironweed
and joepye-weed are such lusty, vigorous plants, and burdock and
jimson-weed. The earth _shall_ nourish them; they push themselves to
the front; they do not live by any one's favor. How can the
impoverished dust of the roadside sustain these burdocks with their
incredible leaves? The richest swamp produces no such extravagant
foliage. As for the ironweed, it clothes the pastures with a royal
purple, so rich a hue it compels the eye, and is a kind of stimulant.
One may become mildly intoxicated with such color.
In August the high-roads and by-roads are painted--stripes of gamboge
and patches of delicate blue--and all because of some weeds. It would
be worth while riding through the country at this season, if for no
other reason than this. Vivid streaks of tansy stretch in narrow lines
for rods together. Where the road skirts a pond, the eye is refreshed
by the pickerel-weed, resting like aureoles above the surface of the
water. In the fields beyond is the celestial blue of the chicory--so
common a weed, so divine a hue; while everywhere a fringe of wild
carrot trails in the dust, the lace border of that gorgeous mantle.
Such laces and jewels nature provides if you are but rich enough in
thought to possess them.
In the pastures mullein and thistle grow side by side, two pronounced
personalities, as different as it is possible to be, yet nourished by
the same soil and under the same conditions. The mullein seems to
invite you to take hold of its leaves, while the thistle as plainly
says, Hands off! They suggest similar types of people, one bristling
and repellent, the other suave and genial. These great flannel leaves
of the mullein are caressing and soft to the touch. Contact with them
is agreeable, well nigh soothing. If, perchance, your feelings have
been ruffled by a bellicose thistle, address yourself to the tender
young leaves of the mullein and you shall feel their soothing effect.
The perfume of the Canada thistle is equal to that of most wild flowers
and superior to many. It is wholly refined, with no taint of
coarseness. With what vulgar effrontery a cheap perfume assails the
nose. But here is a despised thistle which brings itself to notice by
an influence not plebeian but patrician. You might pass this thistle
day in and day out and never suspect it had any such virtue, till you
had gone out of your way to cultivate a closer acquaintance. Call it a
weed if you will, it has an individuality that separates it from other
common plants, and by reason of which it commands attention.
Floating in nebulous masses about the blackberry thicket, the
delicately conspicuous hue of the fireweed catches the eye. If you will
but watch the slender pods you may now and again see one suddenly open
and its four walls silently withdraw, while there emerges from the
interior a phantom shape, the filmy mass of pappus-down with rows of
golden seeds attached. This white cloud of silk gradually takes shape,
as the mist might rise from a mountain lake, lingers a moment, and then
sails away on a passing breeze--ethereal still as the mist--growing
less and less, and vanishing at length, as if resolved again into the
invisible.
Old gravelly roads, which meander across the pasture and seem destitute
of any special beauty, are often adorned from end to end with the
round-leaved spurge, of richest hue, varying from maroon to plum color.
This little weed is so unpretentious, so sincerely humble and
unassuming, that probably very few ever see it or are aware of its
existence. It lies prone upon the earth, where, once it attracts the
attention, it is seen to be a beautiful embroidery on the bare ground.
Here grows the poverty-grass which on misty days is covered with
dewdrops--incrusted with jewels--while more pretentious plants are not
decked in any such beautiful array. The mist descends upon the poorest
of them all, and makes that resplendent.
In the society of weeds there is this tendency to segregate, quite as
in human society. Even the beach has its clique, a curious throng quite
distinct from any of the fields, which defy the encroachment of the
waves. About these coarse weeds of the beach is something peculiarly in
keeping with their environment. The strange spiny fruit of the orache
suggest sculpins, or some sea-shells, while the innumerable erect stems
of the spreading house-leek resemble the backbone of fish. Carrying
with it its air-sacs and paraphernalia of the sea, the rockweed, which
is a "weed" of another world, grows as far up on the land as it can go,
while the weeds of the beach approach the water as near as they dare.
Here is the frontier, the edge of their world, and one and all would
scramble over the border could they sustain life on the other side.
INSECT LORE
Apis the bee, Vespa the wasp, and Arachne the spider--these might
properly figure in many a saga. Mighty are the works of the tribes of
Apis, while Bombus the bumblebee befriends the pale flowers of the
forest as do the winds the pine. Arachne beguiles the fly, for she is a
very Medusa; the solitary wasp slays the Gorgon and lays her in the
tomb she has prepared, rolling a stone over the entrance; lastly, from
the body of the spider springs the race of wasps, like warriors from
dragons' teeth in the days of Jason.
From the first flowering shrubs to the last goldenrod there is the hum
of industry. The willows, on mild April days, resound with the roar of
insect traffic. The bees push in rudely among the bunches of stamens,
and the red anthers so neatly and compactly arranged are soon
disheveled, the filaments bent by the myriad insect legs which scramble
and kick through them. It is everywhere bustle and hurry; all are
wrought to a tense degree. Life is here at a white heat--purposeful,
Anglo-Saxon; yet it appears to move without friction. Occasionally a
bee visits the meek-looking pistillate shrub near by, which patiently
waits while the buzz and din continue uninterrupted across the path.
It is always a mystery just how the honey-bee transfers the pollen to
the pollen-basket--even in view of the explanation. It appears to be
scraped from one leg to the other, and gradually shifted from fore to
aft by a dexterous process until lodged in the proper place, the bee
remaining all the time on the wing so that the legs are moved with
perfect freedom. Finally it is stowed more neatly and compactly than
any pack-mule's load, and the panniers are good to see, rich and yellow
as pumpkins glistening in the corn field. Doubtless the bee is careful
to keep the balance and not put more in one basket than in the other.
Since pollen-grains are of distinct and definite shapes in different
plants, is it not possible that the insect, from its near point of
view, detects these differences, and in place of so much
indistinguishable dust, finds itself handling minute cubes, spheres and
variously shaped blocks?
How readily bees are apprised of the blossoming of any flower. On the
very instant the dwarf-sumacs open, the place hums with them. Solitary
bumblebees continually scout through the woods and discover when the
Indian-pipe, the shinleaf, the pipsissewa are in bloom. Only the queen
bumblebee can have any memory of these flowers, as the life of the
workers is but a season long. Probably they do not communicate the
news, but each hunts for itself. With the honey-bees, however, this is
the gossip of the hive as much as the state of the crops with farmers:
"Meadow sweet is open today!" "Clethra is in bloom!" "The first
goldenrod!" Imagine the news circulating like wildfire through the
hives. Honey-bees have little time or patience to hunt up solitary and
retiring flowers. They want masses of bloom, fields of blossom, having
a large work to do--a city to build, a host to feed.
The bumblebee is the good angel of the woodland flowers, the visiting
priest--or shall I say priestess--to all outlying parishes, calling at
every ledge and gorge and dell where is any colony of blossoms or a
lone settler or two. The bee discovers the pale pendent blossoms of the
checkerberry under the leaves and almost prone upon the ground. In
order to reach them it sometimes turns on its back upon the hemlock
needles as it inserts its tongue in the flower above. In winter when
you gather a checkerberry now and then in your walk you shall bestow a
thought upon the buzzing priest of Flora who solemnized these nuptials.
It visits every flower in the transparent groups of Indian-pipes which
push their way up through the leaf mould to stand like an assembly of
the pale-sheeted dead, and looks singularly rich and velvety against
these stems of alabaster. Here is a botanist who knows the flora well,
and takes a tithe from every blossom to which is brought a grain of
pollen--the marriage fee. It is hard to believe so willing an agent is
unaware of the service; that it fills an office which it does not
recognize, while we, the biographers, alone perceive the relation.
Tell me, is there not something heroic in the life of the queen
bumblebee? She awakens after her winter sleep, the sole survivor of her
race, and bravely goes forth to collect pollen, lay her eggs and become
the founder of a new race of workers. There is rude and virile romance
in the life of this bee with its flavor of the forest. She is the
queen-mother indeed, no mere figurehead, but strong, capable,
self-reliant. Think of her retiring under the moss and leaves at the
approach of winter, the last of her race; or, rather, do they all
resign themselves to a sleep from which she alone is to awaken. She
remains encircled by Cold--as Brunhilde was engirdled with Fire--till
the sun shall cross the magic line and awaken the sleeping Amazon.
Today I split open a dead twig of sumac in which the little
upholsterer-bee had laid her eggs. From the summit a well or shaft was
sunk some ten inches through the central pith. This I cautiously
descended by means of a jack-knife and found it partitioned into a
dozen cells, in each of which lay a pupa, the pallid sleepers like
mummies in their royal tombs awaiting a resurrection.
The cells were lined--upholstered--in silk and partitioned from each
other by walls of chips cemented together. In some cases the pupa was
being devoured by the minute larvæ of a chalcid fly, and in one cell
only the dried skin remained. For that pupa there was to be no
resurrection into the life of the bee, but as the cell was opened, out
stepped a tiny chalcid into the light of day, its dapper little person
shining blue-black and its minute wings of an iridescent green.
You may see many broken twigs of sumac, elder and blackberry,
perforated at the end in evidence that in the cells below are the larvæ
of a bee, or perhaps the pupæ wrapped in their transforming slumbers.
This sepulcher is sign to the chalcid fly as well. In one such that I
opened were several perfect bees, beautiful little green creatures.
Immediately they stepped out upon my hand and began dusting and
cleaning themselves, but appeared to be troubled by the brightness, and
eager to hide. When offered the open end of a tube, such as they had
recently come from, they seemed glad to enter. They were not yet fitted
for contact with the world of light and preferred to return to the
darkness and security of their cells. A spider had concealed herself in
a silken room at the mouth of one tube, perhaps seeking this privacy in
which to change her skin. When their time had come to emerge, the
inmates would naturally have walked into the spider's den, while the
light of day appeared beyond, but for a single instant, as a faint
glimmer which they were destined never to reach.
However, there is a Theseus for every monster. A spider was one day
spinning her web in an outer angle of the veranda, laying the first
strands, the scaffolding. Attaching one point she swung out on her line
and fixed a second, aided by the breeze. Without the wind she perhaps
could not have erected her scaffolding in that place. The morning
sunlight caught these first threads, stretched from post to beam, and
they gleamed like silver or spun glass. At length a wide space was to
be bridged and she swung free at the end of a long strand. The breeze
carried her to and fro, far out from under the roof, so that she
remained suspended in mid-air.
But other eyes were watching her at her work. As she swung thus,
self-possessed and at ease, suddenly a mud-dauber pounced upon her. The
silver strand parted in the sunlight, and the spider was carried to the
beam above, where the wasp apparently stung her several times. A moment
after she rose in air holding the large globular spider, now paralyzed
and inert, and sailed away over the treetops in the direction of her
nest. The victim was to be immured in a sarcophagus of mud together
with the egg of the wasp. When the egg hatched, the larva in this
tomb with the body of the spider would find such gruesome state
congenial enough--being of the wasps. In this case a spider the less
means a wasp the more.
[Illustration: INSECT LORE COPYRIGHT, 1908, BY RUDOLF EICKEMEYER]