The recent article from my pen on the "Riddle of the Bluets," and
which showed the important significance of its two forms of blossoms,
suggests that a few more similar expositions of the beautiful
mysteries of the common flowers which we meet every day in our walks,
and which we claim to "know" so well, may serve to add something to
the interest of our strolls afield. It is scarcely fair to assert that
familiarity can breed contempt in our relations to so lovely an
object as a flower, but certain it is that this every-day contact or
association, especially with the wild things of the wood, meadow, and
way-side, is conducive to an apathy which dulls our sense to their
actual attributes of beauty. Many of these commonplace familiars of
the copse and thicket and field are indeed like voices in the
wilderness to most of us. We forget that the "weed" of one country
often becomes a horticultural prize in another, even as the mullein,
for which it is hard for the average American to get up any
enthusiasm, and which is tolerated with us only in a worthless sheep
pasture, flourishes in distinction in many an English or Continental
garden as the "American velvet plant."
The extent of our admiration often depends upon the relative rarity of
the flower rather than upon its actual claims to our appreciation. The
daisy which whitens our meadows--the "pesky white-weed" of the
farmer--we are perfectly willing to see in the windrows of the scythe
or tossed in the air by the fork of the hay-maker. The meed of our
appreciation of the single blossom becomes extremely thin when spread
over a ten-acre lot. How rarely do we see a bouquet of daisies on a
country table? And yet, strange inconsistency! the marguerite of our
goodwife's window-garden, almost identical with the daisy and not one
whit prettier, is a prize, because it came from the "florist's," and
cost twenty-five cents, with five cents extra for the pot.
A certain thrifty granger of the writer's acquaintance was recently
converted from the error of his attitude towards the "tarnal weeds and
brush." He was one of the tribe of blind, misguided vandals who had
always deemed it his first duty "after hayin'" to invade with his
scythe all the adjacent roadside, to "tidy things up," reducing to
most unsightly untidiness that glorious wild garden of August's floral
cornucopia, that luxuriant tangle of purple eupatorium, the early
asters, golden-rod, vervains, wild-carrot, and meadow-rue.
He was converted in the sanctuary, where one August Sabbath he beheld
by the side of the pulpit, dignified by a large, beautiful vase, a
great bouquet of this very tall, purple thoroughwort, meadow-rue, and
wild-carrot of his abomination, and which had actually fallen before
his scythe on the evening previous. "Well, there!" he exclaimed; "I
didn't realize they _was_ so pretty!"
The beauty of the commonplace often requires the aid of the artist as
its interpreter, a fact which Browning realized when he expressed,
through Fra Lippo Lippi:
"We're made so that we love
First when we see them painted, things which we have passed
Perhaps a hundred times, nor cared to see."
An illustration of the truth of this axiom was afforded in a recent
incident in my experience. Sitting at the open window of my country
studio one summer day, engaged in making a portrait of a common weed,
a friendly farmer, chancing "across lots," seeing me at work,
sauntered up to "pass the time o' day." As he leaned on the
window-sill his eye fell upon the drawing before me.
"My!" he exclaimed, "but ain't that pooty?"
"What!" I retorted, "and will _you admit_ that this drawing of a
_weed_ is pretty?"
"Yes, your _draft_ thar is pooty, but you artist fellows alliz makes
'em look pootier 'n they _ought_ to."
So much for the mere attributes of manifest outward beauty without
regard to consideration of "botany" or the structural beauty of the
flowers. The "botanist" finds beauty everywhere, even among the
homeliest of Flora's hosts. But in the light of the "new botany,"
which recognizes the insect as the important affinity of the
flower--the key to its various puzzling features of color, form, and
fragrance--every commonest blossom which we thought we had "known" all
our lives, and every homely weed scarce worth our knowing, now becomes
a rebuke, and offers us a field of investigation as fresh and
promising as is offered by the veriest rare exotic of the
conservatory; more so, indeed, because these latter are strangers in
a strange land, and divorced from their ordained insect affinities.
The plebeian daisy now becomes a marvel of a flower indeed--five
hundred wonderful little mechanisms packed together in a single golden
disk. The red clover refuses to recognize us now unless properly
introduced by that "burly bumblebee" with which its life is so
strangely linked.
The barn-yard weeds need no longer be considered uninteresting and
commonplace, because their mysteries have not yet been discovered, and
I can do no better in my present chapter than to select one of their
number and redeem it from its hitherto lowly place among them--one of
the homeliest of them all, and whose blossoms are scarce noticed by
any one except a botanist.
In my initial illustration is shown a sketch of the Figwort, or
scrophularia, a tall, spindling weed, with rather fine, luxuriant
leaves, it is true, but with a tall, curiously branching spray of
small, insignificant purplish-olive flowers, with not even a perfume,
like the mignonette, to atone for its plainness. But it has an _odor_
if not a perfume, and it has a nectary which secretes the beads of
sweets for its pet companion insects, which in this instance do not
happen to be bees or butterflies, but most generally wasps of various
kinds, as these insects are not so particular as to the quality of
their tipple as bees are apt to be. But the figwort has found out
gradually through the ages that _wasps_ are more serviceable in the
cross-fertilization of its flowers than other insects, and it has thus
gradually modified its shape, odor, and nectar especially to these
insects.
[Illustration: A. First Day's Welcome--Stigma at the Doorway.]
[Illustration: A^1. First Day--Sectional View.]
[Illustration: B. Second Day's Welcome--Stigma bent downward beneath
two withered Stamens at Doorway.]
[Illustration: B^1. Second Day--Sectional View.]
[Illustration: C. Third Day's Welcome.--Four Stamens at Doorway.]
[Illustration: D. Fourth Day.--Fall of Blossom. Its Mission
fulfilled.]
Let us then take a careful look at these queer little homely flowers,
and for the time being consider them as mere devices--first, to insure
the visit of an insect, and, second, to make that insect the bearer of
the pollen from one blossom to the stigma of another. Here we see a
flower with three distinct welcomes on three successive days.
The flower-bud usually opens in the morning, and shows a face as at A,
which must be fully understood by looking at the side section shown at
A^1.
The anthers and pollen are not yet ripe, but the stigma is ready, and
now guards the doorway. To-morrow morning we shall see a new condition
of things at that doorway, as seen at B and B^1. The stigma has now
bent down out of the way, while two anthers have unfolded on their
stalks and now shed their pollen at the threshold. The third morning,
or perhaps even sooner, the other pair come forward, and we see the
opening of the blossom as at C. Blossoms in all these three
conditions are to be found on this cluster.
[Illustration: Fig. 1]
A small wasp is now seen hovering about the flowers, and we must turn
our attention to him as seen in Figs. 1, 2, and 3. The insect alights,
we will assume, on a blossom of the second day (Fig. 1), clinging with
all his feet, and thrusting his tongue into the beads of nectar shown
at A^1 and B^1. He now brings his breast or thorax, or perhaps the
underside of his head against the pollen, and is thoroughly dusted
with it. Leaving the blossom, we see him in flight, as at Fig. 2, and
very soon he is seen to come to a freshly opened flower, which he sips
as before. The pollen is thus pushed against the projecting stigma,
as shown at Fig. 3, and thus, one by one, the flowers are
cross-fertilized.
The stigma, after receiving pollen, immediately bends downward and
backward, as shown in B^1, to give place to the ripening anthers, and
shortly after the last pair of them have shed their pollen the
blossom, having then fulfilled its functions, falls off, as shown at
D. This may be on the afternoon of the third day, or not until the
fourth. If not visited by insects it may chance to remain the longer
time; but more than one tiny wasp gets his head into such a blossom,
and is surprised with a tumble, his weight pulling the blossom from
its attachment.
[Illustration: Fig. 2]
[Illustration: Fig. 3]
The result of that pollen upon the stigma is quickly seen in the
growing ovary or pod, which enlarges rapidly on the few succeeding
days, as in E.
[Illustration: E]
Many species of hornets and wasps, large and small, are to be seen
about the figwort blooms, occasionally bees, frequently bumblebees,
which usually carry away the pollen on the underside of their heads.
Who shall any longer refer to the figwort as an "uninteresting weed"?