_Thalictrum polygamum (T. Cornuti)_
_Flowers_--Greenish white, the calyx of 4 or 5 sepals, falling early; no
petals; numerous white, thread-like, green-tipped stamens, spreading in
feathery tufts, borne in large, loose, compound terminal clusters 1 ft.
long or more. _Stem_: Stout, erect, 3 to 11 ft. high, leafy, branching
above. _Leaves_: Arranged in threes, compounded of various shaped
leaflets, the lobes pointed or rounded, dark above, paler below.
_Preferred Habitat_--Open sunny swamps, beside sluggish water,
low meadows.
_Flowering Season_--July-September
_Distribution_--Quebec to Florida, westward to Ohio.
Masses of these soft, feathery flowers, towering above the ranker growth
of midsummer, possess an unseasonable, ethereal, chaste, spring-like
beauty. On some plants the flowers are fleecy white and exquisite;
others, again, are dull and coarser. Why is this? Because these are what
botanists term polygamous flowers, _i.e._, some of them are perfect,
containing both stamens and pistils; some are male only; others, again,
are female. Naturally an insect, like ourselves, is first attracted to
the more beautiful male blossoms, the pollen bearers, and of course it
transfers the vitalizing dust to the dull pistillate flowers visited
later. But the meadow-rue, which produces a super-abundance of very
light, dry pollen, easily blown by the wind, is often fertilized through
that agent also, just as grasses, plantains, sedges, birches, oaks,
pines, and all cone-bearing trees are. As might be expected, a plant
which has not yet ascended the evolutionary scale high enough to
economize its pollen by making insects carry it invariably overtops
surrounding vegetation to take advantage of every breeze that blows.
* * * * *
The Early Meadow-rue (_T. dioicum_), found blooming in open, rocky woods
during April and May, from Alabama northward to Labrador, and westward
to Missouri, grows only one or two feet high, and, like its tall sister,
bears fleecy, greenish-white flowers, the staminate and the pistillate
ones on different plants.
Liver-leaf; Hepatica; Liverwort; Round-lobed, or Kidney Liver-leaf;
Noble Liverwort; Squirrel Cup
_Hepatica triloba (H. Hepatica)_
_Flowers_--Blue, lavender, purple, pinkish, or white; occasionally, not
always, fragrant; 6 to 12 petal-like, colored sepals (not petals, as
they appear to be), oval or oblong; numerous stamens, all bearing
anthers; pistils numerous; 3 small, sessile leaves, forming an involucre
directly under flower, simulate a calyx, for which they might be
mistaken. _Stems:_ Spreading from the root, 4 to 6 in. high, a solitary
flower or leaf borne at end of each furry stem. _Leaves:_ 3-lobed and
rounded, leathery, evergreen; sometimes mottled with, or entirely,
reddish purple; spreading on ground, rusty at blooming time, the new
leaves appearing after the flowers. _Fruit:_ Usually as many as pistils,
dry, 1-seeded, oblong, sharply pointed, never opening.
_Preferred Habitat_--Woods; light soil on hillsides.
_Flowering Season_--December-May.
_Distribution_--Canada to northern Florida, Manitoba to Iowa and
Missouri. Most common East.
Even under the snow itself bravely blooms the delicate hepatica, wrapped
in fuzzy furs as if to protect its stems and nodding buds from cold.
After the plebeian Skunk Cabbage, that ought scarcely to be reckoned
among true flowers--and William Hamilton Gibson claimed even before
it--it is the first blossom to appear. Winter sunshine, warming the
hillsides and edges of woods, opens its eyes.
“Blue as the heaven it gazes at,
Startling the loiterer in the naked groves
With unexpected beauty; for the time
Of blossoms and green leaves is yet afar.”
“There are many things left for May,” says John Burroughs, “but nothing
fairer, if as fair, as the first flower, the hepatica. I find I have
never admired this little firstling half enough. When at the maturity of
its charms, it is certainly the gem of the woods. What an individuality
it has! No two clusters alike; all shades and sizes.... A solitary
blue-purple one, fully expanded and rising over the brown leaves or the
green moss, its cluster of minute anthers showing like a group of pale
stars on its little firmament, is enough to arrest and hold the dullest
eye. Then, ... there are individual hepaticas, or individual families
among them, that are sweet scented. The gift seems as capricious as the
gift of genius in families. You cannot tell which the fragrant ones are
till you try them. Sometimes it is the large white ones, sometimes the
large purple ones, sometimes the small pink ones. The odor is faint, and
recalls that of the sweet violets. A correspondent, who seems to have
carefully observed these fragrant hepaticas, writes me that this gift of
odor is constant in the same plant; that the plant which bears
sweet-scented flowers this year will bear them next.”
Pollen-feeding flies and female hive bees frequent these blossoms on the
first warm days. Whether or not they are rewarded by finding nectar is
still a mooted question. They seem to do so.