_Spiraea salicifolia_
_Flowers_--Small, white, or flesh pink, clustered in dense, pyramidal
terminal panicles. Calyx 5 cleft; corolla 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,
flies, 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.
Common Hawthorn; White Thorn; Scarlet-fruited Thorn; Red Haw;
Mayflower
_Crataegus coccinea_
_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 marvellous tales about the hawthorns, and the banshees which
have a predilection for them.