_Epilobium angustifolium (Chamaenerion angustifolium)_
_Flowers_--Magenta or pink, sometimes pale, or rarely white, more or
less than 1 in. across, in an elongated, terminal, spike-like raceme.
Calyx tubular, narrow, in 4 segments; 4 rounded, spreading petals; 8
stamens; 1 pistil, hairy at base; the stigma 4-lobed. _Stem:_ 2 to 8 ft.
high, simple, smooth, leafy. _Leaves:_ Narrow, tapering, willow-like, 2
to 6 in. long. _Fruit:_ A slender, curved, violet-tinted capsule, from 2
to 3 in. long, containing numerous seeds attached to tufts of fluffy,
white, silky threads.
_Preferred Habitat_--Dry soil, fields, roadsides, especially in
burnt-over districts.
_Flowering Season_--June-September.
_Distribution_--From Atlantic to Pacific, with few interruptions;
British Possessions and United States southward to the Carolinas and
Arizona. Also Europe and Asia.
Spikes of these beautiful brilliant flowers towering upward above dry
soil, particularly where the woodsman’s axe and forest fires have
devastated the landscape, illustrate Nature’s abhorrence of ugliness.
Other kindly plants have earned the name of fireweed, but none so
quickly beautifies the blackened clearings of the pioneer, nor blossoms
over the charred trail in the wake of the locomotive. Whole
mountainsides in Alaska are dyed crimson with it. Beginning at the
bottom of the long spike, the flowers open in slow succession upward
throughout the summer, leaving behind the attractive seed-vessels,
which, splitting lengthwise in September, send adrift white silky tufts
attached to seeds that will one day cover far distant wastes with
beauty. Almost perfect rosettes, made by the young plants, are met with
on one’s winter walks.