_Gentiana crinita_
_Flowers--Deep_, bright blue, rarely white, several or many, about 2
in. high, stiffly erect, and solitary at ends of very long footstalk.
Calyx of 4 unequal, acutely pointed lobes. Corolla funnel form, its
four lobes spreading, rounded, fringed around ends, but scarcely on
sides. Four stamens inserted on corolla tube; 1 pistil with 2 stigmas.
_Stem:_ 1 to 3 ft. high, usually branched, leafy. _Leaves:_ Opposite,
upper ones acute at tip, broadening to heart-shaped base, seated on
stem. _Fruit:_ A spindle-shaped, 2-valved capsule, containing numerous
scaly, hairy seeds.
_Preferred Habitat_--Low, moist meadows and woods.
_Flowering Season_--September-November.
_Distribution_--Quebec, southward to Georgia, and westward beyond the
Mississippi.
“Thou waitest late, and com’st alone
When woods are bare and birds have flown,
And frosts and shortening days portend
The aged year is near his end.
“Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye
Look through its fringes to the sky,
Blue--blue--as if that sky let fall
A flower from its cerulean wall.”
When we come upon a bed of gentians on some sparkling October day, we
can but repeat Bryant’s thoughts and express them prosaically who
attempt description. In dark weather this sunshine lover remains shut,
to protect its nectar and pollen from possible showers. An elusive plant
is this gentian, which by no means always reappears in the same places
year after year, for it is an annual whose seeds alone perpetuate it.
Seating themselves on the winds when autumn gales shake them from out
the home wall, these little hairy scales ride afar, and those that are
so fortunate as to strike into soft, moist soil at the end of the
journey, germinate. Because this flower is so rarely beautiful that few
can resist the temptation of picking it, it is becoming sadly rare near
large settlements.
Fifteen species of gentian have been gathered during a half-hour walk in
Switzerland, where the pastures are spread with sheets of blue. Indeed,
one can little realize the beauty of these heavenly flowers who has not
seen them among the Alps.
A deep, intense blue is the Closed, Blind, or Bottle Gentian (_G.
Andrewsii_), more truly the color of the “male bluebird’s back,” to
which Thoreau likened the paler Fringed Gentian. Rarely some degenerate
plant bears white flowers. As it is a perennial, we are likely to find
it in its old haunts year after year; nevertheless its winged seeds sail
far abroad to seek pastures new. This gentian also shows a preference
for moist soil. Gray thought that it expanded slightly, and for a short
time only in sunshine, but added that, although it is proterandrous,
_i.e._, it matures and sheds its pollen before its stigma is susceptible
to any, he believed it finally fertilized itself by the lobes of the
stigma curling backward until they touched the anthers. But Gray was
doubtless mistaken. Several authorities have recently proved that the
flower is adapted to bumblebees. It offers them the last feast of the
season, for although it comes into bloom in August southward, farther
northward--and it extends from Quebec to the Northwest Territory--it
lasts through October.