_Apocynum androsaemifolium_
_Flowers_--Delicate pink, veined with a deeper shade, fragrant,
bell-shaped, about 1/3 in. across, borne in loose terminal cymes. Calyx
5-parted; corolla of 5 spreading, recurved lobes united into a tube;
within the tube 5 tiny, triangular appendages alternate with stamens;
the arrow-shaped anthers united around the stigma and slightly adhering
to it. _Stem:_ 1 to 4 ft. high, with forking, spreading, leafy branches.
_Leaves:_ Opposite, entire-edged, broadly oval, narrow at base, paler,
and more or less hairy below. _Fruit:_ Two pods about 4 in. long.
_Preferred Habitat_--Fields, thickets, beside roads, lanes, and walls.
_Flowering Season_--June-July.
_Distribution_--Northern part of British Possessions south to Georgia,
westward to Nebraska.
Everywhere at the North we come across this interesting, rather shrubby
plant, with its pretty but inconspicuous little rose-veined bells
suggesting pink lilies-of-the-valley. Now that we have learned to read
the faces of flowers, as it were, we instantly suspect by the color,
fragrance, pathfinders, and structure that these are artful wilers,
intent on gaining ends of their own through their insect admirers. What
are they up to?
Let us watch. Bees, flies, moths, and butterflies, especially the
latter, hover near. Alighting, the butterfly visitor unrolls his long
tongue and inserts it where the five pink veins tell him to, for five
nectar-bearing glands stand in a ring around the base of the pistil.
Now, as he withdraws his slender tongue through one of the V-shaped
cavities that make a circle of traps, he may count himself lucky to
escape with no heavier toll imposed than pollen cemented to it. This
granular dust he is required to rub off against the stigma of the next
flower entered. Some bees, too, have been taken with the dogbane’s
pollen cemented to their tongues. But suppose a fly call upon this
innocent-looking blossom? His short tongue, as well as the butterfly’s,
is guided into one of the V-shaped cavities after he has sipped; but,
getting wedged between the trap’s horny teeth, the poor little victim is
held a prisoner there until he slowly dies of starvation in sight of
plenty. This is the penalty he must pay for trespassing on the
butterfly’s preserves! The dogbane, which is perfectly adapted to the
butterfly, and dependent upon it for help in producing fertile seed,
ruthlessly destroys all poachers that are not big or strong enough to
jerk away from its vise-like grasp. One often sees small flies and even
moths dead and dangling by the tongue from the wicked little charmers.
If the flower assimilated their dead bodies as the pitcher plant, for
example, does those of its victims, the fly’s fate would seem less
cruel. To be killed by slow torture and dangled like a scarecrow simply
for pilfering a drop of nectar is surely an execution of justice
medieval in its severity.