In the barberry bushes, as in the gorse, when grown in dry, gravelly situations, we see many leaves and twigs modified into thorns to diminish the loss of water through evaporation by exposing too much leaf surface to the sun and air. That such spines protect the plants which bear them from the ravages of grazing cattle is, of course, an additional motive for their presence. Under cultivation, in well-watered garden soil - and how many charming varieties of barberries are cultivated - the thorny shrub loses much of its armor, putting forth many more leaves, in rosettes, along more numerous twigs, instead. Even the prickly-pear cactus might become mild as a lamb were it to forswear sandy deserts and live in marshes instead. Country people sometimes rob the birds of the acid berries to make preserves. The wood furnishes a yellow dye.
Curiously enough it is the EUROPEAN BARBERRY that is the common species here. The AMERICAN BARBERRY (B. Canadensis), a lower shrub, with dark reddish-brown twigs; its leaves more distantly toothed; its flowers, and consequently its berries, in smaller clusters, keeps almost exclusively to the woods in the Alleghany region and in the southwest, in spite of its specific name.
SPICE-BUSH; BENJAMIN-BUSH; WILD ALLSPICE; FEVER-BUSH(Benzoin Benzoin; Lindera Benzoin of Gray) Laurel family
Flowers - Before the leaves, lemon yellow, fragrant, small, in clusters close to the slender, brittle twigs. Six petal-like sepals; sterile flowers with 9 stamens in 3 series; fertile flowers with a round ovary encircled by abortive stamens. Stem: A smooth shrub 4 to 20 ft. tall. Leaves: Alternate, entire, oval or elliptic, 2 to 5 in, long. Fruit: Oblong, red, berry-like drupes. Preferred Habitat - Moist woodlands, thickets, beside streams. Flowering Season - March-May. Distribution - Central New England, Ontario, and Michigan, southward to Carolina and Kansas.
Even before the scaly catkins on the alders become yellow, or the silvery velvet pussy willows expand to welcome the earliest bees that fly, this leafless bush breathes a faint spicy fragrance in the bleak gray woods. Its only rivals among the shrubbery, the service-berry and its twin sister the shad-bush, have scarcely had the temerity to burst into bloom when the little clusters of lemon-yellow flowers, cuddled close to the naked branches, give us our first delightful spring surprise. All the favor they ask of the few insects then flying is that they shall transfer the pollen from the sterile to the fertile flowers as a recompense for the early feast spread. Inasmuch as no single blossom contains both stamens and pistil, little wonder the flowers should woo with color and fragrance the guests on whose ministrations the continuance of the species absolutely depends. Later, when the leaves appear, we may know as soon as we crush them in the hand that the aromatic sassafras is next of kin. But ages before Linnaeus published "Species Plantarum" butterflies had discovered floral relationships.
Sharp eyes may have noticed how often the leaves on both the spice-bush and the sassafras tree are curled. Have you ever drawn apart the leaf edges and been startled by the large, fat green caterpillar, speckled with blue, whose two great black "eyes" stare up at you as he reposes in his comfortable nest - a cradle which also combines the advantages of a restaurant? This is the caterpillar of the common spice-bush swallow-tail butterfly (Papilio troilus), an exquisite, dark, velvety creature with pale greenish-blue markings on its hind wings. (See Dr. Holland's "Butterfly Book," Plate XLI.) The yellow stage of this caterpillar (which William Hamilton Gibson calls the "spice-bush bugaboo") indicates, he says, that "its period of transformation is close at hand. Selecting a suitable situation, it spins a tiny tuft of silk, into which it entangles its hindmost pair of feet, after which it forms a V-shaped loop about the front portion of its body, and hangs thus suspended, soon changing to a chrysalis of a pale wood color. These chrysalides commonly survive the winter, and in the following June the beautiful 'blue swallow-tail' will emerge, and may be seen suggestively fluttering and poising about the spice and sassafras bushes." After the eggs she lays on them hatch, the caterpillars live upon the leaves. Mrs. Starr Dana says the leaves were used as a substitute for tea during the Rebellion; and the powdered berries for allspice by housekeepers in Revolutionary days.
GREATER CELANDINE; SWALLOW-WORT(Chelidonium majus) Poppy family
Flowers - Lustreless yellow, about 1/2 in. across, on slender pedicels, in a small umbel-like cluster. Sepals 2, soon falling; 4 petals, many yellow stamens, pistil prominent. Stem: Weak, to 2 ft. high, branching, slightly hairy, containing bright orange acrid juice. Leaves: Thin, 4 to 8 in. long, deeply cleft into 5 (usually) irregular oval lobes, the terminal one largest. Fruit: Smooth, slender, erect pods, 1 to 2 in, long, tipped with the persistent style. Preferred Habitat - Dry waste land, fields, roadsides, gardens, near dwellings. Flowering Season - April-September. Distribution - Naturalized from Europe in Eastern United States.
Not this weak invader of our roadsides, whose four yellow petals suggest one of the cross-bearing mustard tribe, but the pert little LESSER CELANDINE, PILEWORT, or FIGWORT BUTTERCUP (Ficaria Ficaria), one of the Crowfoot family, whose larger solitary satiny yellow flowers so commonly star European pastures, was Wordsworth's special delight - a tiny, turf-loving plant, about which much poetical association clusters. Having stolen passage across the Atlantic, it is now making itself at home about College Point, Long Island; on Staten Island; near Philadelphia, and maybe elsewhere. Doubtless it will one day overrun our fields, as so many other European immigrants have done.
The generic Greek name of the greater celandine, meaning a swallow, was given it because it begins to bloom when the first returning swallows are seen skimming over the water and freshly ploughed fields in a perfect ecstasy of flight, and continues in flower among its erect seed capsules until the first cool days of autumn kill the gnats and small winged insects not driven to cover. Then the swallows, dependent on such fare, must go to warmer climes where plenty still fly. Quaint old Gerarde claims that the swallow-wort was so called because "with this herbe the dams restore eye-sight to their young ones when their eye be put out" by swallows. Coles asserts "the swallow cureth her dim eyes with celandine."
There can be little satisfaction in picking a weed which droops immediately, poppy fashion, and whose saffron juice stains whatever it touches. A drop of this acrid fluid on the tip of the tongue is not soon forgotten. The luminous experiments of Darwin, Lubbock, Wallace, Muller, and Sprengel, among others, have proved that color in flowers exists for the purpose of attracting insects. But how about colored juices in the blood-roots' and poppies' stems, for example; the bright stalk of the pokeweed, the orange-yellow root of the carrot, the exquisite tints of autumn leaves, fungi, and seaweed? Besides the green color (chlorophyll), the most necessary of all ingredients to a plant are the lipochromes, which vary from yellow to red. These are most conspicuous when they displace the chlorophyll in autumn foliage. Then there are the anthocyans, ranging from magenta to blue and violet. These vary according to the amount of acid or alkali in the sap. Try the effect of immersing a blue morning glory in an acid solution, or a deep pink one in an alkaline solution. One theory to account for the presence of color is that it exists to screen the plant's protoplasm from light; that it has a physiological function with which insects have nothing whatever to do; and that by its presence the temperature is raised and the plant is protected from cold. Every one who has handled the colorless Indian pipe knows how cold and clammy it is.
The YELLOW or CELANDINE POPPY (Stylophorum diphyllum), with shining yellow flowers double the size of the greater celandine's, and similar pinnatifid leaves springing chiefly from the base, blooms even in March and through the spring in the Middle States and westward to Wisconsin and Missouri. Usually only one of the few terminal blossoms opens at a time, but in low, open woodlands it gleams like a miniature sun. Alas! that the glorious CALIFORNIA POPPY, so commonly grown in Eastern gardens (Eschscholtzia Californica), should confine itself to a limited range on the Pacific Coast. We have no true native poppies (Papaver) in America; such as are rarely to be seen in a wild state, have only locally escaped from cultivation.
GOLDEN CORYDALIS(Capnoides aureum; Corydalis aurea of Gray) Poppy family
Flowers - Bright yellow, about 1/2 in. long, with a spur half the length of the tubular corolla; irregular, lipped; each upheld by a little bract, mostly at a horizontal; borne in a terminal, short raceme. Stem: Smooth, 6 to 14 in. high, branching. Leaves: Finely dissected, decom pound, petioled. Fruit: Sickle-shaped, drooping pods, wavy lumped, and tipped with the style. Preferred Habitat - Woods, rocky banks. Flowering Season - March-May. Distribution - Minnesota to Nova Scotia and Pennsylvania.
A dainty little plant, next of kin to the pink corydalis (q.v.).
BLACK MUSTARD(Brassica nigra) Mustard family
Flowers - Bright yellow, fading pale, 1/4 to 1/2 in. across, 4-parted, in elongated racemes; quickly followed by narrow upright 4-sided pods about 1/2 in. long appressed against the stem. Stem: Erect, 2 to 7 ft. tall, branching. Leaves: Variously lobed and divided, finely toothed, the terminal lobe larger than the 2 to 4 side ones. Preferred Habitat - Roadsides, fields, neglected gardens. Flowering Season - June-November. Distribution - Common throughout our area; naturalized from Europe and Asia.
"The kingdom of heaven is like unto a grain of mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field which indeed is less than all seeds but when it is grown, it is greater than the herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof."
Commentators differ as to which is the mustard of the parable - this common black mustard, or a rarer shrub-like tree (Salvadora Persica), with an equivalent Arabic name, a pungent odor, and a very small seed. Inasmuch as the mustard which is systematically planted for fodder by Old World farmers grows with the greatest luxuriance in Palestine, and the comparison between the size of its seed and the plant's great height was already proverbial in the East when Jesus used it, evidence strongly favors this wayside weed. Indeed, the late Dr. Royle, who endeavored to prove that it was the shrub that was referred to, finally found that it does not grow in Galilee.
Now, there are two species which furnish the most powerfully pungent condiment known to commerce; but the tiny dark brown seeds of the black mustard are sharper than the serpent's tooth, whereas the pale brown seeds of the WHITE MUSTARD, often mixed with them, are far more mild. The latter (Sinapis alba) is a similar, but more hairy, plant, with slightly larger yellow flowers. Its pods are constricted like a necklace between the seeds.
The coarse HEDGE MUSTARD (Sisymbrium officinale), with rigid, spreading branches, and spikes of tiny pale yellow flowers, quickly followed by awl-shaped pods that are closely appressed to the stem, abounds in waste places throughout our area. It blooms from May to November, like the next species.
Another common and most troublesome weed from Europe is the FIELD or CORN MUSTARD, CHARLOCK or FIELD KALE (Brassica arvensis; Sinapis arvensis of Gray) found in grain fields, gardens, rich waste lands, and rubbish heaps. The alternate leaves, which stand boldly out from the stem, are oval, coarsely saw-toothed, or the lower ones more irregular, and lobed at their bases, all rough to the touch, and conspicuously veined. The four-parted yellow flowers, measuring half an inch or more across, have six stamens (like the other members of this cross-bearing family), containing nectar at their bases. Two of them are shorter than the other four. Honey-bees, ever abundant, the brilliant Syrphidae flies which love yellow, and other small visitors after pollen and nectar, to obtain the latter insert their tongues between the stamens, and usually cross-fertilize the flowers. In stormy weather, when few insects fly, the anthers finally turn their pollen-covered tips upward; then, by a curvature of the tip of the stamens, they are brought in contact with the flower's own stigma; for it is obviously better that even self-fertilized seed should be set than none at all. (See Ladies'-smock.) "The birds of the air" may not lodge in the charlock's few and feeble branches; nevertheless they come seeking the mild seeds in the strongly nerved, smooth pods that spread in a loose raceme. Domestic pigeons eat the seeds greedily.
The highly intelligent honey-bee, which usually confines itself to one species of plant on its flights, apparently does not know the difference between the field mustard and the WILD RADISH, or JOINTED or WHITE CHARLOCK (Raphanus Raphanistrum); or, knowing it, does not care to make distinctions, for it may be seen visiting these similar flowers indiscriminately. At first the blossoms of the radish are yellow, but they quickly fade to white, and their purplish veins become more conspicuous. Rarely the flowers are all purplish. The entire plant is rough to the touch; the leaves, similar to those of the garden radish, are deeply cleft (lyrate-pinnatifid); the seed pods, which soon follow the flowers up the spike, are nearly cylindric when fresh, but become constricted between the seeds, as they dry, until each little pod looks like a section of a bead necklace.
The GARDEN RADISH of the market (R. sativus), occasionally escaped from cultivation, although credited to China, is entirely unknown in its native state. "It has long been held in high esteem," wrote Peter Henderson, "and before the Christian era a volume was written on this plant alone. The ancient Greeks, in offering their oblations to Apollo, presented turnips in lead, beets in silver, and radishes in vessels of beaten gold." Pliny describes a radish eaten in Rome as being so transparent one might see through the root. It was not until the sixteenth century that the plant was introduced into England. Gerarde mentions cultivating four varieties for Queen Elizabeth in Lord Burleigh's garden.
The YELLOW ROCKET, HERB OF ST. BARBARA, YELLOW BITTER-CRESS, WINTER- or ROCKET-CRESS (Barbarca Barbarea; B. vulgaris of Gray) sends up spikes of little flowers like a yellow sweet alyssum as early as April, and continues in bloom through June. Smooth pods about one inch long quickly follow. The thickish, shining, tufted leaves, very like the familiar WATER-CRESS (Roripa Nasturtium), were formerly even more commonly eaten as a salad. In rich but dry soil the plant flourishes from Virginia far northward, locally in the interior of the United States and on the Pacific Coast.
WITCH-HAZEL(Hamamelis Virginiana) Witch-hazel family
Flowers - Yellow, fringy, clustered in the axils of branches. Calyx 4-parted; 4 very narrow curving petals about 34 in. long; 4 short stamens, also 4 that are scale-like; 2 styles. Stem: A tall, crooked shrub. Leaves: Broadly oval, thick, wavy-toothed, mostly fallen at flowering time. Fruit: Woody capsules maturing the next season and remaining with flowers of the succeeding year (Hama = together with; mela = fruit). Preferred Habitat - Moist woods or thickets near streams. Flowering Season - August-December. Distribution - Nova Scotia and Minnesota, southward to the Gulf States.
To find a stray. apple blossom among the fruit in autumn, or an occasional violet deceived by caressing Indian Summer into thinking another spring has come, surprises no one; but when the witch-hazel bursts into bloom for the first time in November, as if it were April, its leafless twigs conspicuous in the gray woods with their clusters of spidery pale yellow flowers, we cannot but wonder with Edward Rowland Sill:
"Has time grown sleepy at his postAnd let the exiled Summer back?Or is it her regretful ghost,Or witchcraft of the almanac?"
Not to the blue gentian but to the witch-hazel should Bryant have addressed at least the first stanza of his familiar lines (See Fringed Gentian). The shrub doubtless gives the small bees and flies their last feast of the season in consideration of their services in transferring pollen from the staminate to the fertile flowers. Very slowly through the succeeding year the seeds within the woody capsules mature until, by the following autumn, when fresh flowers appear, they are ready to bombard the neighborhood after the violets' method, in the hope of landing in moist yielding soil far from the parent shrub to found a new colony. Just as a watermelon seed shoots from between the thumb and forefinger pinching it, so the large, bony, shining black, white-tipped witch-hazel seeds are discharged through the elastic rupture of their capsule whose walls pinch them out. To be suddenly hit in the face by such a missile brings no smile while the sting lasts. Witch-hazel twigs ripening indoors transform a peaceful living room into a defenseless target for light artillery practice.
Nowhere more than in the naming of wild flowers can we trace the homesickness of the early English colonists in America. Any plant even remotely resembling one they had known at home was given the dear familiar name. Now our witch-hazel, named for an English hazel tree of elm lineage, has similar leaves it is true, but likeness stops there; nevertheless, all the folklore clustered about that mystic tree has been imported here with the title. By the help of the hazel's divining-rod the location of hidden springs of water, precious ore, treasure, and thieves may be revealed, according to old superstition. Cornish miners, who live in a land so plentifully stored with tin and copper lodes they can have had little difficulty in locating seams of ore with or without a hazel rod, scarcely ever sink a shaft except by its direction.
The literature of Europe is filled with allusions to it. Swift wrote:
"They tell us something strange and oddAbout a certain magic rodThat, bending down its top divinesWhere'er the soil has hidden minesWhere there are none, it stands erectScorning to show the least respect."
A good story is told on Linnaeus in Baring-Gould's "Curious Myths of the Middle Ages": "When the great botanist was on one of his voyages, hearing his secretary highly extol the virtues of his divining-wand, he was willing to convince him of its insufficiency, and for that purpose concealed a purse of one hundred ducats under a ranunculus, which grew by itself in a meadow, and bid the secretary find it if he could. The wand discovered nothing, and Linnaeus's mark was soon trampled down by the company present, so that when he went to finish the experiment by fetching the gold himself, he was utterly at a loss where to find it. The man with the wand assisted him, and informed him that it could not lie in the way they were going, but quite the contrary so they pursued the direction of the wand, and actually dug out the gold. Linnaeus said that another such experiment would be sufficient to make a proselyte of him."
Many a well has been dug even in this land of liberty where our witch-hazel indicated; but here its kindly magic is directed chiefly through the soothing extract distilled from its juices.
FIVE-FINGER; COMMON CINQUEFOIL(Potentilla Canadensis) Rose family
Flowers - Yellow, 1/4 to 1/2 in. across, growing singly on long peduncles from the leaf axils. Five petals longer than the 5 acute calyx lobes with 5 linear bracts between them; about 20 stamens; pistils numerous, forming a head. Stem: Spreading over ground by slender runners or ascending. Leaves: 5-fingered, the digitate, saw-edged leaflets (rarely 3 or 4) spreading from a common point, petioled; some in a tuft at base. Preferred Habitat - Dry fields, roadsides, hills, banks. Flowering Season - April-August. Distribution - Quebec to Georgia, and westward beyond the Mississippi.
Everyone crossing dry fields in the eastern United States and Canada at least must have trod on a carpet of cinquefoil (cinque = five, feuilles = leaves), and have noticed the bright little blossoms among the pretty foliage, possibly mistaking the plant for its cousin, the trefoliate barren strawberry (q.v.). Both have flowers like miniature wild yellow roses. During the Middle Ages, when misdirected zeal credited almost any plant with healing virtues for every ill that flesh is heir to, the cinquefoils were considered most potent remedies, hence their generic name.
The SHRUBBY CINQUEFOIL, or PRAIRIE WEED (P. fructicosa), becomes fairly troublesome in certain parts of its range, which extends from Greenland to Alaska, and southward to New Jersey, Arizona, and California; as well as over northern Europe and Asia. It is a bushy, much branched, and leafy shrub, six inches to four feet high), with bright yellow, five-parted flowers an inch across, more or less, either solitary or in cymes at the tips of the branches. They appear from June to September. The honeybee, alighting in the center of a blossom and turning around, passes its tongue over the entire nectar-bearing ring at the base of the stamens, then proceeding to another flower to do likewise, effects cross-fertilization regularly. On a sunny day the bright blossoms attract many visitors of the lower grade out after nectar and pollen, the beetles often devouring the anthers in their greed. The leaves on this cinquefoil are usually compounded of one terminal and four side leaflets that are narrowly oblong, an inch or less in length, and silky hairy. Sometimes there may be seven leaflets pinnately, not digitately, arranged. Although the shrubby cinquefoil prefers swamps and moist, rocky places to dwell in, it wisely adapts itself, as globe-trotters should, to whatever conditions it meets.
SILVERY or HOARY CINQUEFOIL (P. argentea), found in dry soil, blooming from May to September from Canada to Delaware, Indiana, Kansas, and Dakota, also in Europe and Asia, has yellow flowers only about a quarter of an inch across, but foliage of special beauty. From the tufted, branching, ascending stems, four to twelve inches long, the finely cleft, five-foliate leaves are spread on foot stems that diminish in size as they ascend, not to let the upper leaves shut off the light from the lower ones. These leaves are smooth and green above, silvery on the under side, with fine white hairs, adapted for protection from excessive sunlight and too rapid transpiration of precious moisture. They entirely conceal the sensitive epidermis from which they grow.
YELLOW AVENS; FIELD AVENS(Geum strictum) Rose family
Flowers - Golden yellow, otherwise much resembling the lower growing white avens (q.v.). Preferred Habitat - Low ground, moist meadows, swamps. Flowering Season - June-August. Distribution - Pennsylvania, Missouri, and Arizona, far northward.
After the marsh marigolds have withdrawn their brightness from low-lying meadows, blossoms of yellow avens twinkle in their stead. In autumn the jointed, barbed styles, protruding from the seed clusters, steal a ride by the same successful method of travel to new colonizing ground adopted by burdocks, goose-grass, tick-trefoils (q.v.), agrimony, and a score of other "tramps of the vegetable world."
TALL or HAIRY AGRIMONY(Agrimonia hirsuta; Eupatoria of Gray) Rose family
Flowers - Yellow, small, 5-parted, in narrow, spike-like racemes. Stem: Usua11y 3 to 4 ft. tall, sometimes less or more clothed, with long, soft hairs. Leaves: Large, thin, bright green, compounded of (mostly) 7 principal oblong, coarsely saw-edged leaflets, with pairs of tiny leaflets between. Preferred Habitat - Woods, thickets, edges of fields. Flowering Season - June-August. Distribution - North Carolina, westward to California, and far north.
Quite a different species, not found in this country, is the common European Agrimony - A. Eupatoria of Linnaeus - which figures so prominently in the writings of medieval herbalists as a cure-all. Slender spires of green fruit below and yellow flowers above curve and bend at the borders of woodlands here apparently for no better reason than to enjoy life. Very few insects visit them, owing to the absence of nectar - certainly not the highly specialized and intelligent "Humble-Bee," to whom Emerson addressed the lines:
"Succory to match the sky,Columbine with horn of honey,Scented fern and agrimony,Clover, catch-fly, adder's-tongue,And brier-roses, dwelt among."
It is true the bumblebee may dwell among almost any flowers, but he has decided preferences for such showy ones as have adapted themselves to please his love of certain colors (not yellow), or have secreted nectar so deeply hidden from the mob that his long tongue may find plenty preserved when he calls. Occasional visitors alighting on the agrimony for pollen may distribute some, but the little blossoms chiefly fertilize themselves. When crushed they give forth a faint, pleasant odor. Pretty, nodding seed urns, encircled with a rim of hooks, grapple the clothing of man or beast passing their way, in the hope of dropping off in a suitable place to found another colony.
SENSITIVE PEA; WILD or SMALL-FLOWERED SENSITIVE PLANT(Cassia nictitans) Senna family
Flowers - Yellow, regular, 5-parted, about 1/4 in. across; 2 or 3 together in the axils. Stem: Weak, 6 to 15 in. tall, branching, leafy. Leaves: Alternate, sensitive, compounded of 12 to 44 small, narrowly oblong leaflets; a cup-shaped gland below lowest pair; stipules persistent. Fruit: A pod, an inch long or more, containing numerous seeds. Preferred Habitat - Dry fields, sandy wasteland, roadsides. Flowering Season - July-October. Distribution - New England westward to Indiana, south to Georgia and Texas.
How many of us ever pause to test the sensitiveness of this exquisite foliage that borders the roadsides, and in appearance is almost identical with the South American sensitive plant's, so commonly cultivated in hothouses here? Failing to see its fine little leaflets fold together instantly when brushed with the hand, as they do in the tropical species (Mimosa pudica), many pass on, concluding its title a misnomer. By simply touching the leaves, however roughly, only a tardy and slight movement follows. A sharp blow produces quicker effect, while if the whole plant be shaken by forcibly snapping the stem with the finger, all the leaves will be strongly affected; their sensitiveness being apparently more aroused by vibration through jarring than by contact with foreign bodies. The leaves, which ordinarily spread out flat, partly close in bright sunshine and "go to sleep" at night, not to expose their sensitive upper surfaces to fierce heat in the first case, and to cold by radiation in the second. "Lifeless things may be moved or acted on," says Asa Gray; "living beings move and act - plants less conspicuously, but no less really than animals. In sharing the mysterious gift of life they share some of its simpler powers."
The PARTRIDGE PEA or LARGE-FLOWERED SENSITIVE PLANT (C. Chamaecrista) likewise goes to sleep; the ten to fifteen pairs of leaflets which, with a terminal one, make up each pinnate leaf, slowly turning their outer edges uppermost after sunset, and overlapping as they flatten themselves against their common stem until the entire aspect of the plant is changed. By day the expanded foliage is feathery, fine, acacia-like; at night the bushy, branching, spreading plant, that measures only a foot or two high, appears to produce nothing but pods. These leaves respond slowly to vibration, just as the sensitive pea's do. In spite of their names, neither produces the butterfly-shaped (papilionaceous) blossom of true peas. The partridge pea bears from two to four showy flowers together, each measuring an inch or more across, on a slender pedicel from the axils. It fully expands only four of its five bright yellow petals; they are somewhat unequal in size, the upper ones, with touches of red at the base, as pathfinders, not, however, as nectar-guides, since no sweets are secreted here. Curiously enough, both right and left hand flowers are found upon the same plant; that is to say, the sickle-shaped pistil turns either to the right or the left. One lateral petal, instead of being flexible and spread like the rest, stands so stiffly erect and incurved that it commonly breaks on being bent back. Why? The pistil, it will be noticed, points away from the ten long black anthers. Obviously, then, the flower cannot fertilize itself. Its benefactors are bumblebee females and workers out after pollen. Cup-shaped nectaries ("extra nuptial") are situated on the upper side and near the base of the leaf stalks on these cassia plants, where they can have no direct influence on the fertilization of the blossoms. Apparently, they are free lunch-counters, kept open out of pure charity. Landing upon the long black anthers with pores in their tips to let out the pollen, the bumblebees "seize them between their mandibles, says Professor Robertson, "and stroke them downward with a sort of milking motion. The pollen…falls either directly upon the bee or upon the erect lateral petal which is pressed close against the bee's side. In this way the side of the bee which is next to the incurved petal receives the most pollen…. A bee visiting a left-hand flower receives pollen upon the right side, and then flying to a right-hand flower, strikes the same side against the stigma." When we find circular holes in these petals we may know the leaf-cutter or upholsterer bee (Megachile brevis) has been at work collecting roofs for her nurseries (see Hairy Ruellia). The partridge pea, which has a more westerly range than the sensitive pea's, extends it southward even to Bolivia. Game birds, migrants and rovers, which feed upon the seeds, have of course helped in their wider distribution. The plant blooms from July to September.
WILD or AMERICAN SENNA(Cassia Marylandica) Senna family
Flowers - Yellow, about 3/4 in. broad, numerous, in short axillary clusters on the upper part of plant. Calyx of 5 oblong lobes; 5 petals, 3 forming an upper lip, 2 a lower one; 10 stamens of 3 different kinds; 1 pistil. Stem: 3 to 8 ft. high, little branched. Leaves: Alternate, pinnately compounded of 6 to 10 pairs of oblong leaflets. Fruit: A narrow, flat curving pod, 3 to 4 in. long. Preferred Habitat - Alluvial or moist, rich soil, swamps, roadsides. Flowering Season - July-August. Distribution - New England, westward to Nebraska, south to the Gulf States.
Whoever has seen certain Long Island roadsides bordered with wild senna, the brilliant flower clusters contrasted with the deep green of the beautiful foliage, knows that no effect produced by art along the drives of public park or private garden can match these country lanes in simple charm. Bumblebees, buzzing about the blossoms, may be observed "milking" the anthers just as they do those of the partridge pea. No red spots on any of these petals guide the visitors, as in the previous species, however; for do not the three small, dark stamens, which are reduced to mere scales, answer every purpose as pathfinders here? The stigma, turned sometimes to the right, sometimes to the left, strikes the bee on the side; the senna being what Delpino, the Italian botanist, calls a pleurotribe flower.
While leaves of certain African and East Indian species of senna are most valued for their medicinal properties, those of this plant are largely collected in the Middle and Southern States as a substitute. Caterpillars of several sulphur butterflies, which live exclusively on cassia foliage, appear to feel no evil effects from overdoses.
WILD INDIGO; YELLOW or INDIGO BROOM; HORSEFLY-WEED(Baptisia tinctoria) Pea family
Flowers - Bright yellow, papilionaceous, about 1/2 in. long, on short pedicels, in numerous but few flowered terminal racemes. Calyx light green, 4 or 5-toothed; corolla of 5 oblong petals, the standard erect, the keel enclosing 10 incurved stamens and pistil. Stem: Smooth, branched, 2 to 4 ft. high. Leaves: Compounded of 3 ovate leaflets. Fruit: A many-seeded round or egg-shaped pod tipped with the awl-shaped style. Preferred Habitat - Dry, sandy soil. Flowering Season - June-September. Distribution - Maine and Minnesota to the Gulf States.
Dark grayish green, clover-like leaves, and small, bright yellow flowers growing in loose clusters at the ends of the branches of a bushy little plant, are so commonly met with they need little description. A relative, the true indigo-bearer, a native of Asia, once commonly grown in the Southern States when slavery made competition with Oriental labor possible, has locally escaped and become naturalized. But the false species, although, as Dr. Gray says, it yields "a poor sort of indigo," yields a most valuable medicine employed by the homeopathists in malarial fevers. The plant turns black in drying. As in the case of other papilionaceous blossoms, bees are the visitors best adapted to fertilize the flowers. When we see the little, sleepy, dusky-winged butterfly (Thanaos brizo) around the plant we may know she is there only to lay eggs, that the larvae and caterpillars may find their favorite food at hand on waking into life.
RATTLE-BOX(Crotalaria sagittalis) Pea family
Flowers - Yellow, 1/2 in. long or less, usually only 2 or 3 on a long peduncle. Calyx 5-toothed, slightly 2-lipped; corolla papilionaceous. Stem: 3 to 10 in. high, weak, hairy. Leaves: Alternate, simple, oval to lance-shaped; stipules arrow-shaped above and running along stem. Fruit: An inflated oblong pod 1 in, long, blackish, seedy. Preferred Habitat - Dry, sandy, open situations. Flowering Season - June-September. Distribution - New England and Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico.
These insignificant little yellow flowers attract scant notice from human observers accustomed to associate their generic name with some particularly beautiful relatives from the West Indies grown in hothouses here. But did not small bees alight on the keel and depress it, as in the lupine, next of kin (q.v.) there might be no seeds to rattle in the dark inflated pods that so delight children. (Krotalon = a castanet.)
YELLOW SWEET CLOVER; YELLOW MELILOT(Melilotus officinalis) Pea family
Resembling the white sweet clover, except in color. (q.v.)
YELLOW or HOP CLOVER(Trifotium agrarium) Pea family
Flowers - Yellow, scale-like, overlapping in a densely many-flowered oblong head about 1/2 in. long, becoming brown with age. Stem: Ascending, branched, 6 to 18 in. high. Leaves: 3-foliate, very finely toothed. Preferred Habitat - Waste places, fields, roadsides. Flowering Season - May-September. Distribution - Virginia to Iowa, and far northward.
What did the sulphur butterflies provide as food for their caterpillar babies before the commonest clovers came over from the Old World to possess the soil? Wherever a trifolium grows, there one is sure to see
"gallow-yellow butterflies,Like blooms of lorn primroses blowing loose,when autumn winds arise."
The BLACKSEED HOP CLOVER, BLACK or HOP MEDIC (Medicago lupulina), with even smaller, bright yellow oblong heads which turn black when ripe, lies on the ground, its branches spreading where they leave the root. A native of Europe and Asia, it is now distributed as a common weed throughout our area, for there is scarcely a month in the year when it does not bloom and set seed. It is still another of the many plants known as the shamrock.
YELLOW WOOD-SORREL; LADY'S SORREL(Oxalis stricta) Wood-sorrel family
Flowers - Golden, fragrant, in long peduncled, small, terminal groups. Calyx of 5 sepals; corolla of 5 petals, usually reddish at base; stamens, 10; 1 pistil with 5 styles; followed by slender pods. Stem: Pale, erect, 3 to 12 in. high, the sap sour. Leaves: Palmately compound, of 3 heart-shaped, clover-like leaflets on long petioles. Preferred Habitat - Open woodlands, waste or cultivated soil, roadsides. Flowering Season - April-October. Distribution - Nova Scotia and Dakota westward to the Gulf of Mexico.
An extremely common little weed, whose peculiarly sensitive leaves children delight to set in motion by rubbing, or to chew for the sour juice. Concerning the night "sleep" of wood-sorrel leaves and the two kinds of flowers these plants bear, see the white and violet wood-sorrels.
WILD or SLENDER YELLOW FLAX(Linum Virginianum) Flax family
Flowers - Yellow, about 1/3 in. across, each from a leaf axil,scattered along the slender branches. Sepals, 5; 5 petals, 5stamens. Stem: 1 to 2 ft. high, branching, leafy. Leaves.Alternate, seated on the stem; small, oblong, or lance-shaped, 1nerved.Preferred Habitat - Dry woodlands and borders; shady places.Flowering Season - June-August.Distribution - New England to Georgia.
Certainly in the Atlantic States this is the commonest of its slender, dainty tribe; but in bogs and swamps farther southward and westward to Texas the RIDGED YELLOW FLAX (L. striatum), with leaves arranged opposite each other up to the branches and an angled stem so sticky it "adheres to paper in which it is dried," takes its place.
"Blue were her eyes as the fairy flax,"
wrote Longfellow, as if blue flax were a familiar sight on this side of the Atlantic. The charming little European plant (L. usitatissimum), which has furnished the fiber for linen and the oily seeds for poultices from time immemorial, is only a fugitive from cultivation here. Unhappily, it is rarely met with along the roadsides and railways as it struggles to gain a foothold in our waste places. Possibly Longfellow had in mind the blue toad flax (q.v.).
JEWEL-WEED; SPOTTED TOUCH-ME-NOT: SILVER CAP; WILD BALSAM: LADY'SEARDROPS; SNAP WEED; WILD LADY'S SLIPPER(Impatiens biflora; I. fulva of Gray) Jewel-weed family
Flowers - Orange yellow, spotted with reddish-brown, irregular, 1 in. long or less, horizontal, 2 to 4 pendent by slender footstalks on a long peduncle from leaf axils. Sepals, 3, colored; 1 large, sac-shaped, contracted into a slender incurved spur and 2-toothed at apex; 2 other sepals small. Petals, 3; 2 of them 2-cleft into dissimilar lobes; 5 short stamens, 1 pistil. Stem: 2 to 5 ft. high, smooth, branched, colored, succulent. Leaves: Alternate, thin, pale beneath, ovate, coarsely toothed, petioled. Fruit: An oblong capsule, its 5 valves opening elastically to expel the seeds. Preferred Habitat - Beside streams, ponds, ditches; moist ground. Flowering Season - July-October. Distribution - Nova Scotia to Oregon, south to Missouri and Florida.
These exquisite, bright flowers, hanging at a horizontal, like jewels from a lady's ear, may be responsible for the plant's folk name; but whoever is abroad early on a dewy morning, or after a shower, and finds notched edges of the drooping leaves hung with scintillating gems, dancing, sparkling in the sunshine, sees still another reason for naming this the jewel-weed. In a brook, pond, spring, or wayside trough, which can never be far from its haunts, dip a spray of the plant to transform the leaves into glistening silver. They shed water much as the nasturtium's do.
When the tiny ruby-throated hummingbird flashes northward out of the tropics to spend the summer, where can he hope to find nectar so deeply secreted that not even the long-tongued bumblebee may rob him of it all? Beyond the bird's bill his tongue can be run out and around curves no other creature can reach. Now the early blooming columbine, its slender cornucopias brimming with sweets, welcomes the messenger whose needle-like bill will carry pollen from flower to flower; presently the coral honeysuckle and the scarlet painted-cup attract him by wearing his favorite color; next the jewel-weed hangs horns of plenty to lure his eye; and the trumpet vine and cardinal flower continue to feed him successively in Nature's garden; albeit cannas, nasturtiums, salvia, gladioli, and such deep, irregular showy flowers in men's flower beds sometimes lure him away. These are bird flowers dependent in the main on the ruby-throat, which is not to say that insects never enter them, for they do; only they are not the visitors catered to. Watch the big, velvety bumblebee approach a roomy jewel-weed blossom and nearly disappear within. The large bunch of united stamens, suspended directly over the entrance, bears copious white pollen. So much comes off on his back that after visiting a flower or two he becomes annoyed; clings to a leaf with his fore legs while he thoroughly brushes his back and wings with his middle and hind pairs, and then collects the sticky grains into a wad on his feet which he presently kicks off with disgust to the ground. Examine a jewel-weed blossom to see that the clumsy bumblebee's pollen-laden back is not so likely to come in contact with the short five-parted stigma concealed beneath the stamens, as a hummingbird's slender bill that is thrust obliquely into the spur while he hovers above.
But, as if the plant had not sufficient confidence in its visitors to rely exclusively on them for help in continuing the lovely species, it bears also cleistogamous blossoms that never open - economical products without petals, which ripen abundant self-fertilized seed (see white wood sorrel). It is calculated that each jewel-weed blossom produces about two hundred and fifty pollen grains; yet each is by no means able to produce seed in spite of its prodigality. Nevertheless, enough cross-fertilized seed is set to save the species from the degeneracy that follows close inbreeding among plants as well as animals. In England, where this jewel-weed is rapidly becoming naturalized, Darwin recorded there are twenty plants producing cleistogamous flowers to one having showy blossoms which, even when produced, seldom set seed. What more likely, since hummingbirds are confined to the New World? Therefore why should the plant waste its energy on a product useless in England? It can never attain perfection there until hummingbirds are imported, as bumblebees had to be into Australia before the farmers could harvest seed from their clover fields (see red clover).
Familiar as we may be with the nervous little seedpods of the touch-me-not, which children ever love to pop and see the seeds fly, as they do from balsam pods in grandmother's garden, they still startle with the suddenness of their volley. Touch the delicate hair-trigger at the end of a capsule, and the lightning response of the flying seeds makes one jump. They sometimes land four feet away. At this rate of progress a year, and with the other odds against which all plants have to contend, how many generations must it take to fringe even one mill pond with jewel-weed; yet this is rapid transit indeed compared with many of Nature's processes. The plant is a conspicuous sufferer from the dodder (q.v.).
The PALE TOUCH-ME-NOT (I. aurea; I. pallida of Gray) most abundant northward, a larger, stouter species found in similar situations, but with paler yellow flowers only sparingly dotted if at all, has its broader sac-shaped sepal abruptly contracted into a short, notched, but not incurved spur. It shares its sister's popular names.
VELVET LEAF; INDIAN MALLOW; AMERICAN JUTE(Abutilon Abulilon; A. Avicennae of Gray) Mallow family
Flowers - Deep yellow, 1/2 to 3/4 in. broad, 5-parted, regular, solitary on stout peduncles from the leaf axils. Stem: 3 to 6 ft. high, velvety, branched. Leaves: Soft velvety, heart-shaped, the lobes rounded, long petioled. Fruit: In a head about 1 in. across, 12 to 15 erect hairy carpels, with spreading sharp beaks. Preferred Habitat - Escaped from cultivation to waste sandy loam, fields, roadsides. Flowering Season - August-October. Distribution - Common or frequent, except at the extreme North.
There was a time, not many years ago, when this now common and often troublesome weed was imported from India and tenderly cultivated in flower gardens. In the Orient it and allied species are grown for their fiber, which is utilized for cordage and cloth; but the equally valuable plant now running wild here has yet to furnish American men with a profitable industry. Although the blossom is next of kin to the veiny Chinese bell-flower, or striped abutilon, so common in greenhouses, its appearance is quite different.
ST. ANDREW'S CROSS(Ascyrum hypericoides; A. Crux-Andreae of Gray) St.John's-wort family
Flowers - Yellow, 1/2 to 3/4 in. across, terminal and from the leaf axils. Calyx of 4 sepals in 2 pairs; 4 narrow, oblong petals; stamens numerous; 2 styles. Stem: Much branched and spreading from base, 5 to 10 in. high, leafy. Leaves: Opposite, oblong, small, seated on stem. Preferred Habitat - Dry, sandy soil; pine barrens. Flowering Season - July-August. Distribution - Nantucket Island (Mass.), westward to Illinois, south to Florida and Texas.
Because the four pale yellow petals of this flower approach each other in pairs, suggesting a cross with equals arms, the plant was given its name by Linnaeus in 1753. ST. PETER'S-WORT (A. stans), a similar plant, found in the same localities, in bloom at the same time, has larger flowers in small clusters at the tips only of its upright branches.
COMMON ST. JOHN'S-WORT(Hypericum perforatum) St. John's-wort family
Flowers - Bright yellow, 1 in. across or less, several or many in terminal clusters. Calyx of 5 lance-shaped sepals; 5 petals dotted with black; numerous stamens in 3 sets 3 styles. Stem: to 2 ft. high, erect, much branched. Leaves: Small, opposite, oblong, more or less black-dotted. Preferred Habitat - Fields, waste lands, roadsides. Flowering Season - June-September. Distribution - Throughout our area, except the extreme North; Europe, and Asia.
"Gathered upon a Friday, in the hour of Jupiter when he comes to his operation, so gathered, or borne, or hung upon the neck, it mightily helps to drive away all phantastical spirits." These are the blossoms which have been hung in the windows of European peasants for ages on St. John's eve, to avert the evil eye and the spells of the spirits of darkness. "Devil chaser" its Italian name signifies. To cure demoniacs, to ward off destruction by lightning, to reveal the presence of witches, and to expose their nefarious practices, are some of the virtues ascribed to this plant, which superstitious farmers have spared from the scythe and encouraged to grow near their houses until it has become, even in this land of liberty, a troublesome weed at times. "The flower gets its name," says F. Schuyler Mathews, "from the superstition that on St. John's day, the 24th of June, the dew which fell on the plant the evening before was efficacious in preserving the eyes from disease. So the plant was collected, dipped in oil, and thus transformed into a balm for every wound." Here it is a naturalized, not a native, immigrant. A blooming plant, usually with many sterile shoots about its base, has an unkempt, untidy look; the seed capsules and the brown petals of withered flowers remaining among the bright yellow buds through a long season. No nectar is secreted by the St. John's-worts, therefore only pollen collectors visit them regularly, and occasionally cross-fertilize the blossoms, which are best adapted, however, to pollinate themselves.
The SHRUBBY ST. JOHN'S-WORT (H. prolificum) bears yellow blossoms, about half an inch across, which are provided with stamens so numerous, the many flowered terminal clusters have a soft, feathery effect. In the axils of the oblong, opposite leaves are tufts of smaller ones, the stout stems being often concealed under a wealth of foliage. Sandy or rocky places from New Jersey southward best suit this low, dense, diffusely branched shrub which blooms prolifically from July to September.
Farther north, and westward to Iowa, the GREAT or GIANT ST. JOHN'S-WORT (H. Ascyron) brightens the banks of streams at midsummer with large blossoms, each on a long footstalk in a few-flowered cluster.
LONG-BRANCHED FROST-WEED; FROST-FLOWER; FROST-WORT; CANADIANROCK-ROSE(Helianthemum Canadense) Rock-rose family
Flowers - Solitary, or rarely 2; about 1 in. across, 5-parted, with showy yellow petals; the 5 unequal sepals hairy. Also abundant small flowers lacking petals, produced from the axils later. Stem: Erect, 3 in. to 2 ft. high; at first simple, later with elongated branches. Leaves: Alternate, oblong, almost seated on stem. Preferred Habitat - Dry fields, sandy or rocky soil. Flowering Season - Petal-bearing flowers, May-July. Distribution - New England to the Carolinas, westward to Wisconsin and Kentucky.
Only for a day, and that must be a bright sunny one, does the solitary frost-flower expand its delicate yellow petals. On the next, after pollen has been brought to it by insect messengers and its own carried away, the now useless petal advertisements fall, and the numerous stamens, inserted upon the receptacle with them, also drop off, leaving the club-shaped pistil to develop with the ovary into a rounded, ovoid, three-valved capsule. Notice how flat the stamens lie upon the petals to keep safely out of reach of the stigma. Another flower, exactly like the first, now expands, and the bloom continues for weeks. Why does only one blossom open at a time? Because the whole aim of the showy flowers is to set cross-fertilized seed, and when only one at a time appears, pollination not only between distinct blossoms but between distinct plants insures the healthiest, most vigorous offspring - a wise precaution against degeneracy, in view of the quantities of self-fertilized seed that will be set late in summer by the tiny apetalous flowers that never open (see white wood sorrel). Surely two kinds of blossoms should be enough for any species; but why call this the frost-flower when its bloom is ended by autumn? Only the witch-hazel may be said to flower for the first time after frost. When the stubble in the dry fields is white some cold November morning, comparatively few notice the ice crystals, like specks of glistening quartz, at the base of the stems of this plant. The similar HOARY FROST-WEED (H. majus), whose showy flowers appear in clusters at the hoary stein's summit, in June and July, also bears them. Often this ice formation assumes exquisite feathery, whimsical forms, bursting the bark asunder where an astonishing quantity of sap gushes forth and freezes. Indeed, so much sap sometimes goes to the making of this crystal flower, that it would seem as if an extra reservoir in the soil must pump some up to supply it with its large fantastic corolla.
BEACH or FALSE HEATHER; POVERTY GRASS(Hudsonia tomentosa) Rock-rose family
Flowers - Bright yellow, small, about 1/4 in. across, numerous,closely ascending the upper part of the heath-like branches.Sepals 5, unequal; 5 petals; stamens, 9 to 18. Stem: 4 to 8 in.tall, tufted, densely branched and matted, hoary hairy, pale.Leaves: Overlapping like scales, very small.Preferred Habitat - Sands of the seashore, pine barrens, beachesof rivers and lakes.Flowering Season - May-July.Distribution - New Brunswick to Maryland, west to Lake of theWoods.
Like the showy flowers of the frost-weed, these minute ones open in the sunshine only, and then but for a single day. Nevertheless, the hoary, heath-like little shrub, by growing in large colonies and keeping up a succession of bright bloom, tinges the sand dunes back of the beach with charming color that artists delight to paint in the foreground of their marine pictures.
YELLOW VIOLETS(Viola) Violet family
Fine hairs on the erect, leafy, usually single stem of the DOWNY YELLOW VIOLET (V. pubescens), whose dark veined, bright yellow petals gleam in dry woods in April and May, easily distinguish it from the SMOOTH YELLOW VIOLET (V. scabriuscula), formerly considered a mere variety in spite of its being an earlier bloomer, a lover of moisture, and well equipped with basal leaves at flowering time, which the downy species is not. Moreover, it bears a paler blossom, more coarsely dentate leaves, often decidedly taper-pointed, and usually several stems together.
Our other common yellow species, the ROUND-LEAVED VIOLET (V. rotundifolia), lifts smaller, pale, brown-veined, and bearded blossoms above a tuffet of broad, shining leaves close to the ground. The veins on the petals serve as pathfinders to the nectary for the bee, and the beard as footholds, while she probes the inverted blossoms. Such violets as have their side petals bearded are most frequently visited by small greenish mason bees (Osmia), with collecting brushes on their abdomen that receive the pollen as it falls. Abundant cleistogamous flowers (see blue violets and white wood sorrel) are borne on the runners late in the season. Bryant, whose botanical lore did not always keep step with his Muse, wrote of the yellow violet as the first spring flower, because he found it "by the snowbank's edges cold," one April day, when the hepaticas about his home at Roslyn, Long Island, had doubtless been in bloom a month.
"Of all her train the hands of SpringFirst plant thee in the watery mould,"
he wrote, regardless of the fact that the round-leaved violet's preferences are for dry, wooded, or rocky hillsides. Muller believed that all violets were originally yellow, not white, after they evoluted from the green stage.
EASTERN CACTUS; PRICKLY PEAR; INDIAN FIG(Opuntia Opuntia; 0. vulgaris of Gray) Cactus family
Flowers -Yellow, sometimes reddish at center, 2 to 3 in. across, solitary, mostly seated at the side of joints. Calyx tube not prolonged beyond ovary, its numerous lobes spreading. Petals numerous; stamens very numerous; ovary cylindric; the style longer than stamens, and with several stigmas. Stem: Prostrate or ascending, fleshy, juicy, branching, the thick, flattened joints oblong or rounded, 2 to 5 in. long. Leaves: Tiny, awl-shaped, dotting the joints, but usually falling early; tufts of yellowish bristles at their base. Plant unarmed, or with few solitary stout spines. Fruit: Pear-shaped, pulpy, red, nearly smooth, 1 in. long or over, edible. Preferred Habitat - Sandy or dry or rocky places. Flowering Season - June-August. Distribution - Massachusetts to Florida.
Upwards of one hundred and fifty species of Opuntia, which elect to grow in parching sands, beneath a scorching sun, often prostrate on baking hot rocks, on glaring plains, beaches, and deserts, from Massachusetts to Peru - for all are natives of the New World - show so marvelous an adaptation to environment in each instance that no group of plants is more interesting to the botanist, more decorative in form and color from an artistic standpoint, more distinctively characteristic. Plants choosing such habitats as they have adopted, usually in tropical or semi-tropical regions, had to resort to various expedients to save loss of water through transpiration and evaporation. Now, as leaves are the natural outlets for moisture thrown off by any plant, manifestly the first thing to do was either to reduce the number of branches and leaves, or to modify them into sharp spines (not surface prickles like the rose's); to cultivate a low habit of growth, not to expose unnecessary surface to sun and air; to thicken the skin until little moisture could evaporate through the leathery coat; and, finally, to utilize the material thus saved in developing stems so large, fleshy, and juicy that they should become wells in a desert, with powers of sustenance great enough to support the plant through its fiery trials. A common expedient of plants in dry situations, even at the north, is to modify their leaves into spines, as the gorse and the barberry, for example, have done. That such an armor also serves to protect them against the ravages of grazing animals is an additional advantage, of course; but not their sole motive in wearing it. Popular to destruction would the cool juices of the cacti be in thirsty lands, if only they might be obtained without painful and often poisonous scratches. Given moist soil and greater humidity of atmosphere to grow in, spiny plants at once show a tendency to grow taller, to branch and become leafy. A covering of hairs which reflect the light, thus diminishing the amount that might reach the juicy interior area, has likewise been employed by many cacti, among other denizens of dry soil.
In this common prickly pear cactus of the Atlantic seaboard, where the air is laden with moisture from the ocean, few or no spines are produced; and dotted over the surface of its branching, fleshy, flattened joints we find tiny, awl-shaped leaves, whereas foliage is entirely wanting in the densely prickly, rounded, solid, unbranched, hairy cacti of the southwestern deserts, and the arid plains of Mexico.
In sunshine the beautiful yellow blossom of our prickly pear expands to welcome the bees, folding up its petals again for several successive nights. William Hamilton Gibson says it "encloses its buzzing visitor in a golden bower, from which he must emerge at the roof as dusty as a miller," only to enter another blossom and leave some pollen on its numerous stigmas.
But the cochineal, not the bee, is forever associated with cacti in the popular mind. Indeed, several species are extensively grown on plantations, known as Nopaleries, which furnish food to countless trillions of these tiny insects. Like its relative the aphis of rose bushes (see wild roses), the cochineal fastens itself to a cactus plant by its sucking tube, to live on the juices. The males are winged, and only the female, which yields the valuable dye, sticks tight to the plant. Three crops of insects a year are harvested on a Mexican plantation. After three months' sucking, the females are brushed off, dried in ovens, and sold for about two thousand dollars a ton. The annual yield of Mexico amounting to many thousands of tons, it is no wonder the cactus plant, which furnishes so valuable an industry, should appear on the coat-of-arms of the Mexican republic. Some cacti are planted for hedges, the fruit of others furnishes a refreshing drink in tropical climates, the juices are used as a water color, and to dye candies - in short, this genus Opuntia and allied clans have great commercial value.
The WESTERN PRICKLY PEAR (0. humifusa; O. Rafnesquii of Gray) - a variable species ranging from Minnesota to Texas, is similar to the preceding, but bears a larger flower, and longer, more rounded, deeper green joints, beset with not numerous spines, scattered chiefly near their margins. A few deflexed spines in a cluster leave the surface where a tiny awl-shaped leaf and a tuft of reddish brown hairs are likewise usually found.
EVENING-PRIMROSE; NIGHT WILLOW-HERB (Onagra biennis; Qenothera biennis of Gray) Evening-primrose family
Flowers - Yellow, fragrant, opening at evening, 1 to 2 in. across, borne in terminal leafy-bracted spikes. Calyx tube slender, elongated, gradually enlarged at throat, the 4-pointed lobes bent backward; corolla of 4 spreading petals; 8 stamens; 1 pistil; the stigma 4-cleft. Stem: Erect, wand-like, or branched, to 1 to 5 ft. tall, rarely higher, leafy. Leaves: Alternate, lance-shaped, mostly seated on stem, entire, or obscurely toothed. Preferred Habitat - Roadsides, dry fields, thickets, fence-corners. Flowering Season - June-October. Distribution - Labrador to the Gulf of Mexico, west to the Rocky Mountains.
Like a ballroom beauty, the evening primrose has a jaded, bedraggled appearance by day when we meet it by the dusty roadside, its erect buds, fading flowers from last night's revelry, wilted ones of previous dissipations, and hairy oblong capsules, all crowded together among the willow-like leaves at the top of the rank growing plant. But at sunset a bud begins to expand its delicate petals slowly, timidly - not suddenly and with a pop, as the evening primrose of the garden does.
Now, its fragrance, that has been only faintly perceptible during the day, becomes increasingly powerful. Why these blandishments at such an hour? Because at dusk, when sphinx moths, large and small, begin to fly (see Jamestown weed), the primrose's special benefactors are abroad. All these moths, whose length of tongue has kept pace with the development of the tubes of certain white and yellow flowers dependent on their ministrations, find such glowing like miniature moons for their special benefit, when blossoms of other hues have melted into the deepening darkness. If such have fragrance, they prepare to shed it now. Nectar is secreted in tubes so deep and slender that none but the moths' long tongues can drain the last drop. An exquisite, little, rose-pink twilight flyer, his wings bordered with yellow, flutters in ecstasy above the evening primrose's freshly opened flowers, transferring in his rapid flight some of their abundant, sticky pollen that hangs like a necklace from the outstretched filaments. By day one may occasionally find a little fellow asleep in a wilted blossom, which serves him as a tent, under whose flaps the brightest bird eye rarely detects a dinner. After a single night's dissipation the corolla wilts, hangs a while, then drops from the maturing capsule as if severed with a sharp knife. Few flowers, sometimes only one opens on a spike on a given evening - a plan to increase the chances of cross-fertilization between distinct plants; but there is a very long succession of bloom. If a flower has not been pollenized during the night it remains open a while in the morning. Bumblebees now hurry in, and an occasional hummingbird takes a sip of nectar. Toward the end of summer, when so much seed has been set that the flower can afford to be generous, it distinctly changes its habit and keeps open house all day.
During our winter walks we shall see close against the ground the rosettes of year-old evening primrose plants - exquisitely symmetrical, complex stars from whose center the flower stalks of another summer will arise.
Floriform sunshine bursts forth from roadsides, fields, and prairies when the COMMON SUNDROPS (Kneiffia fructicosa; formerly Qenothera fructicosa) - is in flower. It is first cousin to the similar evening primrose of taller, ranker growth. Often only one blossom on a stalk expands at a time, to increase the chances of cross-fertilization between distinct plants; but where colonies grow it is a conspicuous acquaintance, for its large, bright yellow corollas remain open all day. Bumblebees with their long tongues, and some butterflies, drain the deeply hidden nectar; smaller visitors get some only when it wells up high in the tube. As the stigma surpasses the anthers, self-fertilization is impossible unless an insect blunders by alighting elsewhere than on the lower side, where the stigma is purposely turned to be rubbed against his pollen-laden ventral surface when he settles on a blossom. Unable to reach the nectar, mining and leaf-cutter bees, wasps, flower flies, and beetles visit it for the abundant pollen; and the common little white cabbage butterfly (Pieris protodice) sucks here constantly. The capsules of the sundrops are somewhat club-shaped and four-winged, angled above, with four intervening ribs between. Range from Nova Scotia to Georgia, west beyond the Mississippi.
A similar, but smaller, diurnal species (K. pumilla), likewise found blooming in dry soil from June to August, has a more westerly range North and South.
WILD OR FIELD PARSNIP; MADNEP; TANK(Pastinaca sativa) Carrot family
Flowers - Dull or greenish yellow, small, without involucre or involucels; borne in 7 to 15 rayed umbels, 2 to 6 in. across. Stem: 2 to 5 ft. tall, stout, smooth, branching, grooved, from a long, conic, fleshy, strong-scented root. Leaves: Compounded (pinnately), of several pairs of oval, lobed, or cut, sharply toothed leaflets; the petioled lower leaves often 1 1/2 ft. long. Preferred Habitat - Waste places, roadsides, fields. Flowering Season - June-September. Distribution - Common throughout nearly all parts of the United States and Canada. Europe.
Men are not the only creatures who feed upon such of the umbel-bearing plants as are innocent - parsnips, celery, parsley, carrots, caraway, and fennel, among others; and even those which contain properties that are poisonous to highly organized men and beasts, afford harmless food for insects. Pliny says that parsnips, which were cultivated beyond the Rhine in the days of Tiberius, were brought to Rome annually to please the emperor's exacting palate; yet this same plant, which has overrun two continents, in its wild state (when its leaves are a paler yellowish green than under cultivation) often proves poisonous. A strongly acrid juice in the very tough stem causes intelligent cattle to let it alone - precisely the object desired. But caterpillars of certain swallow-tail butterflies, particularly of the common eastern swallow-tail (Papilio asterias), may be taken on it - the same greenish, black-banded, and yellow-dotted fat "worm" found on parsnips, fennel, and parsley in the kitchen garden. Insects understood plant relationships ages before Linnaeus defined them. When we see this dark, velvety butterfly, marked with yellow, hovering above the wild parsnip, we may know she is there only to lay eggs that her larvae may eat their way to maturity on this favorite food store. After the flat, oval, shining seeds with their conspicuous oil tubes are set in the spreading umbels, the strong, vigorous plant loses nothing of its decorative charm.
>From April to June the lower-growing EARLY or GOLDEN MEADOW PARSNIP (Zizia aurea) spreads its clearer yellow umbels above moist fields, meadows, and swamps from New Brunswick and Dakota to the Gulf of Mexico. Its leaves are twice or thrice compounded of oblong, pointed, saw-edged, but not lobed leaflets.
The HAIRY-JOINTED MEADOW PARSNIP (Thaspium barbinode), another early bloomer, with pale-yellow flowers, most common in the Mississippi basin, may always be distinguished by the little tufts of hair at the joints of the stem, the compound leaves, and often on the rays of the umbels.
A yellow variety of the PURPLE MEADOW PARSNIP, which is popularly known as GOLDEN ALEXANDERS (T. trifoliatum var. aureum), confines itself chiefly to woodlands. The leaves are compounded of three leaflets, longer and more lance-shaped in outline than those of other yellow species.
FOUR-LEAVED or WHORLED LOOSESTRIFE; CROSSWORT(Lysimachia quadrifolia) Primrose family
Flowers - Yellow, streaked with dark red, 1/2 in. across or less; each on a thread-like, spreading footstem from a leaf axil. Calyx, 5 to 7 parted; corolla of 5 to 7 spreading lobes, and as many stamens inserted on the throat; 1 pistil. Stem: Slender, erect, to 3 ft. tall, leafy. Leaves: In whorls of 4 (rarely in 3's to 7's), lance-shaped or oblong, entire, black dotted. Preferred Habitat - Open woodland, thickets, roadsides, moist, sandy soil. Flowering Season - June-August. Distribution - Georgia and Illinois, north to New Brunswick.
Medieval herbalists usually recorded anything that "Plinie saieth" with profoundest respect; not always so, quaint old Parkinson. Speaking of the common (vulgaris), wild loosestrife of Europe, a rather stout, downy species with terminal clusters of good-sized, yellow flowers, that was once cultivated in our Eastern States, and has sparingly escaped from gardens, he thus refers to the reputation given it by the Roman naturalist: "It is believed to take away strife, or debate between ye beasts, not onely those that are yoked together, but even those that are wild also, by making them tame and quiet…if it be either put about their yokes or their necks," significantly adding, "which how true, I leave to them shall try and find it soe." Our slender, symmetrical, common loosestrife, with its whorls of leaves and little star-shaped blossoms on thread-like pedicels at regular intervals up the stem, is not even distantly related to the wonderful purple loosestrife (q.v.).
Another common, lower-growing species, the BULB-BEARING LOOSESTRIFE (L. terrestris; L. stricta of Gray) - blooming from July to September, lifts a terminal, elongated raceme of even smaller, slender-pedicelled, yellow flowers streaked or dotted with reddish; and in the axils of its abundant, opposite, lance-shaped, black-dotted leaves, long bulblets, that are in reality suppressed branches, are usually borne after the flowering season. Occasionally no flowers are produced, only these strange bulblets. In this state Linnaeus mistook the plant for a terrestrial mistletoe. This species shows a decided preference for swamps, moist thickets, and ditches throughout a range which extends from Manitoba and Arkansas to the Atlantic Ocean.
MONEYWORT, or CREEPING LOOSESTRIFE (L. Nummularia), a native of Great Britain, which has long been a favorite vine in American hanging baskets and urns, when kept in moist soil, suspended from a veranda, will produce prolific shoots two or three feet in length, hanging down on all sides. Pairs of yellow, dark-spotted, five-lobed flowers grow from the axils of the opposite leaves from June to August. One often finds it running wild in moist soil beyond the pale of old gardens from Pennsylvania and Indiana northward into Canada. Slight encouragement in starting runaways would easily induce the hardy little evergreen to be as common here as it is in England.
The LANCE-LEAVED LOOSESTRIFE (Steironema lanceolatum), most common in the West and South, although it is by no means rare in the northeastern States, produces either single blossoms or few-flowered, spreading, axillary clusters on slender peduncles, each unspotted, yellow corolla half an inch across or over; the petal edges as if gnawed by the finest of teeth; the pointed calyx segments showing between them. Sterile stamens in addition to the fertile ones characterize this clan. In moist soil it blooms from June to August. It is a strange fact that female bees of the genus Macropis have never been taken on plants outside the loosestrife connection. Here there appears to be the closest interdependence between flower and insect. Even in Germany, Muller found them by far the most abundant visitors, "diligently sweeping the flowers (L. vulgaris) and piling large masses of moistened pollen on their hind legs." He inclined to believe that such blossoms in this group as have spots or streaks on their petals - pathfinders for insect visitors - are largely dependent on them, and cannot easily fertilize themselves; whereas the unmarked blossoms, growing in such situations as are less favorable to insect visits, are regularly self-fertile.
BUTTERFLY-WEED; PLEURISY-ROOT; ORANGE-ROOT; ORANGE MILKWEED(Asclepias tuberosa) Milkweed family
Flowers - Bright reddish orange, in many-flowered, terminal clusters, each flower similar in structure to the common milkweed (q.v.). Stem: Erect, 1 to 2 ft. tall, hairy, leafy, milky juice scanty. Leaves: Usually all alternate, lance-shaped, seated on stem. Fruit: A pair of erect, hoary pods, 2 to 5 in. long, at least containing silky plumed seeds. Preferred Habitat - Dry or sandy fields, hills, roadsides. Flowering Season - June-September. Distribution - Maine and Ontario to Arizona, south to the Gulf of Mexico.
Intensely brilliant clusters of this the most ornamental of all native milkweeds set dry fields ablaze with color. Above them butterflies hover, float, alight, sip, and sail away - the great, dark, velvety, pipe-vine swallow-tail (Papilio philenor), its green-shaded hind wings marked with little white half moons; the yellow and brown, common, Eastern swallow-tail (P. asterias), that we saw about the wild parsnip and other members of the carrot family the exquisite, large, spice-bush swallow-tail, whose bugaboo caterpillar startled us when we unrolled a leaf of its favorite food supply (see spice-bush); the small, common, white, cabbage butterfly (Pieris protodice); the even more common little sulphur butterflies, inseparable from clover fields and mud puddles; the painted lady that follows thistles around the globe; the regal fritillary (Argynnis idalia), its black and fulvous wings marked with silver crescents, a gorgeous creature developed from the black and orange caterpillar that prowls at night among violet plants; the great spangled fritillary of similar habit; the bright fulvous and black pearl crescent butterfly (Phyciodes tharos), its small wings usually seen hovering about the asters; the little grayish-brown, coral hair-streak (Thecla titus), and the bronze copper (Chrysophanus thoe), whose caterpillar feeds on sorrel (Rumex); the delicate, tailed blue butterfly (Lycaena comyntas), with a wing expansion of only an inch from tip to tip; all these visitors duplicated again and again - these and several others that either escaped the net before they were named, or could not be run down, were seen one bright midsummer day along a Long Island roadside bordered with butterfly weed. Most abundant of all was still another species, the splendid monarch (Anosia plexippus), the most familiar representative of the tribe of milkweed butterflies (see common milkweed). Swarms of this enormously prolific species are believed to migrate to the Gulf States, and beyond at the approach of cold weather, as regularly as the birds, traveling in numbers so vast that the naked trees on which they pause to rest appear to be still decked with autumnal foliage. This milkweed butterfly "is a great migrant," says Dr. Holland, "and within quite recent years, with Yankee instinct, has crossed the Pacific, probably on merchant vessels, the chrysalids being possibly concealed in bales of hay, and has found lodgment in Australia where it has greatly multiplied in the warmer parts of the Island Continent, and has thence spread northward and westward, until in its migrations it has reached Java and Sumatra, and long ago took possession of the Philippines…. It has established a more or less precarious foothold for itself in southern England. It is well established at the Cape Verde Islands, and in a short time we may expect to hear of it as having taken possession of the Continent of Africa, in which the family of plants upon which the caterpillars feed is well represented."