Surely here is a butterfly flower if ever there was one, and such are rare. Very few are adapted to tongues so long and slender that the bumblebee cannot help himself to their nectar; but one almost never sees him about the butterfly-weed. While other bees, a few wasps, and even the ruby-throated hummingbird, which ever delights in flowers with a suspicion of red about them, sometimes visit these bright clusters, it is to the ever-present butterfly that their marvelous structure is manifestly adapted. Only visitors long of limb can easily remove the pollinia, which are usually found dangling from the hairs of their legs. We may be sure that after generously feeding its guests, the flower does not allow many to depart without rendering an equivalent service. The method of compelling visitors to withdraw pollen-masses from one blossom and deposit them in another - an amazing process - has been already described under the common milkweed. Lacking the quantity of sticky milky juice which protects that plant from crawling pilferers, the butterfly-weed suffers outrageous robberies from black ants. The hairs on its stem, not sufficient to form a stockade against them, serve only as a screen to reflect light lest too much may penetrate to the interior juices. We learned, in studying the prickly pear cactus, how necessary it is for plants living in dry soil to guard against the escape of their precious moisture.
Transplanted from Nature's garden into our own, into what Thoreau termed "that meager assemblage of curiosities, that poor apology for Nature and Art which I call my front yard," clumps of butterfly-weed give the place real splendor and interest. It is said the Indians used the tuberous root of this plant for various maladies, although they could scarcely have known that because of the alleged healing properties of the genus Linnaeus dedicated it to Aesculapius, of whose name Asclepias is a Latinized corruption.
HORSE-BALM; CITRONELLA; RICH-WEED; STONE-ROOT; HORSE-WEED(Collinsonia Canadensis) Mint family
Flowers - Light yellowish, lemon-scented, about 1/2 in. long, mostly opposite, in numerous spreading racemes, forming long, loose terminal clusters. Calyx bell-shaped, 2-lipped, upper lip 3-toothed, lower lip 2-cleft; corolla 5-lobed, 4 lobes nearly equal, the fifth much larger, fringed; stamens protruding, 2 anther-bearing; 1 long style, the stigma forked. Preferred Habitat - Rich, moist woods. Flowering Season - July-October. Distribution - New England, Ontario, and Wisconsin, south to Florida and Kansas.
Now that we have come to read the faces of flowers much as their insect friends must have done for countless ages, we suspect at a glance that the strong-scented horse-balm, with its profusion of lemon-colored, irregular little blossoms, is up to some ingenious trick. The lower lip, out of all proportion to the rest of the corolla, flaunting its enticing fringes; the long stamens protruding from some flowers, and only the long style from others on the same plant, excite our curiosity. Where many fragrant clumps grow in cool, shady woods at midsummer, is an excellent place to rest a while and satisfy it. Presently a bumblebee, attracted by the odor from afar, alights on the fringed platform too weak to hold him. Dropping downward, he snatches the filaments of the two long stamens to save himself; and, as he does so, pollen jarred out of their anther sacs falls on his thorax at the juncture of his wings. Hanging beneath the flower a second, he sips its nectar and is off. Many bees, large and small, go through a similar performance. Now the young, newly opened flowers have the forked stigmas of the long style only protruding at this stage, the miniature stamens being still curled within the tube. Obviously a pollen-dusted bee coming to one of these young flowers must rub off some of the vitalizing dust on the sticky fork that purposely impedes his entrance at the precise spot necessary. Notice that after a flower's stamens protrude in the second stage of its development the fork is turned far to one side to get out of harm's way - self-fertilization being an abomination. It was the lamented William Hamilton Gibson who first called attention to the horse-balm's ingenious scheme to prevent it.
VIRGINIA GROUND CHERRY(Physalis Virginiana; P. Pennsylvanica of Gray) Potato family
Flowers - Sulphur or greenish yellow, with 5 dark purplish dots, 1 in. across or less, solitary from the leaf axils. Calyx 5-toothed, much inflated in fruit; corolla open bell-shaped, the edge 5-cleft; 5 stamens, the anthers yellow, style slender, 2-cleft. Stem: l 1/2 to 3 ft. tall, erect, more or less hairy or glandular, branched, from a thick rootstock. Leaves: Ovate to lanceolate, tapering at both ends or wedge-shaped, often yellowish green, entire or sparingly wavy-toothed. Fruit: An inflated, 5-angled capsule, sunken at the base, loosely surrounding the edible reddish berry. Preferred Habitat - Open ground; rich, dry pastures; hillsides. Flowering Season - July-September Distribution - New York to Manitoba, south to the Gulf States.
A common plant, so variable, however, that the earlier botanists thought it must be several distinct species, lanceolata among others. A glance within shows that the open flower is not so generous as its spreading form would seem to indicate, for tufts of dense hairs at each side of grooves where nectar is secreted, conceal it from the mob, and, with the thickened filaments, almost close the throat. Doubtless these hairs also serve as footholds for the welcome bee clinging to its pendent host. The dark spots are pathfinders. One anther maturing after another, a visitor must make several trips to secure all the pollen, and if she is already dusted from another blossom, nine chances out of ten she will first leave some of the vitalizing dust on the stigma poked forward to receive it before collecting more. Professor Robertson says that all the ground cherries near his home in Illinois are remarkable for their close mutual relation with two bees of the genus Colletes. So far as is known, the insignificant little greenish or purplish bell-shaped flowers of the Alum-root (Heuchera Americana), with protruding orange anthers, are the only other ones to furnish these females with pollen for their babies' bread. Slender racemes of this species are found blooming in dry or rocky woods from the Mississippi eastward, from May to July, by which time the ground cherry is ready to provide for the bee's wants. The similar Philadelphia species was formerly cultivated for its "strawberry tomato." Many birds which feast on all this highly attractive fruit disperse the numerous kidney-shaped seeds.
GREAT MULLEIN; VELVET or FLANNEL PLANT; MULLEIN DOCK; AARON'S ROD(Verbascum Thapsus) Figwort family
Flowers - Yellow, 1 in. across or less, seated around a thick, dense, elongated spike. Calyx 5-parted; corolla of 5 rounded lobes; 5 anther-bearing stamens, the 3 upper ones short, woolly; 1 pistil. Stem: Stout, 2 to 7 ft. tall, densely woolly, with branched hairs. Leaves: Thick, pale green, velvety-hairy, oblong, in a rosette on the ground; others alternate, strongly clasping the stem. Preferred Habitat - Dry fields, banks, stony waste land. Flowering Season - June-September. Distribution - Minnesota and Kansas, eastward to Nova Scotia and Florida. Europe.
Leaving the fluffy thistle-down he has been kindly scattering to the four winds, the goldfinch spreads his wings for a brief undulating flight, singing in waves also as he goes to where tall, thick-set mullein stalks stand like sentinels above the stony pasture. Here companies of the exquisite little black and yellow minstrels delight to congregate with their somber families and feast on the seeds that rapidly follow the erratic flowers up the gradually lengthening spikes.
Delpino long ago pointed out that the blossom is best adapted to pollen-collecting bees, which, alighting on the two long, protruding stamens, rub off pollen on their undersides while clinging for support to the wool on the three shorter stamens, whose anthers supply their needs. As a bee settles on another flower, the stigma is calculated to touch the pollen on his under side before he gets dusted with more; thus cross-pollination is effected. Three stamens furnish a visitor with food, two others clap pollen on him. Numerous flies assist in removing the pollen, too.
"I have come three thousand miles to see the mullein cultivated in a garden, and christened the velvet plant," says John Burroughs in "An October Abroad." But even in England it grows wild, and much more abundantly in Southern Europe, while its specific name is said to have been given it because it was so common in the neighborhood of Thapsus; but whether the place of that name in Africa, or the Sicilian town mentioned by Ovid and Virgil, is not certain. Strange that Europeans should labor under the erroneous impression that this mullein is native to America, whereas here it is only an immigrant from their own land. Rapidly taking its course of empire westward from our seaports into which the seeds smuggled their passage among the ballast, it is now more common in the Eastern States, perhaps, than any native. Forty or more folk-names have been applied to it, mostly in allusion to its alleged curative powers, its use for candlewick and funeral torches in the Middle Ages. The generic title, first used by Pliny, is thought to be a corruption of Barbascum = with beards, in allusion to the hairy filaments, or, as some think, to the leaves.
Of what use is this felt-like covering to the plant? The importance of protecting the delicate, sensitive, active cells from intense light, draught, or cold, have led various plants to various practices; none more common, however, than to develop hairs on the epidermis of their leaves, sometimes only enough to give it a downy appearance, sometimes to coat it with felt, as in this case, where the hairs branch and interlace. Fierce sunlight in the exposed, dry situations where the mullein grows; prolonged drought, which often occurs at flowering season, when the perpetuation of the species is at stake; and the intense cold which the exquisite rosettes formed by year-old plants must endure through a winter before they can send up a flower-stalk the second spring - these trials the well-screened, juicy, warm plant has successfully surmounted through its coat of felt. Hummingbirds have been detected gathering the hairs to line their tiny nests. The light, strong stalk makes almost as good a cane as bamboo, especially when the root end, in running under a stone, forms a crooked handle. Pale country beauties rub their cheeks with the velvety leaves to make them rosy.
MOTH MULLEIN(Verbascum Blattaria) Figwort family
Flowers - Yellow, or frequently white, 5-parted, about 1 in. broad, marked with brown; borne on spreading pedicles in a long, loose raceme; all the filaments with violet hairs; 1 protruding pistil. Stem: Erect, slender, simple, about 2 ft. high, sometimes less, or much taller. Leaves: Seldom present at flowering time; oblong to ovate, toothed, mostly sessile, smooth. Preferred Habitat - Dry, open wasteland; roadsides, fields. Flowering Season - June-November. Distribution - Naturalized from Europe and Asia, more or less common throughout the United States and Canada.
Quite different from its heavy and sluggish looking sister is this sprightly, slender, fragile-flowered mullein. "Said to repel the cockroach (Blatta). hence the name Blattaria; frequented by moths, hence moth mullein." (Britton and Brown's "Flora.") Are the latter frequent visitors? Surely there is nothing here to a moth's liking. New England women used to pack this plant among woolen garments in summer to keep out the tiny clothes moths. The flower, whose two long stamens and pistil protrude as from the great mullein's blossom, and whose filaments are tufted with violet wool footholds - unnecessary provisions for moths, which rarely alight on any flower, but suck with their wings in motion - are cross-fertilized by pollen-collecting bees and flies as described in the account of the great mullein.
"Of beautiful weeds quite a long list might be made without including any of the so-called wild flowers," says John Burroughs. "A favorite of mine is the little moth mullein that blooms along the highway, and about the fields, and maybe upon the edge of the lawn." Even in winter, when the slender stem, set with round brown seed-vessels, rises above the snow, the plant is pleasing to the human eye, as it is to that of hungry birds.
BUTTER-AND-EGGS; YELLOW TOAD-FLAX; EGGS-AND-BACON; FLAXWEED;BRIDEWEED(Linaria Linaria; L. vulgaris of Gray) Figwort family
Flowers - Light canary yellow and orange, 1 in. long or over, irregular, borne in terminal, leafy-bracted spikes. Corolla spurred at the base, 2-lipped, the upper lip erect, 2-lobed; the lower lip spreading, 3-lobed, its base an orange-colored palate closing the throat; 4 stamens in pairs within; 1 pistil. Stem: 1 to 3 ft. tall, slender, leafy. Leaves: Pale, grass-like. Preferred Habitat - Wasteland, roadsides, banks, fields. Flowering Season - June-October. Distribution - Nebraska and Manitoba, eastward to Virginia and Nova Scotia. Europe and Asia.
An immigrant from Europe, this plebeian perennial, meekly content with waste places, is rapidly inheriting the earth. Its beautiful spikes of butter-colored cornucopias, apparently holding the yolk of a diminutive Spanish egg, emit a cheesy odor, suggesting a close dairy. Perhaps half the charm of the plant consists in the pale bluish-green grass-like leaves with a bloom on the surface, which are put forth so abundantly from the sterile shoots. (See blue toad-flax.)
Guided by the orange palate pathfinder to where the curious, puzzling flower opens, the big velvety bumblebee alights, his weight depressing the lower lip until a comfortable entrance through the gaping mouth is offered him. In he goes, and his long tongue readily reaches the nectar in the deep spur, while his back brushes off pollen from the stamens in his way overhead. Then he backs out, and the gaping mouth springs shut after him - for the linaria is akin to the snapdragon in the garden. As its stamens are of two lengths, the flower is able to fertilize itself in stormy weather, insects failing to transfer its pollen. To drain ten of these spurs a minute is no difficult task for the bumblebee. But how slowly, painfully, the little lightweight hive-bees and leaf-cutters squeeze in between the tight lips. An occasional butterfly inserts its long, thin tongue, and, without transferring a grain of pollen for the flower, robs it of sweets clearly intended for the bumblebee alone. Even when ants - the worst pilferers extant - succeed in entering, they cannot reach the nectar, owing to the hairy stockade bordering the groove where it runs. Beetles, out for pollen, also occasionally steal an entrance, if nothing more. Grazing cattle let the plant alone to ripen seed in peace, for it secretes disagreeable juices in its cells - juices that were once mixed with milk by farmers' wives to poison flies.
DOWNY FALSE FOXGLOVE(Dasystoma flava; Gerardia flava of Gray) Figwort family
Flowers - Pale yellow, 1 1/2 to 2 in. long; in showy, terminal, leafy-bracted racemes. Calyx bell-shaped, 5-toothed; corolla funnel form, the 5 lobes spreading, smooth outside, woolly within; 4 stamens in pairs, woolly; 1 pistil. Stem: Grayish, downy, erect, usually simple, 2 to 4 ft. tall. Leaves: Opposite, lower ones oblong in outline, more or less irregularly lobed and toothed; upper ones small, entire. Preferred Habitat - Gravelly or sandy soil, dry thickets, open woods. Flowering Season - July-August Distribution - "Eastern Massachusetts to Ontario and Wisconsin, south to southern New York, Georgia, and Mississippi." (Britton and Brown.)
In the vegetable kingdom, as in the spiritual, all degrees of backsliding sinners may be found, each branded with a mark of infamy according to its deserts. We have seen how the dodder vine lost both leaf and roots after it consented to live wholly by theft of its hardworking host's juices through suckers that penetrate to the vitals; how the Indian pipe's blanched face tells the story of guilt perpetrated under cover of darkness, in the soil below; how the broom-rape and beech-drops lost their honest green color; and, finally, the foxgloves show us plants with their faces so newly turned toward the path of perdition, their larceny so petty, that only the expert in criminal botany cases condemns them. Like its cousins the gerardias (q.v.), the downy false foxglove is only a partial parasite, attaching its roots by disks or suckers to the roots of white oak or witch hazel (q.v.); not only that, but, quite as frequently, groping blindly in the dark, it fastens suckers on its own roots, actually thieving from itself! It is this piratical tendency which makes transplanting of foxgloves into our gardens so very difficult; even when lifted with plenty of their beloved vegetable mould. The term false foxglove, it should be explained, is by no means one of reproach for dishonesty; it was applied simply to distinguish this group of plants from the true foxgloves cultivated, not wild, here, which yield digitalis to the doctors.
But if these foxgloves live at others' expense, there are creatures which in turn prey upon them. Caterpillars of a peacock butterfly, known as the buckeye (Junonia coenia), with eye-like spots on its tawny, reddish-gray wings, divide their unwelcome attentions between various species of plantain, the snapdragon in the garden, gerardias, and foxgloves.
The SMOOTH FALSE FOXGLOVE (D. Virginica; G. quercifolia of Gray) - which delights in rich woods, moist or dry, bears similar, but slightly larger, blossoms on a smooth, usually branched, and taller stem, whose lower leaves especially are much cleft (pinnatifid). This species is commoner South and West, blooming from July to September. All the foxgloves elevate their sticky stigmas to the mouth of their tubes, that the pollen-dusted bumblebee may leave some of the vitalizing dust brought from another flower on its surface before she turns upside down and enters in this unusual fashion to receive a fresh supply on her way to the nectar in the base of the tube. Her pressure against the pointed anther-tips causes the light, dry pollen to sift out; on the removal of her pressure the gaping chinks close to save it from small bees and flies. It falls out, therefore, only when the bee is in the right position to receive it for export to another foxglove's stigma. Hairy footholds on anthers and filaments are provided lest the bee fall while reversed and sifting out the pollen.
The FERN-LEAVED or LOUSEWORT FALSE FOXGLOVE (D. pedicularia; G. pedicularia of Gray) - a very leafy species found in dry woods and thickets from the Mississippi and Ontario eastward to the Atlantic, north and south, has all its leaves once or twice pinnatifid, the lobes much cut and toothed. It is a rather sticky, hairy, slender, and much branched plant, growing from one to four feet tall; the broad, trumpet-shaped, yellow flower, which is sticky outside, measures an inch or an inch and a half long, and is sometimes almost as wide across. "The most abundant visitor, and the one for which the flower is most perfectly adapted," says Professor Robertson, "is Bombus Americanorum. This bee always turns head downwards on entering the flower. When it enters, or backs out, the basal joints of its legs strike the tips of the anther-cells, when the pollen falls out. I had often wondered why this bee turned upside down to enter the flower…. I discovered that the form of the flower requires it. The modification which requires the bees to reverse is associated with the peculiar mode of pollen discharge. Smaller bumblebees and some other bees which never or rarely try to suck hang under the anthers and work out the pollen by striking the trigger-like awns. They reverse of their own accord, since they are so small they are not compelled to do so on account of the form of the flower. The tube is large…so that most bumblebee workers could easily reach the nectar if the tube were not curved in the opposite direction from that of most flowers, and if the anthers did not obstruct the entrance." Sometimes small bees, despairing of getting into the tube through the mouth, suck at holes in the flower's sides, because legitimate feasting was made too difficult for the poor little things. The ruby-throated hummingbird, hovering a second above the tube, drains it with none of the clown-like performances exacted from the bumblebee. Pilfering ants find death as speedy on the sticky surfaces here as on any catchfly.
GREATER BLADDERWORT; HOODED WATER-MILFOIL; POP-WEED(Utricularia vulgaris) Bladderwort family
Flowers - Yellow, about 1/2 in. across, 3 to 20 on short pedicels in a raceme at the top of a stout, naked scape 3 to 14 in. high. Calyx deeply 2-lobed; corolla 2-lipped, the upper lip erect, the lower lip larger, its palate prominent, the lip slightly 3-lobed, and spurred at the base; 2 stamens; 1 pistil; the stigma 2-lipped. Leaves: Very finely divided into threadlike segments, bearing little air bladders. Preferred Habitat - Floating free in ponds and slow streams, or rooting in mud. Flowering Season - June-August. Distribution - Throughout nearly the whole of North America, Cuba, and Mexico. Europe and Asia.
Here is an extraordinary little plant indeed, which, by its amazing cleverness, now overruns the globe - one of the higher order of intelligence so closely akin to the animals that the gulf which separates such from them seems not very wide after all. In studying the water-crowfoots (q.v.) and other aquatic plants, we learned why submerged leaves must be so finely cut; but what mean the little bladders tipped with bristles among the pop-weed's threadlike foliage? Formerly these were regarded as mere floats - a thoughtless theory, for branches without bladders might have been observed floating perfectly. It is now known they are traps for capturing tiny aquatic creatures: nearly every bladder you examine under a microscope contains either minute crustaceans or larvae, worms, or lower organisms, some perhaps still alive, but most of them more or less advanced toward putrefaction - a stage hastened, it is thought, by a secretion within the bladders; for the plant cannot digest fresh food; it can only absorb, through certain processes within the bladder's walls, the fluid products of decay. The little insectivorous sundew (q.v.), on the contrary, not only digests, but afterward absorbs, animal matter. Tiny aquatic creatures, ever seeking shelter from larger ones ready to devour them, enter the pop-weed bladders by bending inward the free edge of the valve, which, being strongly elastic, snaps shut again behind them instantly. "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here," might be written above the entrance. No victim ever escapes from that prison. Scientists are not agreed that the bristles draw creatures into the bladder. Whatever touches the sensitive valves is at once drawn in. "To show how closely the edge fits," says Charles Darwin, "I may mention that my son found a daphnia which had inserted one of its antennae into the slit, and it was thus held fast during a whole day. On three or four occasions I have seen long narrow larvae, both dead and alive, wedged between the corner of the valve and collar, with half their bodies within the bladder and half out. Professor Cohn of Germany tells of immersing a plant of this bladderwort one evening in clear water swarming with tiny crustaceans, and by the next morning most of the bladders contained them, entrapped and swimming around in their prisons.
So much for what is going on below the surface of the water: what above it? Several flowers on the showy spike attract numerous insects. One alighting on the lower lip must thrust his tongue beneath the upper one to reach the nectar in the spur, passing on its way the irritable stigma, which receives any pollen he has brought in. Instantly it is touched, the stigma folds up to be out of the way of the tongue when it is withdrawn from the spur now laden with fresh pollen. It is thus that self-fertilization is escaped. Many vigorous seeds follow in each capsule. This marvelous piece of mechanism is what Thoreau termed "a dirty-conditioned flower, like a sluttish woman with a gaudy yellow bonnet"!
Not through its seeds alone, however, has the little plant succeeded in firmly establishing itself. In early autumn the stems terminate in large buds which, falling off, lie dormant all winter at the bottom of the pond. In spring they root and put forth leaves bearing bladders, which at this stage of existence are filled with water to help anchor the plant. As flowering season approaches, the bladders undergo an internal change to fit them for a change of function; they now fill with air, when the buoyed plant rises toward the surface to send up its flowering scape, while the bladders proceed with their nefarious practices to nourish it more abundantly while its system is heavily taxed.
The HORNED BLADDERWORT (U. cornuta), found in sandy swamps, along the borders of ponds, marshy lake margins, and in bogs from Newfoundland to Florida, westward to Minnesota and Texas, bears from one to six deliciously fragrant yellow flowers on its leafless scape from June to August. It is "perhaps the most fragrant flower we have," says John Burroughs. "In a warm moist atmosphere its odor is almost too strong…. Its perfume is sweet and spicy in an eminent degree." The low scape, rooting in the mud, has some root-like stems and branches, sometimes with a few entire leaves and bladders. Its benefactors, bumblebees and butterflies, with their highly developed aesthetic taste, are attracted from afar by this pleasing flower, whose acute, curved spur filled with nectar may not be drained by small fry, to whom the hairy throat is an additional discouragement.
SWEET WILD HONEYSUCKLE, or WOODBINE; ITALIAN OR PERFOLIATEHONEYSUCKLE(Lonicera Caprifoliuin; L. grata of Gray) Honeysuckle family
Flowers - White within, the tube pinkish, soon fading yellow, 1 to 1 1/2 in. long, very fragrant; borne in terminal whorls seated in the united pair of upper leaves. Calyx small, 5-toothed; corolla slender, tubular, 2-lipped; upper lip 4-lobed; lower lip narrow, curved downward; 5 stamens and 1 style far protruding. Stem: Climbing high, smooth. Leaves: Upper pairs united around the stem into an oval disk or shallow cup; lower leaves opposite, but not united oval, entire. Fruit: Red berries, clustered. Preferred Habitat - Thickets, wayside hedges, rocky woodlands. Flowering Season - May-June. Distribution - New England and Michigan to the Southern States.
"Escaped from cultivation and naturalized." How does it happen that this vine, a native of Europe, is now so common in the Eastern United States as to be called the American woodbine? Had Columbus been a botanist and wandered about our continent in search of flowers, he would have found very few that were familiar to him at home, except such as were common both to Europe and Asia also. Where the Aleutian Islands jut far out into the Pacific, and the strongest of ocean currents flows our way, must once have been a substantial highroad for beasts, birds, and vegetables, if not for men as well; but in the wide, briny Atlantic no European seed could live long enough to germinate after drifting across to our shores, if, indeed, it ever reached here. Once the American colonies came to be peopled, with homesick Europeans, who sent home for everything portable they had loved there, enormous numbers of trees, shrubs, plants, and seeds were respectably carried across in ships; the seeds of others stole a passage, as they do this day, among the hay used in packing. This was the chance for expansion they had been waiting for for ages. While many cultivated species found it practically impossible to escape from the vigilance of gardeners here, others, with a better plan for disseminating seed, quickly ran wild. Now some of the commonest plants we have are of European origin. This honeysuckle, by bearing red berries to attract migrating birds in autumn, soon escaped the confines of gardens. Its undigested seeds, dropped in the woodland far from the parent vine, germinated quite as readily as in Europe, and pursued in peace their natural mode of existence, until here too we now have banks
"Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine."
The HAIRY HONEYSUCKLE, or ROUGH WOODBINE (L. hirsuta), with a more northerly and westerly range, bears clusters of flowers that are yellow on the outside, and orange within the tube, the terminal clusters slightly elevated above a united pair of dull green leaves that are softly hairy underneath. The slender flower tube is sticky outside to protect it from pilfering ants, and the hairs at the base of the stamens serve to hide the nectar from unbidden guests. Berries, bright orange. Flowering season, June-July.
The deliciously fragrant CHINESE or JAPANESE HONEYSUCKLE (L. Japonica), as commonly grown on garden trellises and fences here as the morning-glory, has freely escaped from cultivation from New York southward to West Virginia and North Carolina. Everyone must be familiar with the pairs of slender, tubular, two-lipped, white or pinkish flowers, quickly turning yellow, which are borne in the leaf axils along the sprays. The smooth, dark green, opposite leaves, pale beneath, cling almost the entire year through. The stem, in winding, follows the course taken by the hands of a clock. Were the berries red instead of black, they would, doubtless, have attracted more birds to disperse their seeds, and the vine would have traveled as fast in its wild state as the Italian honeysuckle has done. It blooms from June to August, and sparingly again in autumn. When daylight begins to fade, these long, slender-tubed buds expand to welcome their chosen benefactors, the sphinx moths, wooing them with fragrance so especially strong and sweet at this time that, long after dark, guests may be guided from afar by it alone, and entertaining them with copious draughts of deeply hidden nectar, which their long tongues alone may drain. Poised above the blossoms, they sip without pause of their whirring wings, and it is not strange that many people mistake them in the half light for hummingbirds. Indeed, they are often called hummingbird moths. Darting away suddenly and swift as thought, they have also earned the name of hawk moths. Because the caterpillars have a curious trick of raising the fore part of their bodies and remaining motionless so long (like an Egyptian sphinx), the commoner name seems most appropriate. A sphinx moth at rest curls up its exceedingly long tongue like .a watch- spring: in action only the hummingbird can penetrate to such depths; hence that honeysuckle which prefers to woo the tiny bird, whose decided preference is for red, is the TRUMPET or CORAL HONEYSUCKLE; whereas the other twiners developed deep, tubular flowers that are white or yellow, so that the moths may see them in the dark, when red blossoms are engulfed in the prevailing blackness. Moreover, the latter bloom at a season when the crepuscular and nocturnal moths are most abundant. Rough rounded pollen grains, carried on the hairs and scales on the under side of the moth's body from his head to his abdomen, including antennae, tongue, legs, and wings, cannot but be rubbed off on the protruding sticky stigma of the next honeysuckle tube entered; hence cross-fertilization is regularly effected by moths alone. The next day such interlopers as bees, flies, butterflies, and even the outwitted hummingbird, may take whatever nectar or pollen remains. If the previous evening has been calm and fine, they will find little or none; but if the night has been wild and stormy, keeping the moths under cover, the tubes will brim with sweets. After fertilization the corolla turns yellow to let visitors know the mutual benefit association has gone out of business.
BUSH HONEYSUCKLE; GRAVEL-WEED(Diervilla Diervilla; D. trifida of Gray) Honeysuckle family
Flowers - Yellow, small, fragrant, 1 to 5 (usually 3) together on a peduncle from upper leaf-axils. Calyx tube slender, elongated; corolla narrowly funnel-form, about 3/4 in. long, its 5 lobes spreading, 3 of them somewhat united; 5 stamens; 1 pistil projecting. Stem: A smooth, branching shrub 2 to 4 ft. high. Leaves. Opposite, oval, and taper-pointed, finely saw-edged. Fruit: Slender, beaked pods crowned with the 5 calyx lobes. Preferred Habitat - Dry or rocky soil, woodlands, hills. Flowering Season - May-August. Distribution - British Possessions southward to Michigan and North Carolina.
The coral honeysuckle determined to woo the hummingbird by wearing his favorite color; the twining white and yellow honeysuckles of our porches chose for their benefactors the sphinx moths, attracting them by delicious fragrance and deeply hidden nectar in slender tubes that are visible even in the dark; whereas the small-flowered bush honeysuckles still cater to the bees which, in all probability, once sufficed for the entire family. For them a conspicuous landing place has been provided in the more highly colored lower lobe of this flower, from which the visitor cannot fail to find the pocket full of nectar that swells the base of the tube but when he alights, pollen laden from another blossom, he must pay toll by leaving some of the vitalizing dust on the projecting stigma before he feasts and dusts himself afresh. After they have been plundered, and consequently fertilized, all the honeysuckles change color, this one taking on a deeper yellow to let the bees know the larder is empty, that they may waste no precious time, but confine their visits where they are needed. "Many flowers adapted to bees show butterflies, hawk moths and hummingbirds as intruders," says Professor Robertson; "and this is important, since it enables us to understand how bee-flowers might become modified to suit them" - just as certain of the honeysuckles have done. Once the Oriental pink weigelias, grown in nearly every American garden, were thought to belong to the Diervilla clan, from which later-day systematists have banished them.
The EARLY FLY or TWIN HONEYSUCKLE (Lonicera ciliata), found in moist, cool woods from Pennsylvania and Michigan far northward, sends forth pairs of funnel-form, honey-yellow flowers, about three-quarters of an inch long, with five, regular lobes, on a slender footstalk from the leaf axils in May. It is a straggling, shrubby bush from three to five feet tall. The opposite leaves are thin, oval, bright green on both sides, the edges hairy. Two little ovoid, light red berries follow the flowers.
Another species, a shrubby SWAMP FLY-HONEYSUCKLE (L. oblongifolia), found in wet ground and bogs throughout a similar range, blooming about two weeks later, coats the under side of its young leaves with fine hairs to prevent their pores from clogging with vapors arising from its moist retreats. The little pale yellow flowers, also growing in pairs on a footstalk from the leaf axils, have their tubular corollas strongly cleft into two lips. Reddish markings within serve as pathfinders for the bumblebee, who finds so much nectar at the base that a tiny bulging pocket had to be provided to hold it. Sometimes the two flowers join below like Siamese twins, in which case the pair of crimson berries become more or less united.
"So we grew together,Like to a double cherry, seeming parted."
One occasionally finds the pink and white twin-flowered TARTARIANBUSH HONEYSUCKLE (L. Tartarica) escaped from cultivation in theEastern States through the agency of birds which feast upon itslittle round, red, translucent berries.
COMMON DANDELION; BLOWBALL; LION'S-TOOTH; PEASANT'S CLOCK(Taraxacum Taraxacum; T. Densleonis of Gray) Chicory family
Flower-head - Solitary, golden yellow, to 2 in. across, containing 150 to 200 perfect ray florets on a flat receptacle at the top of a hollow, milky scape 2 to 18 in. tall. Leaves: From a very deep, thick, bitter root; oblong to spatulate in outline, irregularly jagged. Preferred Habitat - Lawns, fields, grassy waste places. Flowering Season - Every month in the year. Distribution - Around the civilized world.
"Dear common flower that grow'st beside the way,Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold.. . . .Gold such as thine ne'er drew the Spanish prowThrough the primeval hush of Indian seas,Nor wrinkled the lean browOf age, to rob the lover's heart of ease.'Tis the spring's largess, which she scatters nowTo rich and poor alike, with lavish handThough most hearts never understandTo take it at God's value, but pass byThe offered wealth with unrewarded eye."
Let the triumphant Anglo-Saxon with dreams of expansion that include the round earth, the student of sociology who wishes an insight into cooperative methods as opposed to individualism, the young man anxious to learn how to get on, parents with children to be equipped for the struggle for existence, business men and employers of labor, all sit down beside the dandelion and take its lesson to heart. How has it managed without navies and armies - for it is no imperialist - to land its peaceful legions on every part of the civilized world and take possession of the soil? How can this neglected wayside composite weed triumph over the most gorgeous hothouse individual on which the horticulturist expends all the science at his command; to flourish where others give up the struggle defeated; to send its vigorous offspring abroad prepared for similar conquest of adverse conditions wherever met to attract myriads of customers to its department store, and by consummate executive ability to make every visitor unwittingly contribute to its success? Any one who doubts the dandelion's fitness to survive, should humble himself by spending days and weeks on his knees, trying to eradicate the plant from even one small lawn with a knife, only to find the turf starred with golden blossoms, or, worse still from his point of view, hoary with seed balloons, the following spring.
Deep, very deep, the stocky bitter root penetrates where heat and drought affect it not, nor nibbling rabbits, moles, grubs of insects, and other burrowers break through and steal. Cut off the upper portion only with your knife, and not one, but several, plants will likely sprout from what remains; and, however late in the season, will economize stem and leaf to produce flowers and seeds, cuddled close within the tuft, that set all your pains at naught. "Never say die" is the dandelion's motto. An exceedingly bitter medicine is extracted from the root of this dandelion, formerly known as T. officinale. Likewise are the leaves bitter. Although they appear so early in the spring, they must be especially tempting to grazing cattle and predaceous insects, the rosettes remain untouched, while other succulent, agreeable plants are devoured wholesale. Only Italians and other thrifty Old-World immigrants, who go about then with sack and knife collecting the fresh young tufts, give the plants pause but even they leave the roots intact. When boiled like spinach or eaten with French salad dressing, the bitter juices are extracted from the leaves or disguised - mean tactics by an enemy outside the dandelion's calculation. All nations know the plant by some equivalent for the name dent de lion = lion's tooth, which the jagged edges of the leaves suggest.
Presently a hollow scape arises to display the flower above the surrounding grass. Bridge builders and constructing engineers know how yielding and economical, yet how invincibly strong, is the hollow tube. March winds may buffet and bend the dandelion's stem without harm. How children delight to split this slippery tube, and run it in and out of their mouths until curls form! At the top of the scape is a double involucre of narrow, green, leaf-like scales similar to what all composites have. Half the involucre bends downward to protect the flower from crawling pilferers, half stands erect to play the role for the community of florets within that the calyx does for individual blossoms. When it is time to close the dandelion shop, business being ended for the day, this upper-half of the involucre protects it like the heavy shutters merchants put up at their windows.
Seated on a fleshy receptacle, not one flower, but often two hundred minute, perfect florets generously cooperate. "In union there is strength" is another motto adopted, not only by the chicory clan, but by the entire horde of composites. Each floret of itself could hope for no attention from busy insects; united, how gorgeously attractive these disks of overlapping rays are! Doubtless each tiny flower was once a five-petaled blossom, for in the five teeth at the top and the five lines are indications that once distinct parts have been welded together to form a more showy and suitable corolla. Each floret insures cross-pollination from insects crawling over the head, much as the minute yellow tubes in the center of a daisy do (q.v.). Quantities of small bees, wasps, flies, butterflies, and beetles - over a hundred species of insects - come seeking the nectar that wells up in each little tube, and the abundant pollen, which are greatly appreciated in early spring, when food is so scarce. In rainy weather and at night, when its benefactors are not flying, the canny dandelion closes completely to protect its precious attractions. Because the plant, which is likely to bloom every month in the year, may not always certainly reckon on being pollinated by insects, each neglected floret will curl the two spreading, sticky branches of its style so far backward that they come in contact with any pollen that has been carried out of the tube by the sweeping brushes on their tips. Occasional self-fertilization is surely better than setting no seed at all when insects fail. Not a chance does the dandelion lose to "get on."
After flowering, it again looks like a bud, lowering its head to mature seed unobserved. Presently rising on a gradually lengthened scape to elevate it where there is no interruption for the passing breeze from surrounding rivals, the transformed head, now globular, white, airy, is even more exquisite, set as it is with scores of tiny parachutes ready to sail away. A child's breath puffing out the time of day, a vireo plucking at the fluffy ball for lining to put in its nest, the summer breeze, the scythe, rake, and mowing machines, sudden gusts of winds sweeping the country before thunderstorms - these are among the agents that set the flying vagabonds free. In the hay used for packing they travel to foreign lands in ships, and, once landed, readily adapt themselves to conditions as they find them. After soaking in the briny ocean for twenty-eight days - long enough for a current to carry them a thousand miles along the coast - they are still able to germinate.
The DWARF DANDELION, CYNTHIA, or VIRGINIA GOATSBEARD (Adepogon Virginicum; formerly Krigia Virginica) - with from two to six long-peduncled, flat, deep yellow or reddish-orange flower heads, about an inch and a half across, on the summit of its stem from May to October, elects to grow in moist meadows, woodlands, and shady rocky places. How it glorifies them! From a tuffet of spatulate, wavy-toothed or entire leaves, the smooth, shining, branching stem arises bearing a single oblong, clasping leaf below the middle. Particularly beautiful is its silvery seed-ball, the pappus consisting of about a dozen hairlike bristles inside a ring of small oblong scales, on which the seed sails away. Range, from Massachusetts to Manitoba, south to Georgia and Kansas.
A charming little plant, the CAROLINA DWARF DANDELION or KRIGIA (A. Carolinianum), once confounded with the above, sends up several unbranched scapes from the same tuffet. It blooms in dry, sandy soil from April to August, from Maine and Minnesota to the Gulf States.
Like a small edition of Lowell's "dear common flower" is the TALL DANDELION, or AUTUMNAL HAWKBIT (Leontodon autumnale), its slender, wiry, branching scape six inches to two feet high, terminated by several flower-heads, each on a separate peduncle, which is usually a little thickened and scaly just below it. Only forty to seventy five-toothed ray florets spread in a flat golden disk from an oblong involucre. They close in rainy weather and at night. From June to November, in spite of its common name, it blooms in fields and along roadsides, its brownish seed-plumes rapidly following; but these are produced at the frightfully extravagant cost of over two hundred thousand grains of pollen to each head, it is estimated. The Greek generic name, meaning lion's tooth, refers to the shape of the lobes of the narrowly oblong leaves in a tuft at the base. Range, from New Jersey and Ohio far northward. Naturalized from Europe and Asia.
FIELD SOW-THISTLE; MILK THISTLE(Sonchus arvensis) Chicory family
Flower-heads - Bright yellow, very showy, to 2 in. across, several or numerous, on rough peduncles in a spreading cluster. Involucre nearly 1 in. high; the scales narrow, rough. Stem: 2 to 4 ft. high, leafy below, naked, and paniculately branched above, from deep roots and creeping rootstocks. Leaves: Long, narrow, spiny, but not sharp-toothed; deeply cut, mostly clasping at base. Preferred Habitat - Meadows, fields, roadsides, saltwater marshes. Flowering Season - July-October. Distribution - Newfoundland to Minnesota and Utah, south to New Jersey.
It cannot be long, at their present rate of increase, before this and its sister immigrant become very common weeds throughout our entire area, as they are in Europe and Asia.
The ANNUAL SOW-THISTLE or HARE'S LETTUCE (S. oleraceus), its smaller, pale yellow flower-heads, with smooth involucres more closely grouped, now occupies our fields and waste places with the assurance of a native. Honeybees chiefly, but many other bees, wasps, brilliant little flower-flies (Syrphidae), and butterflies among other winged visitors which alight on the flowers, from May to November, are responsible for the copious, soft, fine, white-plumed seeds that the winds waft away to fresh colonizing ground. The leaves clasp the stem by deep ear-like or arrow-shaped lobes, or the large lower ones are on petioles, lyrate-pinnatifid, the terminal division commonly large and triangular; the margins all toothed. Frugal European peasants use them as a potherb or salad. One of the plant's common folk-names in the Old World is hare's palace. According to the "Grete Herbale," if "the hare come under it, he is sure no beast can touch hym!' That was the spot Brer Rabbit was looking for when Brer Fox lay low! Another early writer declares that "when hares are overcome with heat they eat of an herb called hare's-lettuce, hare's-house, hare's-palace; and there is no disease in this beast the cure whereof she does not seek for in this herb." Who has detected our cottontails nibbling the succulent leaves?
TALL or WILD LETTUCE; WILD OPIUM(Lactuca Canadensis) Chicory family
Flower-heads - Numerous small, about 1/4 in. across, involucre cylindric, rays pale yellow; followed by abundant, soft, bright white pappus; the heads growing in loose, branching, terminal clusters. Stem: Smooth, 3 to 10 ft. high, leafy up to the flower panicle; juice milky. Leaves: Upper ones lance shaped; lower ones often 1 ft. long, wavy-lobed, often pinnatifid, taper pointed, narrowed into flat petioles. Preferred Habitat - Moist, open ground; roadsides. Flowering Season - June-November. Distribution - Georgia, westward to Arkansas, north to the British Possessions.
Few gardeners allow the table lettuce (sativa) to go to seed but as it is next of kin to this common wayside weed, it bears a strong likeness to it in the loose, narrow panicles of cream-colored flowers, followed by more charming, bright white little pompons. Where the garden varieties originated, or what they were, nobody knows. Herodotus says lettuce was eaten as a salad in 550 B.C.; in Pliny's time it was cultivated, and even blanched, so as to be had at all seasons of the year by the Romans. Among the privy-purse expenses of Henry VIII is a reward to a certain gardener for bringing "lettuze" and cherries to Hampton Court. Quaint old Parkinson, enumerating "the vertues of the lettice," says, "They all cool a hot and fainting stomache." When the milky juice has been thickened (lactucarium), it is sometimes used as a substitute for opium by regular practitioners - a fluid employed by the plants themselves, it is thought, to discourage creatures from feasting at their expense (see milkweed). Certain caterpillars, however, eat the leaves readily; but offer lettuce or poppy foliage to grazing cattle, and they will go without food rather than touch it.
"What's one man's poison, Signor,Is another's meat or drink."
Rabbits, for example, have been fed on the deadly nightshade for a week without injury.
The HAIRY or RED WILD LETTUCE (L. hirsuta), similar to the preceding, but often with dark reddish stem, peduncles, and tiny flower-cups, the ray florets varying from yellow to pale reddish or purplish, has longer leaves, deeply cut or lobed almost to the wide midrib. After what we learned when studying the barberry and the prickly pear cactus, for example, about plants that choose to live in dry soil, it is not surprising to find that this is a lower, less leafy, and more hairy plant than the moisture-loving tall lettuce.
An European immigrant, naturalized here but recently, the PRICKLY LETTUCE (L. Scariola) has nevertheless made itself so very much at home in a short time that it has already become a troublesome weed from New England to Pennsylvania, westward to Minnesota and Missouri. But when we calculate that every plant produces over eight thousand fluffy white-winged seeds on its narrow panicle, ready to sail away on the first breeze, no wonder so well endowed and prolific an invader marches triumphantly across continents. The long, pale green, spiny-margined, milky leaves, with stiff prickles on the midrib beneath, are doubly protected against insect borers and grazing cattle.
"Look at this delicate plant that lifts its head from themeadow;See how its leaves all point to the North as true as themagnet."
While Longfellow must have had the coarse-growing, yellow-flowered, daisy-like PRAIRIE ROSIN-WEED (Silphium laciniatum) in mind when he wrote this stanza of "Evangeline," his lines apply with more exactness to the delicate prickly lettuce, our eastern compass plant. Not until 1895 did Professor J. C. Arthur discover that when the garden lettuce is allowed to flower, its stem leaves also exhibit polarity. The great lower leaves of the rosin-weed, which stand nearly vertical, with their faces to the east and west, and their edges to the north and south, have directed many a traveler, not from Acadia only, across the prairie until it has earned the titles pilot-weed, compass or polar plant. Various theories have been advanced to account for the curious phenomenon, some claiming that the leaves contained sufficient iron to reader them magnetic - a theory promptly exploded by chemical analysis. Others supposed that the resinous character of the leaves made them susceptible to magnetic influence; but as rosin is a non-conductor of electricity, of course this hypothesis likewise proved untenable. At last Dr. Asa Gray brought forward the only sensible explanation: inasmuch as both surfaces of the rosin-weed leaf are essentially alike, there being very nearly as many stomata on the upper side as on the under, both surfaces are equally sensitive to sunlight; therefore the leaf twists on its petiole until both sides share it as equally as is possible. While the polarity of the prickly lettuce leaves is by no means so marked, Dr. Gray's theory about the rosin-weed may be applied to them as well.
ORANGE or TAWNY HAWKWEED; GOLDEN MOUSE-EAR HAWKWEED; DEVIL'SPAINT-BRUSH(Hieracium aurantiacum) Chicory family
Flower-beads - Reddish orange; 1 in. across or less, the 5-toothed rays overlapping in several series; several heads on short peduncles in a terminal cluster. Stem: Usually leafless, or with 1 to 2 small sessile leaves; 6 to 20 in. high, slender, hairy, from a tuft of hairy, spatulate, or oblong leaves at the base. Preferred Habitat - Fields, woods, roadsides, dry places. Flowering Season - June-September. Distribution - Pennsylvania and Middle States northward into British Possessions.
Peculiar reddish-orange disks, similar in shade to the butterfly weed's umbels, attract our eyes no less than those of the bees, flies, and butterflies for whom such splendor was designed. After cross-fertilization has been effected, chiefly through the agency of the smaller bees, a single row of slender, brownish, persistent bristles attached to the seeds transforms the head into the "devil's paint-brush." Another popular title in England, from whence the plant originally came, is Grimm the Collier. All the plants in this genus take their name from hierax = a hawk, because people in the old country once thought that birds of prey swooped earthward to sharpen their eyesight with leaves of the hawkweed, hawkbit, or speerhawk, as they are variously called. Transplanted into the garden, the orange hawkweed forms a spreading mass of unusual, splendid color.
The RATTLESNAKE-WEED, EARLY or VEIN-LEAF HAWKWEED, SNAKE or POOR ROBIN'S PLANTAIN (H. venosum), with flower-heads only about half an inch across, sends up a smooth, slender stem, paniculately branched above, to display the numerous dandelion-yellow disks as early as May, although October is not too late to find this generous bloomer in pine woodlands, dry thickets, and sandy soil. Purplish-veined oval leaves, more or less hairy, that spread in a tuft next the ground, are probably as efficacious in curing snakebites as those of the rattlesnake plantain (q.v.). When a credulous generation believed that the Creator had indicated with some sign on each plant the special use for which each was intended, many leaves were found to have veinings suggesting the marks on a snake's body; therefore, by simple reasoning, they must extract venom. How delightful is faith cure!
Unlike the preceding, the CANADA HAWKWEED (H. Canadense), lacks a basal tuft at flowering time, but its firm stem, that may be any height from one to five feet, is amply furnished with oblong to lance-shaped leaves seated on it, their midrib prominent, the margins sparingly but sharply toothed. In dry, open woods and thickets, and along shady roadsides, its loosely clustered heads of clear yellow, about one inch across, are displayed from July to September; and later the copious brown bristles remain for sparrows to peck at.
The ROUGH HAWKWEED (H. scabrum), with a stout, stiff stem crowned with a narrow branching cluster of small yellow flower-heads on dark bristly peduncles, also lacks a basal tuft at flowering time. Its hairy oblong leaves are seated on the rigid stem. In dry, open places, clearings, and woodlands from Nova Scotia to Georgia, and westward to Nebraska, it blooms from July to September.
More slender and sprightly is the HAIRY HAWKWEED (H. Gronovii), common in sterile soil from Massachusetts and Illinois to the Gulf States. The basal leaves and lower part of the stiff stem, especially, are hairy, not to allow too free transpiration of precious moisture.
GOLDEN ASTER(Chrysopsis Mariana) Thistle family
Plower-heads - Composite, yellow, 1 in. wide or less, a few corymbed flowers on glandular stalks; each composed of perfect tubular disk florets surrounded by pistillate ray florets the involucre campanulate, its narrow bracts overlapping in several series. Stem: Stout, silky-hairy when young, nearly smooth later, 1 to 2 1/2 ft. tall. Leaves: Alternate, oblong to spatulate, entire. Preferred Habitat - Dry soil, or sandy, not far inland. Flowering Season - August-September. Distribution - Long Island and Pennsylvania to the Gulf States.
Whoever comes upon clumps of these handsome flowers by the dusty roadside cannot but be impressed with the appropriateness of their generic name (Chrysos = gold; opsis = aspect). Farther westward, north and south. it is the HAIRY GOLDEN ASTER (C. villosa), a pale, hoary-haired plant with similar flowers borne at midsummer, that is the common species.
GOLDENRODS(Solidago) Thistle family
When these flowers transform whole acres into "fields of the cloth-of-gold," the slender wands swaying by every roadside, and purple asters add the final touch of imperial splendor to the autumn landscape, already glorious with gold and crimson, is any parterre of Nature's garden the world around more gorgeous than that portion of it we are pleased to call ours? Within its limits eighty-five species of goldenrod flourish, while a few have strayed into Mexico and South America, and only two or three belong to Europe, where many of ours are tenderly cultivated in gardens, as they should be here, had not Nature been so lavish. To name all these species, or the asters, the sparrows, and the warblers at sight is a feat probably no one living can perform; nevertheless, certain of the commoner goldenrods have well-defined peculiarities that a little field practice soon fixes in the novice's mind.
Along shady roadsides, and in moist woods and thickets, from August to October, the BLUE-STEMMED, WREATH or WOODLAND GOLDENROD (S. caesia) sways an unbranched stem with a bluish bloom on it. It is studded with pale golden clusters of tiny florets in the axils of lance-shaped, feather-veined leaves for nearly its entire length. Range from Maine, Ontario, and Minnesota to the Gulf States. None is prettier, more dainty, than this common species.
In rich woodlands and thicket borders we find the ZIG-ZAG or BROAD-LEAVED GOLDENROD (S. flexicaulis; S. latifolia of Gray) its prolonged, angled stem that grows as if waveringly uncertain of the proper direction to take, strung with small clusters of yellow florets, somewhat after the manner of the preceding species. But its saw-edged leaves are ovate, sharply tapering to a point, and narrowed at the base into petioles. It blooms from July to September. Range from New Brunswick to Georgia, and westward beyond the Mississippi.
During the same blooming period, and through a similar range, our only albino, with an Irish-bull name, the WHITE GOLDENROD, or more properly SILVER-ROD (S. bicolor), cannot be mistaken. Its cream-white florets also grow in little clusters from the upper axils of a usually simple and hairy gray stem six inches to four feet high. Most of the heads are crowded in a narrow, terminal pyramidal cluster. This plant approaches more nearly the idea of a rod than its relatives. The leaves; which are broadly oblong toward the base of the stem, and narrowed into long margined petioles, are frequently quite hairy, for the silver-rod elects to live in dry soil, and its juices must be protected from heat and too rapid transpiration.
In swamps and peat bogs the BOG GOLDENROD (S. uliginosa) sends up two to four feet high a densely flowered, oblong, terminal spire; its short branches so appressed that this stem also has a wand-like effect. The leaves, which are lance-shaped or oblong, gradually increase in size and length of petiole until the lowest often measure nine inches long. Season, July to September. Range, from Newfoundland to Pennsylvania and westward beyond the Mississippi.
Now we leave the narrow, unbranched, wand goldenrods strung with clusters of minute florets, which, however slender and charming, are certainly far less effective in the landscape than the following members of their clan which have their multitudes of florets arranged in large, compound, more or less widely branching, terminal, pyramidal clusters. On this latter plan the SHOWY or NOBLE GOLDENROD (S. speciosa) displays its splendid, dense, ascending branches of bloom from August to October. European gardeners object to planting goldenrods, complaining that they so quickly impoverish a rich bed that neighboring plants starve. This noble species becomes ignoble indeed, unless grown in rich soil, when it spreads in thrifty circular tufts. The stout stem, which often assumes reddish tints, rises from three to seven feet high, and the smooth, firm, broadly oval, saw-toothed lower leaves are long-petioled. Range, from Nova Scotia to the Carolinas, westward to Nebraska.
When crushed in the hand, the dotted, bright green, lance-shaped, entire leaves of the SWEET GOLDENROD or BLUE MOUNTAIN TEA (S. odora) cannot be mistaken, for they give forth a pleasant anise scent. The slender, simple, smooth stem is crowned with a graceful panicle, whose branches have the florets seated all on one side. Dry soil. New England to the Gulf States, July to September.
The WRINKLE-LEAVED or TALL, HAIRY GOLDENROD or BITTERWEED (S. rugosa), a perversely variable species, its hairy stem perhaps only a foot high, or, maybe, over seven feet, its rough leaves broadly oval to lance-shaped, sharply saw-edged, few if any furnished with footstems, lifts a large, compound, and gracefully curved panicle, whose florets are seated on one side of its spreading branches. Sometimes the stem branches at the summit. One usually finds it blooming in dry soil from July to November, throughout a range extending from Newfoundland and Ontario to the Gulf States.
Usually the ELM-LEAVED GOLDENROD (S. ulmifolia) sends up several slender, narrow spires of deep yellow bloom from about the same point at the summit of the smooth stem, like long, tapering fingers. Small, oblong, entire leaves are seated on these elongated sprays, while below the inflorescence the large leaves taper to a sharp point, and are coarsely and sharply toothed. In woods and copses from Maine and Minnesota to Georgia and Texas this common goldenrod blooms from July to September.
The unusually beautiful, spreading, recurved, branching panicle of bloom borne by the EARLY, PLUME, or SHARP-TOOTHED GOLDENROD or YELLOW-TOP (S. juncea), so often dried for winter decoration, may wave four feet high, but usually not over two, at the summit of a smooth, rigid stem. Toward the top, narrow, elliptical, uncut leaves are seated on the stalk; below, much larger leaves, their sharp teeth slanting forward, taper into a broad petiole, whose edges may be cut like fringe. In dry, rocky soil this is, perhaps, the first and last goldenrod to bloom, having been found as early as June, and sometimes lasting into November. Range, from North Carolina and Missouri very far north.
West of the Mississippi how beautiful are the dry prairies in autumn with the MISSOURI GOLDENROD (S. Missouriensis), its short, broad, spreading panicle waving at the summit of a smooth, slender stem from two to five feet tall. Its firm, rather thick leaves are lance-shaped, triple-nerved, entire, very rough-margined, or perhaps the lowest ones with a few scattered teeth.
Perhaps the commonest of all the lovely clan east of the Mississippi, or throughout a range extending from Arizona and Florida northward to British Columbia and New Brunswick, is the CANADA GOLDENROD or YELLOW-WEED (S. Canadensis). Surely everyone must be familiar with the large, spreading, dense-flowered panicle, with recurved sprays, that crowns a rough, hairy stem sometimes eight feet tall, or again only two feet. Its lance-shaped, acutely pointed, triple-nerved leaves are rough, and the lower ones saw-edged. From August to November one cannot fail to find it blooming in dry soil.
Most brilliantly colored of its tribe is the low-growing GRAY or FIELD GOLDENROD or DYER'S WEED (S. nemoralis). The rich, deep yellow of its little spreading, recurved, and usually one-sided panicles is admirably set off by the ashy gray, or often cottony, stem, and the hoary, grayish-green leaves in the open, sterile places where they arise from July to November. Quebec and the Northwest Territory to the Gulf States.
No longer classed as a true Solidago, but the type of a distinct genus, the LANCE-LEAVED, BUSHY, or FRAGRANT GOLDENROD (Euthamia graminifolia; formerly S. lanceolata) lifts its flat-topped, tansy-like, fragrant clusters of flower-heads from two to four feet above moist ground. From July to September it transforms whole riverbanks, low fields, and roadsides into a veritable El Dorado. Its numerous leaves are very narrow, lance-shaped, triple or five nerved, uncut, sometimes with a few resinous dots. Range, from New Brunswick to the Gulf, and westward to Nebraska.
"Along the roadside, like the flowers of goldThat tawny Incas for their gardens wrought,Heavy with sunshine droops the goldenrod."
Bewildered by the multitude of species, and wondering at the enormous number of representatives of many of them, we cannot but inquire into the cause of such triumphal conquest of a continent by a single genus. Much is explained simply in the statement that goldenrods belong to the vast order of Compositae, flowers in reality made up sometimes of hundreds of minute florets united into a far-advanced socialistic community having for its motto, "In union there is strength." (See Daisy) In the first place, such an association of florets makes a far more conspicuous advertisement than a single flower, one that can be seen by insects at a great distance; for most of the composite plants live in large colonies, each plant, as well as each floret, helping the others in attracting their benefactors' attention. The facility with which insects are enabled to collect both pollen and nectar makes the goldenrods exceedingly popular restaurants. Finally, the visits of.insects are more likely to prove effectual, because any one that alights must touch several or many florets, and cross-pollinate them simply by crawling over a head. The disk florets mostly contain both stamens and pistil, while the ray florets in one series are all male. Immense numbers of wasps, hornets, bees, flies, beetles, and "bugs" feast without effort here indeed, the budding entomologist might form a large collection of Hymenoptera, Diptera, Coleoptera, and Hemiptera from among the. visitors to a single field of goldenrod alone. Usually to be discovered among the throng are the velvety black Lytta or Cantharis, that impostor wasp-beetle, the black and yellow wavy-banded, red-legged locust-tree borer, and the painted Clytus, banded with yellow and sable, squeaking contentedly as he gnaws the florets that feed him.
Where the slender, brown, plume-tipped wands etch their charming outline above the snow-covered fields, how the sparrows, finches, buntings, and juncos love to congregate, of course helping to scatter the seeds to the wind while satisfying their hunger on the swaying, down-curved stalks. Now that the leaves are gone, some of the goldenrod stems are seen to bulge as if a tiny ball were concealed under the bark. In spring a little winged tenant, a fly, will emerge from the gall that has been his cradle all winter.
ELECAMPANE; HORSEHEAL; YELLOW STARWORT(Inula Helenium) Thistle family
Flower-heads - Large, yellow, solitary or a few, 2 to 4 in. across; on long, stout peduncles; the scaly green involucre nearly 1 in. high, holding disk florets surrounded by a fringe of long, very narrow, 3-toothed ray florets. Stem: Usually unbranched, 2 to 6 ft. high, hairy above. Leaves: Alternate, large, broadly oblong, pointed, saw-edged, rough above, woolly beneath some with heart-shaped, clasping bases. Preferred Habitat - Roadsides, fields, fence rows, damp pastures. Flowering Season - July-September. Distribution - Nova Scotia to the Carolinas, and westward to Minnesota and Missouri.
"September may be described as the month of tall weeds;" says John Burroughs. "Where they have been suffered to stand, along fences, by roadsides, and in forgotten corners,- redroot, ragweed, vervain, goldenrod, burdock, elecampane, thistles, teasels, nettles, asters, etc. - how they lift themselves up as if not afraid to be seen now! They are all outlaws; every man's hand is against them yet how surely they hold their own. They love the roadside, because here they are comparatively safe and ragged and dusty, like the common tramps that they are, they form one of the characteristic features of early fall."
Yet the elecampane has not always led a vagabond existence. Once it had its passage paid across the Atlantic, because special virtue was attributed to its thick, mucilaginous roots as a horse-medicine. For over two thousand years it has been employed by home doctors in Europe and Asia; and at first Old World immigrants thought they could not live here without the plant on their farms. Once given a chance to naturalize itself, no composite is slow in seizing it. The vigorous elecampane, rearing its fringy, yellow disks above lichen-covered stone walls in New England, the Virginia rail fence, and the rank weedy growth along barbed-wire barriers farther west, now bids fair to cross the continent.
CUP-PLANT; INDIAN-CUP; RAGGED CUP; ROSIN-PLANT(Silphium perfoliatum) Thistle family
Plower-heads - Yellow, nearly flat; 2 to 3 in. across; 20 to 30 narrow, pistillate ray florets, about 1 in. long, overlapping in 2 or 3 series around the perfect but sterile disk florets. Stem: 4 to 8 ft. tall, square, smooth, usually branched above. Leaves: Opposite, ovate, upper ones united by their bases to form a cup; lower ones large, coarsely toothed, and narrowed into margined petioles; all filled with resinous juice. Preferred Habitat - Moist soil, low ground near streams. Flowering Season - July-September. Distribution - Ontario, New York, and Georgia, westward to Minnesota, Nebraska, and Louisiana.
It behooves a species related to the wonderful compass-plant (q.v.) to do something unusual with its leaves; hence this one makes cups to catch rain by uniting its upper pairs. Darwin's experiments with infinitesimal doses of ammonia in stimulating leaf activity may throw some light on this singular arrangement. So many plants provide traps to catch rain, although fourteen gallons of it contain only one grain of ammonia, that we must believe there is a wise physiological reason for calling upon the leaves to assist the roots in absorbing it, A native of Western prairies, the cup-plant has now become naturalized so far east as the neighborhood 6f New York City.
FALSE SUNFLOWER; OX-EYE(Heliopsis helianthoides; H. laevis of Gray) Thistle family
Flower-heads - Entirely golden yellow, daisy-like, 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 in. across, the perfect disk florets inserted on a convex, chaffy receptacle, and surrounded by pistillate, fertile, 3-toothed ray florets; usually numerous solitary heads borne on long peduncles from axils of upper leaves. Stem: 3 to 5 ft. tall, branching above, smooth. Leaves: Opposite, ovate, and tapering to a sharp point, sharply and evenly toothed. Preferred Habitat - Open places; rich, low ground; beside streams. Flowering Season - July-September. Distribution - Southern Canada to Florida, westward to Illinois and Kentucky.
Along the streams the numerous flower-heads of this gorgeous sunbearer shine out from afar, brightening a long, meandering course across the low-lying meadows. Like heralds of good things to come, they march a little in advance of the brilliant pageant of wild flowers that sweeps across the country from midsummer till killing frost. Most people mistake them for true, yellow-disked sunflowers, whose ray florets are neutral, not fertile as these long persistent ones are, But no one should confuse them with the dark cone-centered ox-eye daisy. Small bees, wasps, hornets, flies, little butterflies, beetles, and lower insects come to feast on the nectar and pollen within the minute tubular disk florets. The bright fulvous and black pearl crescent butterfly, with a trifle over an inch wing expanse; the common hairstreak; the even commoner little white butterfly; and the tiny black sooty wing, among others, appear to find generous entertainment here. The last named little fellow, when in the caterpillar stage, formed a cradle for himself by folding together a leaf of the ubiquitous green-flowered pigweed or lamb's quarters (Cizenopodium album) and stitching the edges together with a few silken threads. Here it slept by day, emerging only at night to feed. Usually one has not long to wait before discovering the white-dotted sooty wing among the midsummer composites.
BLACK-EYED SUSAN; YELLOW or OX-EYE DAISY; NIGGER-HEAD; GOLDENJERUSALEM; PURPLE CONE-FLOWER(Rudbeckia hirta) Thistle family
Flower-heads - From 10 to 20 orange-yellow neutral rays around a conical, dark purplish-brown disk of florets containing both stamens and pistil. Stem: 1 to 3 ft. tall, hairy, rough, usually unbranched, often tufted. Leaves: Oblong to lance-shaped, thick, sparingly notched, rough. Preferred Habitat - Open sunny places; dry fields. Flowering Season - May-September. Distribution - Ontario and the Northwest Territory south to Colorado and the Gulf States.
So very many weeds having come to our Eastern shores from Europe, and marched farther and farther west year by year, it is but fair that black-eyed Susan, a native of Western clover fields, should travel toward the Atlantic in bundles of hay whenever she gets the chance, to repay Eastern farmers in their own coin. Do these gorgeous heads know that all our showy rudbeckias - some with orange red at the base of their ray florets - have become prime favorites of late years in European gardens, so offering them still another chance to overrun the Old World, to which so much American hay is shipped? Thrifty farmers may decry the importation into their mowing lots, but there is a glory to the cone-flower beside which the glitter of a gold coin fades into paltry nothingness. Having been instructed in the decorative usefulness of all this genus by European landscape gardeners, we Americans now importune the Department of Agriculture for seeds through members of Congress, even Representatives of States that have passed stringent laws against the dissemination of "weeds." Inasmuch as each black-eyed Susan puts into daily operation the business methods of the white daisy (q.v.), methods which have become a sort of creed for the entire composite horde to live by, it is plain that she may defy both farmers and legislators. Bees, wasps, flies, butterflies, and beetles could not be kept away from an entertainer so generous; for while the nectar in the deep, tubular brown florets may be drained only by long, slender tongues, pollen is accessible to all. Anyone who has had a jar of these yellow daisies standing on a polished table indoors, and tried to keep its surface free from a ring of golden dust around the flowers, knows how abundant their pollen is. There are those who vainly imagine that the slaughter of dozens of English sparrows occasionally is going to save this land of liberty from being overrun with millions of the hardy little gamins that have proved themselves so fit in the struggle for survival. As vainly may farmers try to exterminate a composite that has once taken possession of their fields.