WILD or HOG PEANUT(Falcata comosa; Amphicarpaea monoica of Gray) Pea family
Flowers - Numerous small, showy ones, borne in drooping clusters from axils of upper leaves; lilac, pale purplish, or rarely white, butterfly-shaped, consisting of standard petal partly enfolding wings and keel. Calyx tubular, 4 or 5 toothed; 10 stamens (9 and 1); 1 pistil. (Also solitary fertile flowers, lacking petals, on thread-like, creeping branches from lower axils or underground). Stem: Twining wiry brownish-hairy, to 8 ft. long. Leaves: Compounded of 3 thin leaflets, egg-shaped at base, acutely pointed at tip. Fruit: Hairy pod 1 in. long. Also 1-seeded, pale, rounded, underground peanut. Preferred Habitat - Moist thickets, shady roadsides. Flowering Season - August-September. Distribution - New Brunswick westward to Nebraska, south to Gulf of Mexico.
Amphicarpaea ("seed at both ends"), the Greek name by which this graceful vine was formerly known, emphasizes its most interesting feature, that, nevertheless, seems to many a foolish duplication of energy on Nature's part. Why should the same plant bear two kinds of blossoms and seeds? Among the foliage of low shrubbery and plants in shady lanes and woodside thickets, we see the delicate, drooping clusters of lilac blossoms hanging where bees can readily discover them and, in pilfering their sweets, transfer their pollen from flower to flower. But in case of failure to intercross these blossoms that are dependent upon insect help to set fertile seed, what then? Must the plant run the risk of extinction? Self-fertilization may be an evil, but failure to produce seed at all is surely the greatest one. To guard against such a calamity, insignificant looking flowers that have no petals to open for the enticing of insects, but which fertilize themselves with their own pollen, produce abundant seed close to the ground or under it.Then what need of the showy blossoms hanging in the thicket above? Close inbreeding in the vegetable world, as in the animal, ultimately produces degenerate offspring; and although the showy lilac blossoms of the wild peanut yield comparatively few cross-fertilized seeds, these are quite sufficient to enable the vine to maintain those desired features which are the inheritance from ancestors that struggled in their day and generation after perfection. No plant dares depend upon its cleistogamous or blind flowers alone for offspring; and in the sixty or more genera containing these curious growths, that usually look like buds arrested in development, every plant that bears them bears also showy flowers dependent upon cross-pollination by insect aid.
The boy who
"Drives home the cows from the pastureUp through the long shady lane"
knows how reluctantly they leave the feast afforded by the wild peanut. Hogs, rooting about in the moist soil where it grows, unearth the hairy pods that should produce next year's vines; hence the poor excuse for branding a charming plant with a repellent folk-name,
VIOLETS(Viola) Violet family
Lacking perfume only to be a perfectly satisfying flower, the COMMON, PURPLE, MEADOW, or HOODED BLUE VIOLET (V. obliqua; V. cucullata of Gray) has nevertheless established itself in the hearts of the people from the Arctic to the Gulf as no sweet-scented, showy, hothouse exotic has ever done. Royal in color as in lavish profusion, it blossoms everywhere - in woods, waysides, meadows, and marshes, but always in finer form in cool, shady dells; with longer flowering scapes in meadow bogs; and with longer leaves than wide in swampy woodlands. The heart-shaped, saw-edged leaves, folded toward the center when newly put forth, and the five-petalled, bluish-purple, golden-hearted blossom are too familiar for more detailed description. From the three-cornered stars of the elastic capsules, the seeds are scattered abroad.
Beards on the spurred lower petal and the two side petals give the bees a foothold when they turn head downward, as some must, to suck nectar. This attitude enables them to receive the pollen dusted on their abdomens, when they jar the flower, at a point nearest their pollen-collecting hairs. It is also an economical advantage to the flower which can sift the pollen downward on the bee instead of exposing it to the pollen-eating interlopers. Among the latter may be classed the bumblebees and butterflies whose long lips and tongues pilfer ad libitum. "For the proper visitors of the bearded violets," says Professor Robertson, "we must look to the small bees, among which the Osmias are the most important."
When science was younger and hair splitting an uncommon indulgence of botanists, the EARLY BLUE VIOLET (Viola palmata) was thought to be simply a variety of the common purple violet, whose heart-shaped leaves frequently show a tendency to divide into lobes. But the early blue violet, however roundish or heart-shaped its early leaves may be, has the later ones variously divided into from three to thirteen lobes, often almost as much cut on the sides as the leaves of the bird's-foot violet. In dry soil, chiefly in the woods, this violet may be found from Southern Canada westward to Minnesota, and south to northern boundaries of the Gulf States. Only its side petals are bearded to form footrests for the insects that search for the deeply secreted nectar. Many butterflies visit this flower. On entering it a bee must first touch the stigma before any fresh golden pollen is released from the anther cone, and cross-fertilization naturally results.
In shale and sandy soil, even in the gravel of hillsides, one finds the narrowly divided, finely cut leaves and the bicolored beardless blossom of the BIRD'S-FOOT VIOLET (V. pedata), pale bluish purple on the lower petals, dark purple on one or two upper ones, and with a heart of gold. The large, velvety, pansy-like blossom and the unusual foliage which rises in rather dense tufts are sufficient to distinguish the plant from its numerous kin. This species produces no cleistogamous or blind flowers. Frequently the bird's-foot violet blooms a second time, in autumn, a delightful eccentricity of this family. The spur of its lower petal is long and very slender, and, as might be expected, the longest-tongued bees and butterflies are its most frequent visitors. These receive the pollen on the base of the proboscis.
The WOOLLY BLUE VIOLET (V. sororia), whose stems and younger leaves, at least, are covered with hairs, and whose purplish-blue flowers are more or less bearded within, prefers a shady but dry situation; whereas its next of kin, the ARROW-LEAVED VIOLET (V. sagittata), delights in moist but open meadows and marshes. The latter's long, arrow, or halberd-shaped leaves, usually entire above the middle, but slightly lobed below it, may rear themselves nine inches high in favorable soil, or in dry uplands perhaps only two inches. The flowering scapes grow as tall as the leaves. All but the lower petal of the large, deep, dark, purplish-blue flower are bearded. This species produces an abundance of late cleistogamous flowers on erect stems. These peculiar greenish flowers without petals, that are so often mistaken for buds or seed vessels; that never open, but without insect aid ripen quantities of fertile seed, are usually borne, if not actually under ground, then not far above it, on nearly all violet plants. It will be observed that all species which bear blind flowers rely somewhat on showy, cross-fertilized blossoms also to counteract degeneracy from close inbreeding.
The OVATE-LEAVED VIOLET (V. ovata), formerly reckoned as a mere variety of the former species, is now accorded a distinct rank. Not all the blossoms, but an occasional clump, has a faint perfume like sweet clover. The leaf is elongated, but rather too round to be halberd-shaped; the stems are hairy; and the flowers, which closely resemble those of the arrow-leaved violet, are earlier; making these two species, which are popularly mistaken for one, among the earliest and commonest of their clan. The dry soil of upland woods and thickets is the ovate-leaved violet's preferred habitat.
In course of time the lovely ENGLISH, MARCH, or SWEET VIOLET, (V. odorata), which has escaped from gardens, and which is now rapidly increasing with the help of seed and runners on the Atlantic and the Pacific coasts, may be established among our wild flowers. No blossom figures so prominently in European literature. In France, it has even entered the political field since Napoleon's day. Yale University has adopted the violet for its own especial flower, although it is the corn-flower, or bachelor's button (Centaurea cyanus) that is the true Yale blue. Sprengel, who made a most elaborate study of the violet, condensed the result of his research into the following questions and answers, which are given here because much that he says applies to our own native species, which have been too little studied in the modern scientific spirit:
"1. Why is the flower situated on a long stalk which is upright, but curved downwards at the free end? In order that it may hang down; which, firstly, prevents rain from obtaining access to the nectar; and, secondly, places the stamens in such a position that the pollen falls into the open space between the pistil and the free ends of the stamens. If the flower were upright, the pollen would fall into the space between the base of the stamen and the base of the pistil, and would not come in contact with the bee.
"2. Why does the pollen differ from that of most other insect-fertilized flowers? In most of such flowers the insects themselves remove the pollen from the anthers, and it is therefore important that the pollen should not easily be detached and carried away by the wind. In the present case, on the contrary, it is desirable that it should be looser and dryer, so that it may easily fall into the space between the stamens and the pistil. If it remained attached to the anther, it would not be touched by the bee, and the flower would remain unfertilized.
"3. Why is the base of the style so thin? In order that the bee may be more easily able to bend the style.
"4. Why is the base of the style bent? For the same reason. The result of the curvature is that the pistil is much more easily bent than would be the case if the style were straight.
"5. Finally, why does the membranous termination of the upper filament overlap the corresponding portions of the two middle stamens? Because this enables the bee to move the pistil, and thereby to set free the pollen more easily than would be the case under the reverse arrangement."
In high altitudes of New England, Colorado. and northward, where the soil is wet and cold, the pale lilac, slightly bearded petals, streaked with darker veins, of the MARSH VIOLET (V. palustris), with its almost round leaves, may be found from May to June. All through the White Mountains one finds it abundant.
A peculiarity of the DOG or RUNNING VIOLET (V. Labradorica) is that its small, heart-shaped leaves are set along the branching stem, and its pale purple blossoms rise from their angles, pansy fashion. From March to May it blooms throughout its wide range in wet, shady places. Its English prototype, called by the same invidious name, was given the prefix "dog," because the word, which is always intended to express contempt in the British mind, is applied in this case for the flower's lack of fragrance. When a bee visits this violet, his head coming in contact with the stigma jars it, thus opening the little pollen box, whose contents must fall out on his head and be carried away and rubbed off where it will fertilize the next violet visited.
SEA LAVENDER; MARSH ROSEMARY; CANKER-ROOT; INK-ROOT (Limonium Carolinianum; Statice Limonium of Gray) Plumbago family
Flowers - Very tiny, pale, dull lavender, erect, set along upper side of branches. Calyx 5-toothed, tubular, plaited; corolla of 5 petals opposite as many stamens; 1 pistil with 5 thread-like styles. Scape: 1 to 2 ft. high, slender, leafless, much branched above. Leaves: All from thick, fleshy rootstock, narrowly oblong, tapering into margined petioles, thick, the edges slightly waved, not toothed; midrib prominent. Preferred Habitat - Salt meadows and marshes. Flowering Season - July-October. Distribution - Atlantic coast from Labrador to Florida, westward along the Gulf to Texas; also in Europe.
Seen in masses, from a little distance, this tiny flower looks like blue-gray mist blown in over the meadows from the sea, and on closer view each plant suggests sea-spray itself. Thrifty housewives along the coast dry it for winter bouquets, partly for ornament and partly because there is an old wives' tradition that it keeps away moths. Statice, from the Greek verb to stop, hence an astringent, was the generic name formerly applied to the plants, with whose roots these same old women believed they cured canker sores.
FRINGED GENTIAN(Gentiana crinita) Gentian family
Flowers - Deep, bright blue, rarely white, several or many, about 2 in. high, stiffly erect, and solitary at ends of very long foot-stalk. Calyx of 4 unequal, acutely pointed lobes. Corolla funnel form, its four lobes spreading, rounded, fringed around ends, but scarcely on sides. Four stamens inserted on corolla tube; 1 pistil with 2 stigmas. Stem: 1 to 3 ft. high, usually branched, leafy. Leaves: Opposite, upper ones acute at tip, broadening to heart-shaped base, seated on stem. Fruit: A spindle-shaped, 2-valved capsule, containing numerous scaly, hairy seeds. Preferred Habitat - Low, moist meadows and woods. Flowering Season - September-November. Distribution - Quebec, southward to Georgia, and westward beyond the Mississippi.
"Thou waitest late, and com'st aloneWhen woods are bare and birds have flown,And frosts and shortening days portendThe aged year is near his end.
"Then doth thy sweet and quiet eyeLook through its fringes to the sky,Blue - blue - as if that sky let failA flower from its cerulean wall."
When we come upon a bed of gentians on some sparkling October day, we can but repeat Bryant's thoughts and express them prosaically who attempt description. In dark weather this sunshine lover remains shut, to protect its nectar and pollen from possible showers. An elusive plant is this gentian, which by no means always reappears in the same places year after year, for it is an annual whose seeds alone perpetuate it. Seating themselves on the winds when autumn gales shake them from out of the home wall, these little hairy scales ride afar, and those that are so fortunate as to strike into soft, moist soil at the end of the journey, germinate. Because this flower is so rarely beautiful that few can resist the temptation of picking it, it is becoming sadly rare near large settlements.
The special importance of producing a quantity of fertile seed has led the gentians to adopt proterandry - one of the commonest, because most successful, methods of insuring it. The anthers, coming to maturity early, shed their pollen on the bumblebees that have been first attracted by their favorite color and the enticing fringes before they crawl half way down the tube where they can reach the nectar secreted in the walls. After the pollen has been carried from the early flowers, and the stamens begin to wither, up rises the pistil to be fertilized with pollen brought from a newly opened blossom by the bee or butterfly. The late development of the pistil accounts for the error often stated, that some gentians have none. No doubt the fringe, which most scientists regard simply as an additional attraction for winged insects, serves a double purpose in entangling the feet of ants and other crawlers that would climb over the edge to pilfer sweets clearly intended for the bumblebee alone.
Fifteen species of gentian have been gathered during a half-hour walk in Switzerland, where the pastures are spread with sheets of blue. Indeed, one can little realize the beauty of these heavenly flowers who has not seen them among the Alps.
The FIVE-FLOWERED or STIFF GENTIAN, or AGUE-WEED (Gentiana quinquefolia; G. quinqueflora of Gray) has its five-parted, small, picotee-edged blue flowers arranged in clusters, not exceeding seven, at the ends of the branches or seated in the leaf-axils. The slender, branching, ridged stem may rise only two inches in dry soil; or perhaps two feet in rich, moist, rocky ground, where it grows to perfection, especially in mountainous regions. From Canada to Florida and westward to Missouri is its range, and beginning to bloom in August southward, it may not be found until September in the Catskills, and in October it is still in its glory in Ontario. The colorless, bitter juice of many of the gentian tribe has long been valued as a tonic in medicine. Evidently the butterflies that pilfer this "ague-weed," and the bees that are its legitimate feasters, find something more delectable in its blue walls.
A deep, intense blue is the CLOSED, BLIND, or BOTTLE GENTIAN (G. Andrewsii), more truly the color of the "male bluebird's back," to which Thoreau likened the paler fringed gentian. Rarely some degenerate plant bears white flowers. As it is a perennial, we are likely to find it in its old haunts year after year; nevertheless its winged seeds sail far abroad to seek pastures new. This gentian also shows a preference for moist soil. Gray thought that it expanded slightly, and for a short time only in sunshine, but added that, although it is proterandrous, i.e. it matures and sheds its pollen before its stigma is susceptible to any, he believed it finally fertilized itself by the lobes of the stigma curling backward until they touched the anthers. But Gray was doubtless mistaken. Several authorities have recently proved that the flower is adapted to bumblebees. It offers them the last feast of the season, for although it comes into bloom in August southward, farther northward - and it extends from Quebec to the Northwest Territory - it lasts through October.
Now, how can a bumblebee enter this inhospitable-looking flower? If he did but know it, it keeps closed for his special benefit, having no fringes or hairs to entangle the feet of crawling pilferers, and no better way of protecting its nectar from rain and marauding butterflies that are not adapted to its needs. But he is a powerful fellow. Watch him alight on a cluster of blossoms, select the younger, nectar-bearing ones, that are distinctly marked white against a light-blue background at the mouth of the corolla for his special guidance. Old flowers from which the nectar has been removed turn deep reddish purple, and the white pathfinders become indistinct. With some difficulty, it is true, the bumblebee (B. Americanorum) thrusts his tongue through the valve of the chosen flower where the five plaited lobes overlap one another; then he pushes with all his might until his head having passed the entrance most of his body follows, leaving only his hind legs and the tip of his abdomen sticking out as he makes the circuit. He has much sense as well as muscle, and does not risk imprisonment in what must prove a tomb by a total and unnecessary disappearance within the bottle. Presently he backs out, brushes the pollen from his head and thorax into his baskets, and is off to fertilize an older, stigmatic flower with the few grains of quickening dust that must remain on his velvety head.
WILD BLUE PHLOX(Phlox divaricata) Phlox family
Flowers - Pale lilac blue, slightly fragrant, borne on sticky pedicels, in loose, spreading clusters. Calyx with 5 long, sharp teeth. Corolla of 5 flat lobes, indented like the top of a heart, and united into a slender tube; 5 unequal, straight, short stamens in corolla tube; 1 pistil with 3 stigmas. Stem: to 2 ft. high, finely coated with sticky hairs above, erect or spreading, and producing leafy shoots from base. Leaves: Of flowering stem - opposite, oblong, tapering to a point; of sterile shoots - oblong or egg-shaped, not pointed, 1 to 2 in. long. Preferred habitat - Moist, rocky woods. Flowering Season - April-June. Distribution - Eastern Canada to Florida, Minnesota to Arkansas.
The merest novice can have no difficulty in naming the flower whose wild and cultivated relations abound throughout North America, the almost exclusive home of the genus, although it is to European horticulturists, as usual the first to see the possibilities in our native flowers, that we owe the gay hybrids in our gardens. Mr. Drummond, a collector from the Botanical Society of Glasgow, early in the thirties sent home the seeds of a species from Texas, which became the ancestor of the gorgeous annuals, the Drummond phloxes of commerce today; and although he died of fever in Cuba before the plants became generally known, not even his kinsman, the author of "Natural Law in the Spiritual World," has done more to immortalize the family name.
While the wild blue phlox is sometimes cultivated, it is the GARDEN PHLOX (P. paniculata), common in woods and thickets from Pennsylvania to Illinois and southward, that under a gardener's care bears the large terminal clusters of purple, magenta, crimson, pink, and white flowers abundant in old-fashioned, hardy borders. From these it has escaped so freely in many sections of the North and East as to be counted among the local wildflowers. Unless the young offshoots are separated from the parent and given a nook of their own, the flower quickly reverts to the original type. European cultivators claim that the most brilliant colors are obtained by crossing annual with perennial phloxes.
WILD SWEET WILLIAM (P. maculata), another perennial much sought by cultivators, loves the moisture of low woods and the neighborhood of streams in the Middle and Western States when it is free to choose its habitat; but it, too, has so freely escaped from gardens farther north into dry and dusty roadsides, that anyone who has passed the ruins of Hawthorne's little red cottage at Lenox, for example, and seen the way his wife's clump of white phlox under his study window has spread to cover an acre of hillside, would suppose it to be luxuriating in its favorite locality. This variety of the species (var. Candida) lacks the purplish flecks on stem and lower leaves responsible for the specific name of the type. Pinkish purple or pink blossoms are borne in a rather narrow, elongated panicle on the typical Sweet William.
Most members of the phlox family resort to the trick of coating the upper stem and the peduncles immediately below the flowers with a sticky secretion in which crawling insects, intent on pilfering sweets, meet their death, just as birds are caught on limed twigs. Butterflies, for whom phloxes have narrowed their tubes to the exclusion of most other insects, are their benefactors; but long-tongued bees and flies often seek their nectar. Indeed, the number of strictly butterfly-flowers is surprisingly small.
VIRGINIA COWSLIP; TREE or SMOOTH LUNGWORT; BLUE-BELLS(Mertensia Virginica) Borage family
Flowers - Pinkish in bud, afterward purplish blue, fading to light blue; about 1 in. long, tubular, funnel form, the tube of corolla not crested; spreading or hanging on slender pedicels in showy, loose clusters at end of smooth stem from 1 to 2 ft. high; stamens 5, inserted on corolla; 1 pistil; ovary of 4 divisions. Leaves: Large, entire, alternate, veiny, oblong or obovate, the upper ones seated on stem; lower very large ones diminishing toward base into long petioles; at first rich, dark purple, afterward pale bluish gray. Fruit: 4 seed-like little nuts, leathery, wrinkled when mature. Preferred Habitat - Alluvial ground, low meadows, and along streams. Flowering Season - March-May. Distribution - Southern Canada to South Carolina and Kansas, west to Nebraska; most abundant in middle West.
Not to be outdone by its cousins the heliotrope and the forget-me-not, this lovely and far more showy spring flower has found its way into the rockwork and sheltered, moist nooks of many gardens, especially in England, where Mr. W. Robinson, who has appealed for its wider cultivation in that perennially charming book, "The English Flower Garden," says of the Mertensias: "There is something about them more beautiful in form of foliage and stem, and in the graceful way in which they rise to panicles of blue, than in almost any other family…. Handsomest of all is the Virginia cowslip." And yet Robinson never saw the alluvial meadows in the Ohio Valley blued with lovely masses of the plant in April.
A great variety of insects visit this blossom, which, being tubular, conducts them straight to the ample feast; but not until they have deposited some pollen brought from another flower on the stigma in their way. The anthers are too widely separated from the stigma to make self-fertilization likely. Occasionally one finds the cowslips perforated by clever bumblebees. As only the females, which are able to sip far deeper cups, are flying when they bloom, they must be either too mischievous or too lazy to drain them in the legitimate manner. Butterflies have only to stand on a flower, not to enter it, in order to sip nectar from the four glands that secrete it abundantly.
FORGET-ME-NOT; MOUSE-EAR; SCORPION GRASS; SNAKE GRASS; LOVE ME(Myosotis Palustris) Borage family
Flowers - Pure blue, pinkish, or white, with yellow eye; flat, 5-lobed, borne in many-flowered, long, often 1-sided racemes. Calyx 5-cleft; the lobes narrow, spreading, erect, and open in fruit; 5 stamens inserted on corolla tube; style threadlike; ovary 4-celled. Stem: Low, branching, leafy, slender, hairy, partially reclining. Leaves: (Myosotis = mouse-ear) oblong, alternate, seated on stem, hairy. Fruit: Nutlets, angled and keeled on inner side. Preferred Habitat - Escaped from gardens to brooksides, marshes, and low meadows. Flowering Season - May-July. Distribution - Native of Europe and Asia, now rapidly spreading from Nova Scotia southward to New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and beyond.
How rare a color blue must have been originally among our flora is evident from the majority of blue and purple flowers that, although now abundant here and so perfectly at home, are really quite recent immigrants from Europe and Asia. But our dryer, hotter climate never brings to the perfection attained in England
"The sweet forget-me-notsThat grow for happy lovers."
Tennyson thus ignores the melancholy association of the flower in the popular legend which tells how a lover, when trying to gather some of these blossoms for his sweetheart, fell into a deep pool, and threw a bunch on the bank, calling out, as he sank forever from her sight, "Forget me not." Another dismal myth sends its hero forth seeking hidden treasure caves in a mountain, under the guidance of a fairy. He fills his pockets with gold, but not heeding the fairy's warning to "forget not the best" - i.e., the myosotis - he is crushed by the closing together of the mountain. Happiest of all is the folk-tale of the Persians; as told by their poet Shiraz: "It was in the golden morning of the early world, when an angel sat weeping outside the closed gates of Paradise. He had fallen from his high estate through loving a daughter of earth, nor was he permitted to enter again until she whom he loved had planted the flowers of the forget-me-not in every corner of the world. He returned to earth and assisted her, and together they went hand in hand. When their task was ended, they entered Paradise together, for the fair woman, without tasting the bitterness of death, became immortal like the angel whose love her beauty had won when she sat by the river twining forget-me-nots in her hair."
It was the golden ring around the forget-me-not's center that first led Sprengel to believe the conspicuous markings at the entrance of many flowers served as pathfinders to insects. This golden circle also shelters the nectar from rain, and indicates to the fly or bee just where it must probe between stigma and anthers to touch them with opposite sides of its tongue. Since it may probe from any point of the circle, it is quite likely that the side of the tongue that touched a pollen-laden anther in one flower will touch the stigma in the next one visited, and so cross-fertilize it. But forget-me-nots are not wholly dependent on insects. When these fail, a fully mature flower is still able to set fertile seed by shedding its own pollen directly on the stigma.
The SMALLER FORGET-ME-NOT (M. laxa), formerly accounted a mere variety of palustris, but now defined as a distinct species, is a native, and therefore may serve to show how its European relative here will deteriorate in the dryer atmosphere of the New World. Its tiny turquoise flowers, borne on long stems from a very loose raceme, gleam above wet, muddy places from Newfoundland and Eastern Canada to Virginia and Tennessee.
Even smaller still are the blue or white flowers of the FIELD FORGET-ME-NOT, SCORPION GRASS, or MOUSE-EAR (M. arvenis), whose stems and leaves are covered with bristly hairs. It blooms from August to July in dry places, even on hillsides, an unusual locality in which to find a member of this moisture-loving clan. All the flowers remain long in bloom, continually forming new buds on a lengthening stem, and leaving behind little empty green calices.
VIPER'S BUGLOSS; BLUE-WEED; VIPER'S HERB or GRASS; SNAKE-FLOWER;BLUE-THISTLE(Echium vulgare) Borage family
Flowers - Bright blue, afterward reddish purple, pink in the bud, numerous, clustered on short, 1-sided, curved spikes rolled up at first, and straightening out as flowers expand. Calyx deeply 5-cleft; corolla 1 in. long or less, funnel form, the 5 lobes unequal, acute; 5 stamens inserted on corolla tube, the filaments spreading below, and united above into slender appendage, the anthers forming a cone. 1 pistil with 2 stigmas. Stem: 1 to 2 1/2 ft. high; bristly-hairy, erect, spotted. Leaves: Hairy, rough, oblong to lance-shaped, alternate, seated on stem, except at base of plant. Preferred Habitat - Dry fields, waste places; roadsides. Flowering Season - June-July. Distribution - New Brunswick to Virginia, westward to Nebraska; Europe and Asia.
In England, from whose gardens this plant escaped long ago, a war of extermination that has been waged against the vigorous, beautiful weed by the farmers has at last driven it to the extremity of the island, where a few stragglers about Penzance testify to the vanquishing of what must once have been a mighty army. From England a few refugees reached here in i683, no one knows how; but they proved to be the vanguard of an aggressive and victorious host that quickly overran our open, hospitable country, as if to give vent to revenge for long years of persecution at the hands of Europeans. "It is a fact that all our more pernicious weeds, like our vermin, are of Old-World origin," says.John Burroughs. "…Perhaps the most notable thing about them, when compared with our native species, is their persistence, not to say pugnacity. They fight for the soil; they plant colonies here and there, and will not be rooted out. Our native weeds are for the most part shy and harmless, and retreat before civilization…. We have hardly a weed we can call our own."
Years ago, when simple folk believed God had marked plants with some sign to indicate the special use for which each was intended, they regarded the spotted stem of the bugloss, and its seeds shaped like a serpent's head, as certain indications that the herb would cure snake bites. Indeed, the genus takes its name from Echis, the Greek for viper.
Because it is showy and offers accessible nectar, a great variety of insects visit the blue-weed; Muller alone observed sixty-seven species about it. We need no longer wonder at its fertility. Of the five stamens one remains in the tube, while the other four project and form a convenient alighting place for visitors, which necessarily dust their under sides with pollen as they enter; for the red anthers were already ripe when the flower opened. Then, however, the short, immature pistil was kept below. After the stamens have shed their pollen and there can be no longer danger of self-fertilization, it gradually elongates itself beyond the point occupied by them, and divides into two little horns whose stigmatic surfaces an incoming pollen-laden insect cannot well fail to strike against. Cross-pollination is so thoroughly secured in this case that the plant has completely lost the power of fertilizing itself. Unwelcome visitors like ants, which would pilfer nectar without rendering any useful service in return, are warded off by the bristly, hairy foliage. Several kinds of female bees seek the bugloss exclusively for food for their larvae as well as for themselves, sweeping up the abundant pollen with their abdominal brushes as they feast without effort.
BLUE VERVAIN; WILD HYSSOP; SIMPLER'S JOY(Verbena hastala) Vervain family
Flowers - Very small, purplish blue, in numerous slender, erect, compact spikes. Calyx 5-toothed; corolla tubular, unequally 5-lobed; 2 pairs of stamens; 1 pistil. Stem: 3 to 7 ft. high, rough, branched above, leafy, 4-sided. Leaves: Opposite, stemmed, lance-shaped, saw-edged, rough; lower ones lobed at base. Preferred Habitat - Moist meadows, roadsides, waste places. Flowering Season - June-September. Distribution - United States and Canada in almost every part.
Seeds below, a circle of insignificant purple-blue flowers in the center, and buds at the top of the vervain's slender spires do not produce a striking effect, yet this common plant certainly does not lack beauty. John Burroughs, ever ready to say a kindly, appreciative word for any weed, speaks of its drooping, knotted threads, that "make a pretty etching upon the winter snow." Bees, the vervain's benefactors, are usually seen clinging to the blooming spikes, and apparently sleep on them. Borrowing the name of simpler's joy from its European sister, the flower has also appropriated much of the tradition and folk-lore centered about that plant which herb-gatherers, or simplers, truly delighted to see, since none was once more salable.
EUROPEAN VERVAIN (V. officinalis) HERB-OF-THE-CROSS, BERBINE, HOLY-HERB, ENCHANTER'S PLANT, JUNO'S TEARS, PIGEON-GRASS, LIGHTNING PLANT, SIMPLER'S JOY, and so on through a long list of popular names for the most part testifying to the plant's virtue as a love-philter, bridal token, and general cure-all, has now become naturalized from the Old World on the Atlantic and Pacific Slopes; and is rapidly appropriating waste arid cultivated ground until, in many places, it is truly troublesome. In general habit like the blue vervain, its flowers are more purplish than blue, and are scattered, not crowded, along the spikes. The leaves are deeply, but less acutely, cut.
Ages before Christians ascribed healing virtues to the vervain - found growing on Mount Calvary, and therefore possessing every sort of miraculous power, according to the logic of simple peasant folk - the Druids had counted it among their sacred plants. "When the dog-star arose from unsunned spots" the priests gathered it. Did not Shakespeare's witches learn some of their uncanny rites from these reverend men of old? One is impressed with the striking similarity of many customs recorded of both. Two of the most frequently used ingredients in witches' cauldrons were the vervain and the rue. "The former probably derived its notoriety from the fact of its being sacred to Thor, an honor which marked it out, like other lightning plants, as peculiarly adapted for occult uses," says Mr. Thiselton Dyer in his "Folk-lore of Plants." "Although vervain, therefore, as the enchanter's plant, was gathered by witches to do mischief in their incantations, yet, as Aubrey says, it 'hinders witches from their will,' a circumstance to which Drayton further refers when he speaks of the vervain as ''gainst witchcraft much avayling.'" Now we understand why the children of Shakespeare's time hung vervain and dill with a horseshoe over the door.
In his eighth Eclogue, Virgil refers to vervain as a charm to recover lost love. Doubtless this was the verbena, the herba sacra employed in ancient Roman sacrifices, according to Pliny. In his day the bridal wreath was of verbena, gathered by the bride herself.
NARROW-LEAVED VERVAIN (V. angustifolia), like the blue vervain, has a densely crowded spike of tiny purple or blue flowers that quickly give place to seeds, but usually there is only one spike at the end of a branch. The leaves are narrow, lance-shaped, acute, saw-edged, rough. From Massachusetts and Florida westward to Minnesota and Arkansas one finds the plant blooming in dry fields from June to August, after the parsimonious manner of the vervain tribe.
It is curious that the vervain, or verbena, employed by brides for centuries as the emblem of chastity, should be one of the notorious botanical examples of a willful hybrid. Generally, the individuals of distinct species do not interbreed; but verbenas are often difficult to name correctly in every case because of their susceptibility to each other's pollen - the reason why the garden verbena may so easily be made to blossom forth into whatever hue the gardener wills. His plants have been obtained, for the most part, from the large-flowered verbena, the beautiful purple, blue, or white species of our Western States (V. Canadensis) crossed with brilliant-hued species imported from South America.
MAD-DOG SKULLCAP or HELMET-FLOWER; MAD-WEED; HOODWORT(Scutellaria lateriflora) Mint family
Flowers - Blue, varying to whitish; several or many, 1/4 in. long, growing in axils of upper leaves or in 1-sided spike-like racemes. Calyx 2-lipped, the upper lip with a helmet-like protuberance; corolla 2-lipped; the lower, 3-lobed lip spreading; the middle lobe larger than the side ones. Stamens, 4, in pairs, under the upper lip; upper pair the shorter; one pistil, the style unequally cleft in two. Stem: Square, smooth, leafy, branched, 8 in. to 2 ft. high. Leaves: Opposite, oblong to lance-shaped, thin, toothed, on slender pedicles, 1 to 3 in. long, growing gradually smaller toward top of stem. Fruit: 4 nutlets. Preferred Habitat - Wet, shady ground. Flowering Season - July-September. Distribution - Uneven throughout United States and the British Possessions.
By the helmet-like appendage on the upper lip of the calyx, which to the imaginative mind of Linnaeus suggested Scutellum (a little dish), which children delight to spring open for a view of the four tiny seeds attached at the base when in fruit, one knows this to be a member of the skullcap tribe, a widely scattered genus of blue and violet two-lipped flowers, some small to the point of insignificance, like the present species, others showy enough for the garden, but all rich in nectar, and eagerly sought by bees. The wide middle lobe of the lower lip forms a convenient platform on which to alight; the stamens in the roof of a newly opened blossom dust the back of the visitor as he explores the nectary; and as the stamens of an older flower wither when they have shed their pollen, and the style then rises to occupy their position, it follows that, in flying from the top of one spike of flowers to the bottom of another, where the older ones are, the visitor, for whom the whole scheme of color, form, and arrangement was planned, deposits on the sticky top of the style some of the pollen he has brought with him and so cross-fertilizes the flower. When the seeds begin to form and the now useless corolla drops off, the helmet-like appendage on the top of the calyx enlarges and meets the lower lip, so enclosing and protecting the tiny nutlets. After their maturity, either the mouth gapes from dryness, or the appendage drops off altogether, from the same cause, to release the seeds. Old herb doctors, who professed to cure hydrophobia with this species, are responsible for its English misnomer.
Perhaps the most beautiful member of the genus is the SHOWY SKULLCAP (S. serrata), whose blue corolla, an inch long, has its narrow upper lip shorter than the spreading lower one. The flowers are set opposite each other at the end of the smooth stem, which rises from one to two feet high in the woods throughout a southerly and westerly range. As several other skullcaps have distinctly saw-edged leaves, this plant might have been given a more distinctive adjective, thinks one who did not have the naming of 200,000 species!
Above dry, sandy soil from New York and Michigan southward the HAIRY SKULLCAP (S. pilosa) lifts short racemes of blue flowers that are only half an inch long, and whose lower lip and lobes at either side are shorter than the arched upper lip. Most parts of the plant are covered with down, the lower stem being especially hairy; and this fact determines the species when connected with its rather distant pairs of indented, veiny leaves, ranging from oblong to egg-shaped, and furnished with petioles which grow gradually shorter toward the top, where pairs of bracts, seated on the stem, part to let the flowers spring from their axils.
The LARGER or HYSSOP SKULLCAP (S. integrifolia) rarely has a dent in its rounded oblong leaves ,which, like the stem, are covered with fine down. Its lovely, bright blue flowers, an inch long, the lips of about equal length, are grouped opposite each other at the top of a stem that never lifts them higher than two feet; and so their beauty is often concealed in the tall grass of roadsides and meadows and the undergrowth of woods and thickets, where they bloom from May to August, from southern New England to the Gulf of Mexico, westward to Texas.
This tribe of plants is almost exclusively North American, but the hardy MARSH SKULLCAP or HOODED WILLOW-HERB (S. galericulata), at least, roams over Europe, and Asia also, with the help of runners, as well as seeds that, sinking into the soft earth of swamps and the borders of brooks, find growth easy. The blue flowers which grow singly in the axils of the upper leaves are quite as long as those of the larger and the showy skullcaps; the oblong, lance-shaped leaves, which are mostly seated on the branching stem, opposite each other, have low teeth. Why do leaves vary as they do, especially in closely allied species? "The causes which have led to the different forms of leaves have been, so far as I know," says Sir John Lubbock, "explained in very few cases: those of the shapes and structure of seeds are tolerably obvious in some species, but in the majority they are still entirely unexplained; and, even as regards the blossoms themselves, in spite of the numerous and conscientious labors of so many eminent naturalists, there is as yet no single species thoroughly known to us."
GROUND IVY or JOY; GILL-OVER-THE-GROUND; FIELD BALM; CREEPINGCHARLIE(Glecoma hederacea; Nepeta Glechoma of Gray) Mint family
Flowers - Light bluish purple, dotted with small specks of reddish violet; growing singly or in clusters along stem, seated in leaf axils; calyx hairy, with 5 sharp teeth; corolla tubular, over 1/2 in. long, 2-lipped, the upper lip 2-lobed, lower lip with 3 spreading lobes, middle one largest; 4 stamens in pairs under upper lip; the anther sacs spreading; pistil with 2-lobed style. Stem: Trailing, rooting at intervals, sometimes 18 in. long, leafy, the branches ascending. Leaves: From 1/2 to 1 1/2 in. across; smooth, rounded, kidney-shaped, scallop-edged. Preferred Habitat - Waste places, shady ground. Flowering Season - March-May. Distribution - Eastern half of Canada and the United States, from Georgia and Kansas northward.
Besides the larger flowers, containing both stamens and pistils, borne on this little immigrant, smaller female flowers, containing a pistil only, occur just as they do in thyme, mint, marjoram, and doubtless other members of the great family to which all belong. Muller attempted to prove that these small flowers, being the least showy, are the last to be visited by insects, which, having previously dusted themselves with pollen from the stamens of the larger flowers when they first open, are in a condition to make cross-fertilization certain. So much for the small flower's method of making insects serve its end; the larger flowers have another way. At first they are male; that is, the pistil is as yet undeveloped and the four stamens are mature, ready to shed pollen on any insect alighting on the lip. Later, when the stamens are past maturity, the pistil elongates itself and is ready for the reception of pollen brought from younger flowers. Many blossoms are male on the first day of opening, and female later, to protect themselves against self-fertilization.
In Europe, where the aromatic leaves of this little creeper were long ago used for fermenting and clarifying beer, it is known by such names as ale-hoof and gill ale-gill, it is said, being derived from the old French word, guiller, to ferment or make merry. Having trailed across Europe, the persistent hardy plant is now creeping its way over our continent, much to the disgust of cattle, which show unmistakable dislike for a single leaf caught up in a mouthful of herbage.
Very closely allied to the ground ivy is the CATMINT or CATNIP (Nepela Cataria) ,whose pale-purple, or nearly white flowers, dark-spotted, may be most easily named by crushing the coarsely toothed leaves in one's hand. It is curious how cats will seek out this hoary-hairy plant in the waste places where it grows and become half-crazed with delight over its aromatic odor.
SELF-HEAL; HEAL-ALL; BLUE CURLS; HEART-OF-THE-EARTH; BRUNELLA(Prunella vulgaris) Mint family
Flowers - Purple and violet, in dense spikes, somewhat resembling a clover head; from 1/2 to 1 in. long in flower, becoming 4 times the length in fruit. Corolla tubular, irregularly 2-lipped, the upper lip darker and hood-like; the lower one 3-lobed, spreading, the middle and largest lobe fringed; 4 twin-like stamens ascending under upper lip; filaments ofthe lower and longer pair 2-toothed at summit, one of the teeth bearing an anther, the other tooth sterile; style thread-like, shorter than stamens, and terminating in a 2-cleft stigma. Calyx 2-parted, half the length of corolla, its teeth often hairy on edges. Stem: 2 in. to 2 ft. high, erect or reclining, simple or branched. Leaves: Opposite, oblong. Fruit: 4 nutlets, round and smooth. Preferred Habitat - Fields, roadsides, waste places. Flowering Season - May-October. Distribution - North America, Europe, Asia.
This humble, rusty green plant, weakly lopping over the surrounding grass, so that often only its insignificant purple, clover-like flower heads are visible, is another of those immigrants from the old countries which, having proved fittest in the fiercer struggle for existence there, has soon after its introduction here exceeded most of our more favored native flowers in numbers. Everywhere we find the heal-all, sometimes dusty and stunted by the roadside, sometimes truly beautiful in its fresh purple, violet, and white when perfectly developed under happy conditions. In England, where most flowers are deeper hued than with us, the heal-all is rich purple. What is the secret of this flower's successful march across three continents? As usual, the chief reason is to be found in the facility it offers insects to secure food; and the quantity of fertile seed it is therefore able to ripen as the result of their visits is its reward. Also, its flowering season is unusually long, and it is a tireless bloomer. It is finical in no respect; its sprawling stems root easily at the joints, and it is very hardy.
Several species of bumblebees enter the flower, which being set in dense clusters enables them to suck the nectar from each with the minimum loss of time, the smaller bee spending about two seconds to each. After allowing for the fraction of time it takes him to sweep his eyes and the top of his head with his forelegs to free them from the pollen which must inevitably be shaken from the stamen in the arch of the corolla as he dives deeply after the nectar in the bottom of the throat, and to pass the pollen, just as honeybees do, with the most amazing quickness, from the forelegs to the middle ones, and thence to the hairy "basket" on the hind ones - after making all allowances for such delays, this small worker is able to fertilize all the flowers in the fullest cluster in half a minute! When the contents of the baskets of two different species of bumblebees caught on this blossom were examined under the microscope, the pollen in one case proved to be heal-all, with some from the goldenrod, and a few grains of a third kind not identified; and in the other case; heal-all pollen and a small proportion of some unknown kind. Bees that are evidently out for both nectar and pollen on the same trip have been detected visiting white and yellow flowers on their way from one heal-all cluster to another; and this fact, together with the presence of more than one kind of pollen in the basket, shows that the generally accepted statement that bees confine themselves to flowers of one kind or color during a trip is not always according to fact.
The older name of the plant, Brunella, and the significant one, altered by Linnaeus into the softer sound it now bears, is doubtless derived from the German word, braune, the quinsy. Quaint old Parkinson reads: "This is generally called prunella and brunella from the Germans who called it brunellen, because it cureth that disease which they call die bruen, common to soldiers in campe, but especially in garrison, which is an inflammation of the mouth, throat, and tongue." Among the old herbalists who pretended to cure every ill that flesh is heir to with it, it was variously known as carpenter's herb, sicklewort, hook-heal, slough-heal, and brownwort.
AMERICAN or MOCK PENNYROYAL; TICKWEED; SQUAW MINT(Hedeoma pulegioides) Mint family
Flowers - Very small, bluish purple, clustered in axils of upper leaves. Calyx tubular, unequally 5-cleft; teeth of upper lip triangular, hairy in throat. Corolla 2-lipped, upper lip erect, notched; lower one 3-cleft, spreading; 2 anther-bearing stamens under upper lip; 2 sterile but apparent; 1 pistil with 2-cleft style. Stem: Low, erect, branched, square, hairy, 6 to 18 in. high. Leaves: Small, opposite, ovate to oblong, scantily toothed, strongly aromatic, pungent. Preferred Habitat - Dry fields, open woodland. Flowering Season - July-September. Distribution - Cape Breton Island westward to Nebraska, south to Florida.
However insignificant its flower, this common little plant unmistakably proclaims its presence throughout the neighborhood. So powerful is the pungent aroma of its leaves that dog doctors sprinkle them about freely in the kennels to kill fleas, a pest by no means exterminated in Southern Europe, however, where the true pennyroyal of commerce (Mentha Pulegium) is native. Herb gatherers who collect our pennyroyal, that is so similar to the European species it is similarly employed in medicine, say they can scent it from a greater distance than any other plant.
BASTARD PENNYROYAL, which, like the Self-heal, is sometimes called BLUE CURLS (Trichostema dichotomum), chooses dry fields, but preferably sandy ones, where we find its abundant, tiny blue flowers, that later change to purple, from July to October. Its balsam-like odor is not agreeable, neither has the plant beauty to recommend it; yet where it grows, from Maine to Florida, and west to Texas, it is likely to be so common we cannot well pass it unnoticed. The low, stiff, slender, much-branched, and rather clammy stem bears opposite, oblong, smooth-edged leaves narrowed into petioles. One, two, or three flowers, borne at the tips of the branches, soon fall off, leaving the 5-cleft calyx to cradle four exposed nutlets.
>From the five-lobed tubular corolla protrude four very long, curling, blue or violet stamens - hair stamens the Greek generic title signifies - and the pretty popular name of blue curls also has reference to these conspicuous filaments that are spirally coiled in the bud.
In general habit like the two preceding plants, the FALSE PENNYROYAL (Isanthus brachiatus) nevertheless prefers that its sandy home should be near streams. From Quebec to Georgia, westward to Minnesota and Texas, it blooms in midsummer, lifting its small, tubular, pale blue flowers from the axils of pointed, opposite leaves. An unusual characteristic in one of the mint tribe is that the five sharp lobes of its bell-shaped calyx, and the five rounded, spreading lobes of the corolla, are of equal length, hence its Greek name signifying an equal flower.
WILD or CREEPING THYME(Thymus Serpyllum) Mint family
Flowers - Very small purple or pink purple, fragrant, clustered at ends of branches or in leaf axils. Hairy calyx and corolla 2-lipped, the latter with lower lip 3-cleft; stamens 4; style 2-cleft. Leaves: Oblong, opposite, aromatic. Stem: 4 to 12 in. long) creeping, woody, branched, forming dense cushions. Preferred Habitat - Roadsides, dry banks, and waste places. Flowering Season - June-September. Distribution - Naturalized from Europe. Nova Scotia to Middle States.
"I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows;Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine."- A Midsummer Night's Dream.
According to Danish tradition, anyone waiting by an elder-bush on Midsummer Night at twelve o'clock will see the king of fairyland and all his retinue pass by and disport themselves in favorite haunts, among others the mounds of fragrant wild thyme. How well Shakespeare knew his folklore!
Thyme is said to have been one of the three plants which made the Virgin Mary's bed. Indeed, the European peasants have as many myths as there are quotations from the poets about this classic plant. Its very name denotes that it was used as an incense in Greek temples. No doubt it was the Common Thyme (T. vulgaris), an erect, tall plant cultivated in gardens here as a savory, that Horace says the Romans used so extensively for bee culture.
Dense cushions of creeping thyme usually contain two forms of blossoms on separate plants - hermaphrodite (male and female which are much the commoner; and pistillate, or only female, flowers, in which the stamens develop no pollen. The latter are more fertile; none can fertilize itself. But blossoms so rich in nectar naturally attract quantities of insects - bees and butterflies chiefly. A newly opened hermaphrodite flower, male on the first day, dusts its visitors as they pass the ripe stamens. This pollen they carry to a flower two days old, which, having reached the female stage, receives it on the mature two-cleft stigma, now erect and tall, whereas the stamens are past maturity.
GARDEN, SPEAR, or MACKEREL MINT(Mentha spicata; M. viridis of Gray) Mint family
Flowers - Small, pale bluish, or pinkish purple, in whorls, forming terminal, interrupted, narrow spikes, 2 to 4 in. long in fruit, the central one surpassing lateral ones. Calyx bell-shaped, toothed; corolla tubular, 4-cleft. Stamens 4; style 2-cleft. Stem: Smooth, 1 to 1 1/2 ft. high, branched. Leaves: Opposite, narrowly oblong, acute, saw-edged, aromatic. Preferred Habitat - Moist soil. Flowering Season - July-September. Distribution - Eastern half of Canada and United States. Also Europe and Asia.
The poets tell us that Proserpine, Pluto's wife, in a fit of jealousy changed a hated rival into the mint plant, whose name Mentha, in its Latin form, or Minthe, the Greek equivalent, is still that of the metamorphosed beauty, a daughter of Cocytus, who was also Pluto's wife. Proserpine certainly contrived to keep her rival's memory fragrant. But how she must delight in seeing her under the chopping-knife and served up as sauce!
It is a curious fact that among the Labiates, or two-lipped blossoms to which thymes and mints belong, there very frequently occur species bearing flowers that are male on the first day (staminate) and female, or pistillate, on the second day, and also smaller female flowers on distinct plants. Muller believed this plan was devised to attract insects, first by the more showy hermaphrodite flower, that they might carry its pollen to the less conspicuous female flower, which they would naturally visit last; but this interesting theory has yet to be proved. Nineteen species of flies, to which the mints are specially adapted, have been taken in the act of transferring pollen. Ten varieties of the lower hymenoptera (bees, wasps, and others) commonly resort to the fragrant spikes of bloom.
PEPPERMINT (M. piiterita), similar in manner of growth to the preceding, is another importation from Europe now thoroughly at home here in wet soil. The volatile oil obtained by distilling its leaves has long been an important item of trade in Wayne County, New York. One has only to crush the leaves in one's hand to name the flower.
Our native WILD MINT (M. Canadensis), common along brook-sides and in moist soil from New Brunswick to Virginia and far westward, has its whorls of small purplish flowers seated in the leaf axils. Its odor is like pennyroyal. The true PENNYROYAL, not to be confused with our spurious woodland annual, is M. Pulegium, a native of Europe, whence a number of its less valuable relatives, all perennials, have traveled to become naturalized Americans.
In dry open woods and thickets and by the roadside, from late August throughout September, we find blooming the aromatic fragrant STONE MINT, SWEET HORSE-MINT, or AMERICAN DITTANY (Cunila origanoides; C. Mariana of Gray). Its small pink-purple, lilac, or whitish flowers, that are only about half as long as the protruding pair of stamens, are borne in loose terminal clusters at the ends of the stiff, branched, slender, sometimes reddish, stem. A pair of rudimentary, useless stamens remain within the two-lipped tube; the exserted pair, affording the most convenient alighting place for the visiting flies, dust their undersides with pollen the first day the flower opens; on the next, the stigma will be ready to receive pollen carried from young flowers.
NIGHTSHADE; BLUE BINDWEED; FELONWORT; BITTERSWEET; SCARLET orSNAKE BERRY; POISON-FLOWER; WOODY NIGHTSHADE(Solanum Dulcamara) Potato family
Flowers - Blue, purple, or, rarely, white with greenish spots on each lobe; about 1/2 in. broad, clustered in slender, drooping cymes. Calyx 5-lobed, oblong, persistent on the berry; corolla deeply, sharply 5-cleft, wheel-shaped, or points curved backward; 5 stamens inserted on throat, yellow, protruding, the anthers united to form a cone; stigma small. Stem: Climbing or straggling, woody below, branched, 2 to 8 ft. long. Leaves: Alternate, 2 to 4 in. long, 1 to 2 1/2 in. wide, pointed at the apex, usually heart-shaped at base; some with 2 distinct leaflets below on the petiole, others have leaflets united with leaf like lower lobes or wings. Fruit: A bright red, oval berry. Preferred Habitat - Moist thickets, fence rows. Flowering Season - May-September. Distribution - United States east of Kansas, north of New Jersey. Canada, Europe, and Asia.
More beautiful than the graceful flowers are the drooping cymes of bright berries, turning from green to yellow, then to orange and scarlet, in the tangled thicket by the shady roadside in autumn, when the unpretending, shrubby vine, that has crowded its way through the rank midsummer vegetation, becomes a joy to the eye. Another bittersweet, so-called, festoons the hedgerows with yellow berries which, bursting, show their scarlet-coated seeds. Rose hips and mountain-ash berries, among many other conspicuous bits of color, arrest attention, but not for us were they designed. Now the birds are migrating, and, hungry with their long flight, they gladly stop to feed upon fare so attractive. Hard, indigestible seeds traverse the alimentary canal without alteration and are deposited many miles from the parent that bore them. Nature's methods for widely distributing plants cannot but stir the dullest imagination.
The purple pendent flowers of this nightshade secrete no nectar, therefore many insects let them alone; but it is now believed that no part of the plant is poisonous. Certainly one that claims the potato, tomato, and eggplant among its kin has no right to be dangerous. The BLACK, GARDEN, or DEADLY NIGHTSHADE, also called MOREL (S. nigrum), bears jet-black berries that are alleged to be fatal. Nevertheless, female bumblebees, to which its white flowers are specially adapted, visit them to draw out pollen from the chinks of the anthers with their jaws, just as they do in the case of the wild, sensitive plant, and with no more disastrous result. It has been well said that the nightshades are a blessing both to the sick and to the doctors. The present species takes its name from dulcis, sweet, and amaras, bitter, referring to the taste of the juice; the generic name is derived from solamen, solace or consolation, referring to the relief afforded by the narcotic properties of some of these plants.
BLUE or WILD TOADFLAX; BLUE LINARIA(Linaria Canadensis) Figwort family
Flowers - Pale blue to purple, small, irregular, in slender spikes. Calyx 5-pointed; corolla 2-lipped, with curved spur longer than its tube, which is nearly closed by a white, 2-ridged projection or palate; the upper lip erect, 2-lobed; lower lip 3-lobed, spreading. Stamens 4, in pairs, in throat; 1 pistil. Stem: Slender, weak, of sterile shoots, prostrate; flowering stem, ascending or erect, 4 in. to 2 ft. high. Leaves: Small, linear, alternately scattered along stem, or oblong in pairs or threes on leafy sterile shoots. Preferred Habitat - Dry soil, gravel, or sand. Flowering Season - May-October. Distribution - North, Central, and South Americas.
Sometimes lying prostrate in the dust, sometimes erect, the linaria's delicate spikes of bloom wear an air of injured innocence, yet the plant, weak as it looks, has managed to spread over three Americas from ocean to ocean. More beautiful than the rather scrawny flowers are the tufts of cool green foliage made by the sterile shoots that take complete possession of a wide area around the parent plants.
Unlike its relative butter-and-eggs, the corolla of this toadflax is so contracted that bees cannot enter it; but by inserting their long tongues, they nevertheless manage to drain it. Small, short-tongued bees contrive to reach only a little nectar. The palate, so valuable to the other linaria, has in this one lost its function; and the larger flies, taking advantage of the flower's weakness, pilfer both sweets and pollen. Butterflies, to which a slender spurred flower is especially attractive, visit this one in great numbers, and as they cannot regale themselves without touching the anthers and stigma, they may be regarded as the legitimate visitors.
Wolf, rat, mouse, sow, cow, cat, snake, dragon, dog, toad, are among the many animal prefixes to the names of flowers that the English country people have given for various and often most interesting reasons. Just as dog, used as a prefix, expresses an idea of worthlessness to them, so toad suggests a spurious plant; the toadflax being made to bear what is meant to be an odious name because before flowering it resembles the true flax, linum, from which the generic title is derived.
MARYLAND FIGWORT; BEE PLANT; KNOTTED FIGWORT; HEAL-ALL; PILEWORT(Scrophularia Marylandica; S. nodosa of Gray) Figwort family
Flowers - Very small, dull green on outside; vivid, shining brownish purple within; borne in almost leafless terminal clusters on slender stems; Calyx 5-parted.; corolla of 5 rounded lobes, the 2 upper ones erect, side ones ascending, lower one bent downward; 5 staroens, 4 of them twin-like and bearing anthers, the fifth sterile, a mere scale on roof of the globular corolla tube; style with knot-like stigma. Stem: From 3 to 10 ft. high, square, with grooved sides, widely. branching. Leaves: From 3 to 12 in. long, oblong, pointed, coarsely toothed, on slender stems, strong smelling. Preferred Habitat - Moist, shady ground. Flowering Season - July-September. Distribution - New York to the Carolinas, westward to Tennessee and Kansas; possibly beyond.
An insignificant little flower by itself, conspicuous only because it rears itself in clusters on a level with one's eyes, lacking beauty, perfume, and all that makes a blossom charming to the human mind - why has it been elevated by the botanists to the dignity of lending its name to a large and important family, and why is it mentioned at all in a popular flower book beside the more showy ornaments of nature's garden? Both questions have the same answer: Because it is the typical flower of the family, and therefore serves as an illustration of the manner in which many others are fertilized. Beautiful blossoms are by no means always the most important ones.
It well repays one to observe the relative times of maturing anthers and stigmas in the flowers, as thereby hangs a tale in which some insect plays an interesting role. The figwort matures its stigma at the lip of the style before its anthers have ripened their pollen. Why? By having the stigma of a newly opened flower thrust forward to the mouth of the corolla, an insect alighting on the lip, which forms his only convenient landing place, must brush against it and leave upon it some pollen brought from an older flower, whose anthers are already matured. At this early stage of the flower's development its stamens lie curved over in the tube of the corolla; but presently, as the already fertilized style begins to wither, and its stigma is dry and no longer receptive to pollen, then, since there can be no longer any fear of self-pollination - the horror of so many flowers - the figwort uncurls and elevates its stamens. The insect visitor in search of nectar must get dusted with pollen from the late maturing anthers now ready for him. By this ingenious method the flower becomes cross-fertilized and wastes the least pollen.
Bees and wasps evidently pursue opposite routes in going to work, the former beginning at the bottom of a spike or raceme, where the older, more mature flowers are, and working upward; the wasps commencing at the top, among the newly opened ones. In spite of the fact that we usually see hive bees about this plant, pilfering the generous supply of nectar in each tiny cup, it is undoubtedly the wasp that is the flower's truest benefactor, since he carries pollen from the older blossoms of the last raceme visited to the projecting stigmas of the newly opened flowers at the top of the next cluster. Manifestly no flower, even though it were especially adapted to wasps, as this one is, could exclude bees. About one-third of all its visitors are wasps.
HAIRY BEARD-TONGUE(Pentstemon hirsutus; P. pubescens of Gray) Figwort family
Flowers - Dull violet or lilac and white, about 1 in. long, borne in a loose spike. Calyx 5-parted, the sharply pointed sepals overlapping; corolla, a gradually inflated tube widening where the mouth divides into a 2-lobed upper lip and a 3-lobed lower lip; the throat nearly closed by hairy palate at base of lower lip; sterile fifth stamen densely bearded for half its length; 4 anther-bearing stamens, the anthers divergent. Stem: 1 to 3 ft. high, erect, downy above. Leaves: Oblong to lance shape, upper ones seated on stem; lower ones narrowed into petioles. Preferred Habitat - Dry or rocky fields, thickets, and open woods. Flowering Season - May-July. Distribution - Ontario to Florida, Manitoba to Texas.
It is the densely bearded, yellow, fifth stamen (pente =five, stemon = a stamen) which gives this flower its scientific name and its chief interest to the structural botanist. From the fact that a blossom has a lip in the center of the lower half of its corolla, that an insect must use as its landing place, comes the necessity for the pistil to occupy a central position. Naturally, a fifth stamen would be only in its way, an encumbrance to be banished in time. In the figwort, for example, we have seen the fifth stamen reduced, from long sterility, to a mere scale on the roof of the corolla tube in other lipped flowers, the useless organ has disappeared; but in the beard-tongue, it goes through a series of curious curves from the upper to the under side of the flower to get out of the way of the pistil. Yet it serves an admirable purpose in helping close the mouth of the flower, which the hairy lip alone could not adequately guard against pilferers. A long-tongued bee, thrusting in his head up to his eyes only, receives the pollen in his face. The blossom is male (staminate) in its first stage and female (pistillate) in its second.
While this is the beard-tongue commonly found in the Eastern United States, particularly southward, and one of the most beautiful of its clan, the western species have been selected by the gardeners for hybridizing into those more showy, but often less charming, flowers now quite extensively cultivated. Several varieties of these, having escaped from gardens in the East, are locally common wild.
The LARGE-FLOWERED BEARD-TONGUE (P. grandiflorus), one of the finest prairie species, whose lavender-blue, bell-shaped corolla is abruptly dilated above the calyx, measures nearly two inches long. Its sterile filament, curved over at the summit, is bearded there only.
Handsomest of all is the COBEA BEARD-TONGUE, a native of the Southwest, with a broadly rounded, bell-shaped corolla, hairy without, like the leaves, but smooth within. The pale purple blossom, delicately suffused with yellow, and pencilled with red lines - pathfinders for the bees - has the base of its tube creamy white. Few flowers hang from each stout clammy spike.
The more densely crowded spikes of the large SMOOTH BEARD-TONGUE (P. glaber), a smaller blue or purple flowered, narrower-leaved species, that shows an unusual preference for moist soil throughout its range, is, like the other beard-tongues mentioned, better known to the British gardener, perhaps, than to Americans, who have yet to learn the value of many of their wild flowers under cultivation.
The tall FOXGLOVE BEARD-TONGUE (P. digitalis), with large, showy white blossoms tinged with purple, the one most commonly grown in gardens here, escapes on the slightest encouragement to run wild again from Maine to Virginia, west to Illinois and Arkansas. Small bees crawl into the broad tube, and butterflies drain the nectar evidently secreted for long-tongued bees, but without certainly transferring pollen. To insure cross-fertilization, the flower first develops its anthers, whose saw-edges grating against the visitors thorax, aid in sifting out the dry pollen; and later the style, which when immature clung to the top of the corolla, lowers its receptive stigma to oppose the bee's entrance. Professor Robertson has frequently detected the common wasp nipping holes with her sharp jaws in the base of the tube. With remarkable intelligence she invariably chose to insert her tongue at the precise spots where the nectar is stored on either side of the sterile filament.
BLUE-EYED MARY; INNOCENCE; BROAD-LEAVED COLLINSIA(Collinsia verna) Figwort family
Flowers - On slender, weak stalks; whorled in axils of upper leaves. Blue on lower lip of corolla, its middle lobe folded lengthwise to enclose 4 adhering stamens and pistil; upper lip white, with scalloped margins; corolla from 1/2 to 3/4 in. long, its throat about equaling the deeply 5-cleft calyx. Stem: Hoary, slender, simple or branched, from 6 in. to 2 ft. high. Leaves: Thin, opposite; upper and more acute ones clasping the stem; lower, ovate ones on short petioles. Fruit: A round capsule to which the enlarged calyx adheres. Preferred Habitat - Moist meadows, woods, and thickets. Flowering Season - April-June. Distribution - Western New York and Pennsylvania to Wisconsin, Kentucky, and Indian Territory.
Next of kin to the great Paulonia tree, whose deliciously sweet, vanilla-scented, trumpet-shaped violet flowers are happily fast becoming as common here as in their native Japan, what has this fragile, odorless blossom of the meadows in common with it? Apparently nothing; but superficial appearances count for little or nothing among scientists, to whom the structure of floral organs is of prime importance; and analysis instantly shows the close relationship between these dissimilar-looking cousins. Even without analysis one can readily see that the monkey flower is not far removed.
Because few writers have arisen as yet in the newly settled regions of the middle West and Southwest, where blue-eyed Mary dyes acres of meadow land with her heavenly color, her praises are little sung in the books, but are loudly buzzed by myriads of bees that are her most devoted lovers. "I regard the flower as especially adapted to the early flying bees with abdominal collecting brushes for pollen - i.e., species of Osmia - and these bees," says Professor Robertson of Illinois, "although not the exclusive visitors, are far more abundant and important than all the other visitors together." For them are the brownish marks on the palate provided as pathfinders. At the pressure of their strong heads the palate yields to give them entrance, and at their removal it springs back to protect the pollen against the inroads of flies, mining bees, and beetles. As the longer stamens shed their pollen before the shorter ones mature theirs, bees must visit the flower several times to collect it all.