"Calopogon," says Professor Robertson, who knows more about the fertilization of American wild flowers by insects than most writers, "is one of a few flowers which move the insect toward the stigma…. There is no expenditure in keeping up a supply of nectar, and the flower, although requiring a smooth insect of a certain size and weight, suffers nothing from the visits of those it cannot utilize. Then, there is no delay caused by the insect waiting to suck; but as soon as it alights it is thrown down against the stigma. This occurs so quickly that, while standing net in hand, I have seen insects effect pollination and escape before I could catch them. So many orchids fasten their pollinia upon the faces and tongues of insects that it is interesting to find one which applies them regularly to the first abdominal segment. Mr. Darwin has observed that absence of hair on the tongues of Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) and on the faces of Hymenoptera (bees; wasps, etc.) has led to the more usual adaptations, and sparseness of hair has its influence in this case. Species of Augochlora are the only insects on which I found pollinia. These bees are very smooth, depending for ornament on the metallic sheen of their bodies. An Halictus repeatedly pulled down the labella (lips) of flowers from which pollinia had not been removed; and the only reason I can assign for its failure to extract pollinia is that it is more hairy than the Augochlora.
COMMON PERSICARIA, PINK KNOTWEED, or JOINT-WEED; SMARTWEED(Polygonum Pennsylvanicum) Buckwheat family
Flowers - Very small, pink, collected in terminal, dense, narrow, obtuse spikes, 1 to 2 in. long. Calyx pink or greenish, 5-parted, like petals; no corolla; stamens 8 or less; style 2-parted. Stem: 1 to 3 ft. high, simple or branched, often partly red, the joints swollen and sheathed; the branches above, and peduncles glandular. Leaves: Oblong, lance-shaped, entire edged, 2 to 11 in. long, with stout midrib, sharply tapering at tip, rounded into short petioles below. Preferred Habitat - Waste places, roadsides, moist soil. Flowering Season - July-October. Distribution - Nova Scotia to the Gulf of Mexico; westward to Texas and Minnesota.
Everywhere we meet this commonest of plants or some of its similar kin, the erect pink spikes brightening roadsides, rubbish heaps, fields, and waste places, from midsummer to frost. The little flowers, which open without method anywhere on the spike they choose, attract many insects, the smaller bees (Andrena) conspicuous among the host. As the spreading divisions of the perianth make nectar-stealing all too easy for ants and other crawlers that would not come in contact with anthers and stigma where they enter a flower near its base, most buckwheat plants whose blossoms secrete sweets protect themselves from theft by coating the upper stems with glandular hairs that effectually discourage the pilferers. Shortly after fertilization, the little rounded, flat-sided fruit begins to form inside the persistent pink calyx. At any time the spike-like racemes contain more bright pink buds and shining seeds than flowers. Familiarity alone breeds contempt for this plant, that certainly possesses much beauty.
The LADY'S THUMB (P. Persicaria), often a troublesome weed, roams over the whole of North America, except at the extreme north - another illustration of the riotous profusion of European floral immigrants rejoicing in the easier struggle for existence here. Its pink spikes are shorter and less slender than those of the preceding taller, but similar species, and its leaves, which are nearly seated on the stem, have dark triangular or lunar marks near the center in the majority of cases.
An insignificant little plant, found all over our continent, Europe, and Asia, is the familiar KNOT-GRASS or DOORWEED (P. aviculare), often trailing its leafy, jointed stems over the ground, but at times weakly erect, to display its tiny greenish or white pink-edged flowers, clustered in the axils of oblong, bluish-green leaves that are considerably less than an inch long. Although in bloom from June to October, insects seldom visit it, for it secretes very little, if any, nectar. As might be expected in such a case, its stem is smooth.
When the amphibious WATER PERSICARIA (P. amphibium) lifts its short, dense, rose-colored ovoid or oblong club of bloom above ponds and lakes, it is sufficiently protected from crawling pilferers, of course, by the water in which it grows. But suppose the pond dries up and the plant is left on dry ground, what then? Now, a remarkable thing happens: protective glandular, sticky hairs appear on the epidermis of the leaves and stems, which were perfectly smooth when the flowers grew in water. Such small wingless insects as might pilfer nectar without bringing to their hostess any pollen from other blossoms are held as fast as on bird-lime. The stem, which sometimes floats, sometimes is immersed, may attain a length of twenty feet; the rounded, elliptic, petioled leaves may be four inches long or only half that size. From Quebec to New Jersey, and westward to the Pacific, the solitary, showy inflorescence, which does well to attain a height of an inch, may be found during July and August.
Throughout the summer, narrow, terminal, erect, spike-like racemes of small, pale pink, flesh-colored, or greenish flowers are sent upward by the MILD WATER PEPPER (P. hydropiperoides). It is like a slender, pale variety of the common pink persicaria. One finds its inconspicuous, but very common, flowers from June to September. The plant, which grows in shallow water, swamps, and moist places throughout the Union and considerably north and south of it, rises three feet or less. The cylindric sheaths around the swollen joints of the stem are fringed with long bristles - a clue to identification. Another similar WATER PEPPER or SMARTWEED (P. hydropiper) is so called because of its acrid, biting juice.
The CLIMBING FALSE BUCKWHEAT (P. scandens) straggles over bushes in woods, thickets, and by the waysides throughout a very wide range; yet its small, dull, greenish-yellow and pinkish flowers, loosely clustered in long pedicelled racemes, are so inconspicuous during August and September, when the showy composites are in their glory, that we give them scarcely a glance. The alternate leaves, which are heart-shaped at the base and pointed at the lip, suggesting those of the morning glory, are on petioles arising from sheaths over the enlarged joints which, in this family, are always a most prominent characteristic - (Poly = many, gonum = a knee). The three outer sepals, keeled when in flower, are irregularly winged when the three-angled, smooth achene hangs from the matured blossom in autumn, the season at which the vine assumes its greatest attractiveness.
The ARROW-LEAVED TEAR THUMB (P. sagittatum), found in ditches and swampy wet soil, weakly leans on other plants, or climbs over them with the help of the many sharp, recurved prickles which arm its four-angled stem. Even the petioles and underside of the leaf's midrib are set with prickles. The light green leaves, that combine the lance and the arrow shapes, take on a beautiful russet-red tint in autumn. The little, five-parted rose-colored or greenish-white flowers grow in small, close terminal heads from July to September from Nova Scotia to the Gulf and far westward.
SEASIDE or COAST JOINTWEED or KNOT-GRASS (Polygonella articulata; Polygonum articulatum of Gray) a low, slender, wiry, diffusely spreading little plant, with thread-like leaves seated on its much-jointed stem, rises cleanly from out the sand of the coast from Maine to Florida, and the shores of the Great Lakes. Very slender racemes of tiny, nodding, rose-tinted white flowers, with a dark midrib to each of the five calyx segments, are insignificant of themselves; but when seen in masses, from July to October, they tinge the upper beaches and sandy meadows with a pink blush that not a few artists have transferred to the foreground of their marine pictures.
CORN COCKLE; CORN ROSE; CORN or RED CAMPION; CROWN-OF-THE-FIELD(Agrostemma Githago; Lychnis Githago of Gray) Pink family
Flowers - Magenta or bright purplish crimson, to 3 in. broad, solitary at end of long, stout footstem; 5 lobes of calyx leaf-like, very long and narrow, exceeding petals. Corolla of 5 broad, rounded petals; 10 stamens; 5 styles alternating with calyx lobes, opposite petals. Stem: 1 to 3 ft. high, erect, with few or no branches, leafy, the plant covered with fine white hairs. Leaves: Opposite, seated on stem, long, narrow, pointed, erect. Fruit: a 1-celled, many-seeded capsule. Preferred Habitat - Wheat and other grain fields; dry, waste places. Flowering Season - July-September. Distribution - United States at large; most common in Central and Western States. Also in Europe and Asia.
"Allons! allons! sow'd cockle, reap'd no corn," exclaims Biron in "Love's Labor Lost." Evidently the farmers even in Shakespeare's day counted this brilliant blossom the pest it has become in many of our own grain fields just as it was in ancient times, when Job, after solemnly protesting his righteousness, called on his own land to bear record against him if his words were false. "Let thistles grow instead of wheat, and cockle instead of barley," he cried, according to James the First's translators; but the "noisome weeds" of the original text seem to indicate that these good men were more anxious to give the English people an adequate conception of Job's willingness to suffer for his honor's sake than to translate literally. Possibly the cockle grew in Southern Asia in Job's time : today its range is north.
Like many another immigrant to our hospitable shores, this vigorous invader shows a tendency to outstrip native blossoms in life's race. Having won in the struggle for survival in the old country, where the contest has been most fiercely waged for centuries, it finds life here easy, enjoyable. What are its methods for insuring an abundance of fertile seed? We see that the tube of the flower is so nearly closed by the stamens and five-styled pistil as to be adapted only to the long, slender tongues of moths and butterflies, for which benefactors it became narrow and deep to reserve the nectar. "A certain night-flying moth (one of the Dianthaecia) fertilizes flowers of this genus exclusively, and its larvae feed on their unripe seeds as a staple. Bees and some long-tongued flies seen about the corn cockle doubtless get pollen only; but there are few flowers so deep that the longest-tongued bees cannot sip them. Butterflies, attracted by the bright color of the flower - and to them color is the most catchy of advertisements - are guided by a few dark lines on the petals to the nectary.
Soon after the blossom opens, five of the stamens emerge from the tube and shed their pollen on the early visitor. Later, the five other stamens empty the contents of their anthers on more tardy comers. Finally, when all danger of self-fertilization is past, the styles stretch upward, and the butterfly, whose head is dusted with pollen brought from earlier flowers, necessarily leaves some on their sticky surfaces as he takes the leavings in the nectary.
So much cross-fertilized seed as the plant now produces and scatters through the grain fields may well fill the farmer's prosaic mind with despair. To him there is no glory in the scarlet of the poppy comparable with the glitter of a silver dollar; no charm in the heavenly blue of the corn-flower, that likewise preys upon the fertility of his soil; the vivid flecks of color with which the cockle lights up his fields mean only loss of productiveness in the earth that would yield him greater profit without them. Moreover, seeds of this so-called weed not only darken his wheat when they are threshed out together, but are positively injurious if swallowed in any quantity. Emerson said every plant is called a weed until its usefulness is discovered. Linnaeus called this flower Agrostemma = the crown-of-the-field. Agriculturalists never realize that beauty is in itself a sufficient plea for respected existence. Not a few of the cockle's relatives adorn men's gardens.
WILD PINK or CATCHFLY(Silene Caroliniana; S. Pennsylvanica of Gray) Pink family
Flowers - Rose pink, deep or very pale; about inch broad, on slender footstalks, in terminal clusters. Calyx tubular, 5-toothed, much enlarged in fruit, sticky; 5 petals with claws enclosed in calyx, wedged-shaped above, slightly notched. Stamens 10; pistil with 3 styles. Stem: 4 to 10 in. high, hairy, sticky above, growing in tufts. Leaves: Basal ones spatulate; 2 or 3 pairs of lance-shaped, smaller leaves seated on stem. Preferred Habitat - Dry, gravelly, sandy, or rocky soil. Flowering Season - April-June. Distribution - New England, south to Georgia, westward to Kentucky.
Fresh, dainty, and innocent-looking as Spring herself are these bright flowers. Alas, for the tiny creatures that try to climb up the rosy tufts to pilfer nectar, they and their relatives are not so innocent as they appear! While the little crawlers are almost within reach of the cup of sweets, their feet are gummed to the viscid matter that coats it, and here their struggles end as flies' do on sticky fly-paper, or birds' on limed twigs. A naturalist counted sixty-two little corpses on the sticky stem of a single pink. All this tragedy to protect a little nectar for the butterflies which, in sipping it, transfer the pollen from one flower to another, and so help them to produce the most beautiful and robust offspring.
The pink, which has two sets of stamens of five each, elevates first one set, then the other, for economy's sake and to run less risk of failure to get its pollen transferred in case of rain when its friends are not flying. After all the golden dust has been shed, however, up come the three recurved styles from the depth of the tube to receive pollen brought by butterflies from younger flowers. There are few cups so deep that the largest bumblebees cannot suck them. Flies which feed on the pink's pollen only, sometimes come by mistake to older blossoms in the stigmatic stage, and doubtless cross-fertilize them once in a while.
In waste places and woods farther southward and westward, and throughout the range of the Wild Pink as well, clusters of the SLEEPY CATCHFLY (S. antirrhina) open their tiny pink flowers for a short time only in the sunshine. At any stage they are mostly calyx, but in fruit this part is much expanded. Swollen, sticky joints are the plant's means of defense from crawlers. Season: Summer.
When moths begin their rounds at dusk, the NIGHT-FLOWERING CATCHFLY (S. noctiflora) opens its pinkish or white flowers to emit a fragrance that guides them to a feast prepared for them alone. Day-blooming catchflies have no perfume, nor do they need it; their color and markings are a sufficient guide to the butterflies. Sticky hairs along the stems of this plant ruthlessly destroy, not flies, but ants chiefly, that would pilfer nectar without being able to render the flower any service. Yet the calyx is beautifully veined, as if to tantalize the crawlers by indicating the path to a banquet hail they may never reach. Only a very few flowers, an inch across or less, are clustered at the top of the plant, which blooms from July to September in waste places east of the Mississippi and in Canada.
SOAPWORT; BOUNCING BET; HEDGE PINK; BRUISEWORT; OLD MAID'S PINK;FULLER'S HERB(Saponaria officinalis) Pink family
Flowers - Pink or whitish, fragrant, about 1 inch broad, loosely clustered at end of stem, also sparingly from axils of upper leaves. Calyx tubular, 5-toothed, about 3/4 in. long; 5 petals, the claws inserted in deep tube. Stamens 10, in 2 sets; 1 pistil with 2 styles. Flowers frequently double. Stem: to 2 ft. high, erect, stout, sparingly branched, leafy. Leaves: Opposite, acutely oval, 2 to 3 in. long, about 1 in. wide, 3 to 5 ribbed. Fruit: An oblong capsule, shorter than calyx, opening at top by 4 short teeth or valves. Preferred Habitat - Roadsides, banks, and waste places. Flowering Season - June-September. Distribution - Generally common. Naturalized from Europe.
A stout, buxom, exuberantly healthy lassie among flowers is bouncing Bet, who long ago escaped from gardens whither she was brought from Europe, and ran wild beyond colonial farms to roadsides, along which she has traveled over nearly our entire area. Underground runners and abundant seed soon form thrifty colonies. This plant, to which our grandmothers ascribed healing virtues, makes a cleansing, soap-like lather when its bruised leaves are agitated in water.
Butterflies, which delight in bright colors and distinct markings, find little to charm them here; but the pale shade of pink or white, easily distinguished in the dark, and the fragrance, strongest after sunset, effectively advertise the flower at dusk when its benefactors begin to fly. The sphinx moth, a frequent visitor, works as rapidly in extracting nectar from the deep tube as any hawk moth, so frequently mistaken for a hummingbird. The little cliff-dwelling bees (Halictus), among others, visit the flowers by day for pollen only. At first five outer stamens protrude slightly from the flower and shed their pollen on the visitor, immediately over the entrance. Afterward, having spread apart to leave the entrance free, the path is clear for the five inner stamens to follow the same course. Now the styles are still enclosed in the tube but when there is no longer fear of self-fertilization - that is to say, when the pollen has all been carried off, and the stamens have withered - up they come and spread apart to expose their rough upper surfaces to pollen brought from younger flowers by the moths.
DEPTFORD PINK(Dianthus Armeria) Pink family
Flowers - Pink, with whitish dots, small, borne in small clusters at end of stem. Calyx tubular, 5-toothed, with several bract-like leaves at base; 5 petals with toothed edges, clawed at base within deep calyx; 10 stamens; 1 pistil with 2 styles. Stem: 6 to 18 in. high, stiff, erect, finely hairy, few branches. Leaves: Opposite, blade-shaped, or lower ones rounded at end. Preferred Habitat - Fields, roadsides. Flowering Season - June-September. Distribution - Southern Ontario, New England, south to Maryland, west to Michigan.
The true pinks of Europe, among which are the SWEET WILLIAM or BUNCH PINK (D. barbatus) of our gardens, occasionally wild here, and the deliciously spicy CLOVE PINK (D. Carophyllus), ancestor of the superb carnations of the present day, that have reached a climax in the Lawson pink of newspaper fame, were once held sacred to Jupiter, hence Dianthus = Jove's own flower. The Deptford pink, a rather insignificant little European immigrant, without fragrance, has a decided charm, nevertheless, when seen in bright patches among the dry grass of early autumn, with small butterflies, that are its devoted admirers, hovering above.
PINK OR PALE CORYDALIS (Capnoides sempervirens; Corydalis glauca of Gray) Poppy family
Flowers - Pink, with yellow tip, about 1/2 in. long, a few borne in a loose, terminal raceme. Calyx of 2 small sepals; corolla irregular, of 4 erect, closed, and flattened petals joined, 1 of outer pair with short rounded spur at base, the interior ones narrow and keeled on back. Stamens 6, in 2 sets, Opposite outer petals; 1 pistil. Stem: Smooth, curved, branched, 1 to 2 feet high. Leaves: Pale grayish green, delicate, divided into variously and finely cut leaflets. Fruit: Very narrow, erect pod, 1 to 2 in. long. Preferred Habitat - Rocky, rich, cool woods. Flowering Season - April-September. Distribution - Nova Scotia westward to Alaska, south to Minnesota and North Carolina.
Dainty little pink sacs, yellow at the mouth, hang upside down along a graceful stem, and instantly suggest the Dutchman's breeches, squirrel corn, bleeding heart, and climbing fumitory, to which the plant is next of kin. Because the lark (Korydalos) has a spur, the flower, which boasts a small one also, borrows its Greek name.
Hildebrand proved by patient experiments that some flowers of this genus have not only lost the power of self-fertilization, but that they produce fertile seed only when pollen from another plant is carried to them. Yet how difficult they make dining for their benefactors! The bumblebee, which can reach the nectar, but not lap it conveniently, often "gets square" with the secretive blossom by nipping holes through its spur, to which the hive bees and others hasten for refreshment. We frequently find these punctured flowers. But hive and other bees visiting the blossom for pollen, some rubs off against their breast when they depress the two middle petals, a sort of sheath that contains pistil and stamens.
HARDHACK; STEEPLE BUSH(Spiraea tomentosa) Rose family
Flowers - Pink or magenta, rarely white, very small, in dense, pyramidal clusters. Calyx of 5 sepals; corolla of 5 rounded petals; stamens, 20 to 60; usually 5 pistils, downy. Stem: 2 to 3 ft. high, erect, shrubby, simple, downy. Leaves: Dark green above, covered with whitish woolly hairs beneath; oval, saw-edged, 1 to 2 in. long. Preferred Habitat - Low moist ground, roadside ditches, swamps. Flowering Season - July-September. Distribution - Nova Scotia westward, and southward to Georgia and Kansas.
These bright spires of pink bloom attract our attention no less than the countless eyes of flies, beetles, and bees, ever on the lookout for food to be eaten on the spot or stored up for future progeny. Pollen-feeding insects such as these, delight in the spireas, most of which secrete little or no nectar, but yield an abundance of pollen, which they can gather from the crowded panicles with little loss of time, transferring some of it to the pistils, of course, as they move over the tiny blossoms. But most spireas are also able to fertilize themselves, insects failing them.
An instant's comparison shows the steeple bush to be closely related to the fleecy, white meadow-sweet, often found growing near. The pink spires, which bloom from the top downward, have pale brown tips where the withered flowers are, toward the end of summer.
Why is the under side of the leaves so woolly? Not as a protection against wingless insects crawling upward, that is certain; for such could only benefit these tiny clustered flowers. Not against the sun's rays, for it is only the under surface that is coated. When the upper leaf surface is hairy, we know that the plant is protected in this way from perspiring too freely. Doubtless these leaves of the steeple bush, like those of other plants that choose a similar habitat, have woolly hairs beneath as an absorbent to protect their pores from clogging with the vapors that must rise from the damp ground where the plant grows. If these pores were filled with moisture from without, how could they possibly throw off the waste of the plant? All plants are largely dependent upon free perspiration for health, but especially those whose roots, struck in wet ground, are constantly sending up moisture through the stem and leaves.
PURPLE-FLOWERING OR VIRGINIA RASPBERRY(Rubus odoratus) Rose family
Flowers - Royal purple or bluish pink, showy, fragrant, 1 to 2 in. broad, loosely clustered at top of stem. Calyx sticky-hairy, deeply 5-parted, with long pointed tips; corolla of 5 rounded petals; stamens and pistils very numerous. Stem: 3 to 5 ft. high, erect, branched, shrubby, bristly, not prickly. Leaves: Alternate, petioled, 3 to 5 lobed, middle lobe largest, and all pointed; saw-edged lower leaves immense. Fruit: A depressed red berry, scarcely edible. Preferred Habitat - Rocky woods, dells, shady roadsides. Flowering Season - June-August. Distribution - Northern Canada south to Georgia, westward to Michigan and Tennessee.
To be an unappreciated, unloved relative of the exquisite wild rose, with which this flower is so often likened, must be a similar misfortune to being the untalented son of a great man, or the unhappy author of a successful first book never equaled in later attempts. But where the bright blossoms of the Virginia raspberry burst forth above the roadside tangle and shady woodland dells, even those who despise magenta see beauty in them where abundant green tones all discordant notes into harmony. Purple, as we of today understand the color, the flower is not; but rather the purple of ancient Orientals. On cool, cloudy days the petals are a deep, clear purplish rose, that soon fades and dulls with age, or changes into pale, bluish pink when the sun is hot.
Many yellow stamens help conceal the nectar secreted in a narrow ring between the filaments and the base of the receptacle. Bumblebees, the principal and most efficient visitors, which can reach sweets more readily than most insects, although numerous others help to self-fertilize the flower, bring to the mature stigmas of a newly opened blossom pollen carried on their undersides from the anthers of a flower a day or two older. When the inner row of anthers shed their pollen, some doubtless falls on the stigmas below them, and so spontaneous self-fertilization may occur. Fruit sets quickly; nevertheless the shrub keeps on flowering nearly all summer. Children often fold the lower leaves, which sometimes measure a foot across, to make drinking-cups.
QUEEN-OF-THE-PRAIRIE(Ulmaria rubra; Spirea lobata of Gray) Rose family
Flowers - Deep pink, like the peach blossom, fragrant, about 1/3 in. across, clustered in large cymose panicles on a long footstalk. Calyx 5-lobed; 5-clawed, rose-like petals; stamens numerous; pistils 5 to 15, usually 10. Stem: 2 to 8 ft. tall, smooth, grooved, branched. Leaves: Mostly near the ground, large, rarely measuring 3 ft. long, compounded of from 3 to 7 leaflets; end leaflet, of 7 to 9 divisions, much the largest; side leaflets opposite, seated on stem, 3 to 5 lobed or parted; all lobes acute, and edges unequally incised. Prominent kidney-shaped stipules. Preferred Habitat - Moist meadows and prairies. Flowering Season - June-July. Distribution - Western Pennsylvania to Michigan and Iowa, and southward.
A stately, beautiful native plant, seen to perfection where it rears bright panicles of bloom above the ranker growth in the low moist meadows of the Ohio Valley. When we find it in the East, it has only recently escaped from man's gardens into Nature's. Butterflies and bees pay grateful homage to this queen. Indeed, butterflies appear to have a special fondness for pink, as bees have for blue flowers. Cattle delight to chew the leaves, which, when crushed, give out a fragrance like sweet birch.
WILD ROSES(Rosa) Rose family
Just as many members of the lily tribe show a preference for the rule of three in the arrangements of their floral parts, so the wild roses cling to the quinary method of some primitive ancestor, a favorite one also with the buttercup and many of its kin, the geraniums, mallows, and various others. Most of our fruit trees and bushes are near relatives of the rose. Five petals and five sepals, then, we always find on roses in a state of nature; and although the progressive gardener of today has nowhere shown his skill more than in the development of a multitude of petals from stamens in the magnificent roses of fashionable society, the most highly cultivated darling of the greenhouses quickly reverts to the original wild type, setting his work of years at naught, if once it regain its natural liberties through neglect.
To protect its foliage from being eaten by hungry cattle, the rose goes armed into the battle of life with curved, sharp prickles, not true thorns or modified branches, but merely surface appliances which peel off with the bark. To destroy crawling pilferers of pollen, several species coat their calices, at least, with fine hairs or sticky gum; and to insure wide distribution of offspring, the seeds are packed in the attractive, bright red calyx tube or hip, a favorite food of many birds, which drop them miles away. When shall we ever learn that not even a hair has been added to or taken from a blossom without a lawful cause, and study it accordingly? Fragrance, abundant pollen, and bright-colored petals naturally attract many insects; but roses secrete no nectar. Some species of bees, and a common beetle (Trichius piger) for example, seem to depend upon certain wild roses exclusively for pollen to feed themselves and their larvae. Bumblebees, to which roses are adapted, require a firmer support than the petals would give, and so alight on the center of the flower, where the pistil receives pollen carried by them from other roses. Although the numerous stamens and the pistils mature simultaneously, the former are usually turned outward, that the incoming pollen-laden insect may strike the stigma first. When the large bees cease their visits as they may in long-continued dull or rainy weather, the rose, turning toward the sun, stands more or less obliquely, and some of the pollen must fall on its stigma. Occasional self-fertilization matters little.
If plants have insect benefactors, they have their foes as well and hordes of tiny aphids, commonly known as green flies or plant lice, moored by their sucking tubes to the tender sprays of roses, wild and cultivated, live by extracting their juices. A curious relationship exists between these little creatures and the ants, which "milk" them by stroking and caressing them with their antennae until they emit a tiny drop of sweet, white fluid. The yellow ant, that lives an almost subterranean life, actually domesticates flocks and herds of root-feeding aphids; the brown ant appropriates those that live among the bark of trees; and the common black garden ant (Lasius niger), devoting itself to the aphis of the rose bushes, protects it in extraordinary ways, delightfully described by the author of "Ants, Bees, and Wasps."
In literature, ancient and modern, sacred and profane, no flower figures so conspicuously as the rose. To the Romans it was most significant when placed over the door of a public or private banquet hall. Each who passed beneath it bound himself thereby not to disclose anything said or done within; hence the expression sub rosa, common to this day.
The PRAIRIE, CLIMBING, or MICHIGAN ROSE (R. setigera) lifts clusters of deep, bright pink flowers, that after a while fade almost white, above the thickets and rich prairie soil, from southern Ontario and Wisconsin to the Gulf, as far eastward as Florida. Its distinguishing characteristics are: Stout, widely separated prickles along the stem, that grows several feet long; leaves compounded of three, rarely five, oval leaflets, acute or obtuse at the apex; stalks and calyx often glandular; odorless flowers that, opening in June and July, measure about two and a half inches across, their styles cohering in a smooth column on which bees are tempted to alight; and a round hip, or seed vessel, formed by the fruiting calyx, which is more or less glandular. From this parent stock several valuable double-flowering roses have been derived, among others the Queen and the Gem of the Prairies, but it is our only native rose that has ever passed into cultivation.
The SMOOTH, EARLY, or MEADOW ROSE (R. blanda), found blooming in June and July in moist, rocky places from Newfoundland to New Jersey and a thousand miles westward, has a trifle larger and slightly fragrant flowers, at first pink, later pure white. Their styles are separate, not cohering in a column nor projecting as in the climbing rose. This is a leafy, low bush mostly less than three feet high; it is either entirely unarmed, or else provided with only a few weak prickles; the stipules are rather broad, and the leaf is compounded of from five to seven oval, blunt, and pale green leaflets, often hoary below.
In swamps and low wet ground from Quebec to Florida, and westward to the Mississippi, the SWAMP ROSE (R. Carolina) blooms late in May and on to midsummer. The bush may grow taller than a man, or perhaps only a foot high. It is armed with stout, hooked, rather distant prickles, and few or no bristles. The leaflets, from five to nine, but usually seven, to a leaf, are smooth, pale, or perhaps hairy beneath to protect the pores from filling with moisture arising from the wet ground. Long, sharp calyx lobes, which drop off before the cup swells in fruit into a round, glandular, hairy red hip, are conspicuous among the clustered pink flowers and buds.
Surely no description of our COMMON, LOW, DWARF, or PASTURE ROSE (R. humilis; R. lucida of Gray) is needed. One's acquaintance with flowers must be limited indeed, if it does not include this most abundant of all the wild roses from Ontario to Georgia, and westward to Wisconsin. In light, dry, or rocky soil we find the exquisite, but usually solitary, blossom late in May until July, and, like most roses, it has the pleasant practice of putting forth a stray blossom or two in early autumn. The stamens of this species are turned outward so strongly that self- pollination must very rarely take place.
Among the following charming wild roses, not natives, but naturalized immigrants from foreign lands, that have escaped from gardens, is Shakespeare's CANKER-BLOOM, the lovely DOG ROSE or WILD BRIER (R. canina), that spreads its long, straggling branches along the roadsides and banks, covering the waste lands with its smooth, beautiful foliage, and in June and July with pink or white roses. Because it lacks the fragrance of sweetbrier, which it otherwise closely resembles, it has been branded with the dog prefix as a mark of contempt. Professor Koch says that long before it was customary to surround gardens with walls, men had rose hedges. "Each of the four great peoples of Asia," he continues, "possessed its own variety of rose, and carried it during all wanderings, until finally all four became the common property of the four peoples. The great Indo-Germanic stock chose the 'hundred-leaved' and RED ROSE (R. Gallica); nevertheless, after the Niebelungen the common dog rose played an important part among the ancient Germans. The DAMASCUS ROSE (R. Damascena), which blooms twice a year, as well as the MUSK ROSE (R. moschata), were cherished by the Semitic or Arabic stock; while the Turkish-Mongolian people planted by preference the YELLOW ROSE (R. lutea). Eastern Asia (China and Japan) is the fatherland of the INDIAN and TEA ROSES."
How fragrant are the pages of Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare with the Eglantine! This delicious plant, known here as SWEETBRIAR (R. rubIginosa), emits its very aromatic odor from russet glands on the under, downy side of the small leaflets, always a certain means of identification. From eastern Canada to Virginia and Tennessee the plant has happily escaped from man's gardens back to Nature's.
In spite of its American Indian name, the lovely white CHEROKEE ROSE (R. Sinica), that runs wild in the South, climbing, rambling and rioting with a truly Oriental abandon and luxuriance, did indeed come from China. Would that our northern thickets and roadsides might be decked with its pure flowers and almost equally beautiful dark, glossy, evergreen leaves!
COMMON RED, PURPLE, MEADOW, or HONEYSUCKLE CLOVER(Trifolium pratense) Pea family
Flowers - Magenta, pink, or rarely whitish, sweet-scented, the tubular corollas set in dense round, oval, or egg-shaped heads about 1 in. long, and seated in a sparingly hairy calyx. Stem: 6 in. to 2 ft. high, branching, reclining, or erect, more or less hairy. Leaves: On long petioles, commonly compounded of 3, but sometimes of 4 to 11 oval or oblong leaflets, marked with white crescent, often dark-spotted near center; stipules egg-shaped, sharply pointed, strongly veined, over 1/2 in. long. Preferred Habitat - Fields, meadows, roadsides. Flowering Season - April-November. Distribution - Common throughout Canada and United States.
Meadows bright with clover-heads among the grasses, daisies, and buttercups in June resound with the murmur of unwearying industry and rapturous enjoyment. Bumblebees by the tens of thousands buzzing above acres of the farmer's clover blossoms should be happy in a knowledge of their benefactions, which doubtless concern them not at all. They have never heard the story of the Australians who imported quantities of clover for fodder, and had glorious fields of it that season, but not a seed to plant next year's crops, simply because the farmers had failed to import the bumblebee. After her immigration the clovers multiplied prodigiously. No; the bee's happiness rests on her knowledge that only the butterflies' long tongues can honestly share with her the brimming wells of nectar in each tiny floret. Children who have sucked them too appreciate her rapture. If we examine a little flower under the magnifying glass, we shall see why its structure places it in the pea family. Bumblebees so depress the keel either when they sip, or feed on pollen, that their heads and tongues get well dusted with the yellow powder, which they transfer to the stigmas of other flowers; whereas the butterflies are of doubtful value, if not injurious, since their long, slender tongues easily drain the nectar without depressing the keel. Even if a few grains of pollen should cling to their tongues, it would probably be wiped off as they withdrew them through the narrow slit, where the petals nearly meet, at the mouth of the flower. Bombus terrestris delights in nipping holes at the base of the tube, which other pilferers also profit by. Our country is so much richer in butterflies than Europe, it is scarcely surprising that Professor Robertson found thirteen Lepidoptera out of twenty insect visitors to this clover in Illinois, whereas Muller caught only eight butterflies on it out of a list of thirty-nine visitors in Germany. The fritillaries and the sulphurs are always seen about the clover fields among many others, and the "dusky wings" and the caterpillar of several species feeds almost exclusively on this plant.
"To live in clover," from the insect's point of view at least, may well mean a life of luxury and affluence. Most peasants in Europe will tell you that a dream about the flower foretells not only a happy marriage, but long life and prosperity. For ages the clover has been counted a mystic plant, and all sorts of good and bad luck were said to attend the finding of variations of its leaves which had more than the common number of leaflets. At evening these leaflets fold downward, the side ones like two hands clasped in prayer, the end one bowed over them. In this fashion the leaves of the white and other clovers also go to sleep, to protect their sensitive surfaces from cold by radiation, it is thought.
The ZIG-ZAG CLOVER, COW or MARL-GRASS (T. Medium), a native of Europe and Asia, now naturalized in the eastern half of the United States and Canada, may scarcely be told from the common red clover, except by its crooked, angular stems - often provokingly straight - by its unspotted leaves, and the short peduncle in which its heads are elevated above the calyx.
Farmers here are beginning to learn the value of the beautiful CRIMSON, CARNATION or ITALIAN CLOVER or NAPOLEONS (T. incarnatum), and happily there are many fields and waste places in the East already harboring the brilliant runaways. The narrow heads may be two and a half inches long. A meadow of this fodder plant makes one envious of the very cattle that may spend the summer day wading through acres of its deep bright bloom.
GOAT'S RUE; CAT-GUT; HOARY PEA or WILD SWEET PEA(Cracca Virginiana; Tephrosia Virginiana of Gray) Pea family
Flowers - In terminal cluster, each 1/2 in. long or over, butterfly-shaped, consisting of greenish, cream-yellow standard, purplish-rose wings, and curved keel of greenish yellow tinged with rose; petals clawed; 10 stamens (9 and 1); calyx 5-toothed. Stem: Hoary, with white, silky hairs, rather woody, 1 to 2 feet high. Leaves: Compounded of 7 to 25 oblong leaflets. Root: Long, fibrous, tough. Fruit: A hoary, narrow pod, to 2 in. long. Preferred Habitat - Dry, sandy soil, edges of pine woods. Flowering Season - June-July. Distribution - Southern New England, westward to Minnesota, south to Florida, Louisiana, and Mexico.
Flowers far less showy and attractive than this denizen of sandy wastelands, a cousin of the wisteria vine and the locust tree, have been introduced to American gardens. Striking its long fibrous root deep into the dry soil, the plant spreads in thrifty clumps through heat and drought - and so tough are its fibers they might almost be used for violin strings. As in the case of the lupine, the partridge pea and certain others akin to it, the leaves of the hoary pea "go to sleep" at night, but after a manner of their own, i.e., by lying along the stem and turning on their own bases.
In similar situations from New York south and southwestward, the MILK PEA (Galactia regularis; G. glabella of Gray) lies prostrate along the ground, the matted, usually branched stems sending up at regular intervals a raceme of rose-purple flowers in July and August from the axil of the trefoliate leaf.
TRAILING BUSH CLOVER(Lespedeza procumbens) Pea family
Flowers - Purplish pink or violet, veined, the butterfly-shaped ones having standard petal, wings, and keel, clustered at end of peduncles; the minute flowers lacking a corolla, nearly sessile. Calyx of 5 slender, nearly equal lobes. Stems: Prostrate, trailing, or sometimes ascending, woolly or downy, leafy. Leaves: Clover-like, trefoliate. Fruit: A very small, hairy, flat, rounded, acute pod. Preferred Habitat - Dry soil open, sandy places. Flowering Season - August-September. Distribution - Massachusetts to the Gulf, and westward to the Mississippi.
Springing upward from a mass of clover-like leaves, these showy little blossoms elevate themselves to arrest, not our attention, but the notice of the passing bee. As the claw of the standard petal and the calyx are short, he need not have a long tongue to drain the nectary pointed out to him by a triangular white mark at the base of the banner. Now, as his weight depresses the incurved keel, wherein the vital organs are protected, the stigma strikes the visitor in advance of the anthers, so that pollen brought on his underside from another flower must come off on this one before he receives fresh pollen to transfer to a third blossom. At first the keel returns to its original position when depressed; later it loses its elasticity. But besides these showy flowers intended to be cross-fertilized by insects, the bush clovers bear, among the others, insignificant-looking, tightly closed, bud-like ones that produce abundant self-fertilized seed. The petaliferous flowers are simply to counteract the inevitable evils resulting from close inbreeding. One usually finds caterpillars of the "dusky wings" butterfly feeding on the foliage and the similar tick trefoils which are its staple. At night the bush clover leaves turn upward, completely changing the aspect of these plants as we know them by day. Michaux named the group of flowers for his patron, Lespedez, a governor of Florida under the Spanish regime.
Perhaps the commonest of the tribe is the VIOLET BUSH CLOVER (L. violacea), a variable, branching, erect, or spreading plant, sometimes only a foot high, or again three times as tall. Its thin leaves are more elliptic than the decidedly clover-like ones of the preceding species; its rose-purple flowers are more loosely clustered, and the stems are only sparingly hairy, never woolly.
On the top of the erect, usually unbranched, but very leafy stem of the WAND-LIKE BUSH CLOVER (L. frutescens), the two kinds of flowers grow in a crowded cluster, and more sparingly from the axils below. The clover-like leaflets, dark green and smooth above, are paler and hairy below. Like the rest of its kin, this bush clover delights in dry soil, particularly in open, sandy places near woods of pine and oak. One readily distinguishes the SLENDER BUSH CLOVER (L. Virginica) by the very narrowly oblong leaves along its wand, which bears two kinds of bright rose flowers, clustered at the top chiefly, and in the axils.
Yellowish-white flowers, about a quarter of an inch long, and with a purplish-rose spot on the standard petal to serve as a pathfinder to the nectary, are crowded in oblong spikes an inch and a half long or less on the HAIRY BUSH CLOVER (L. hirta). The stem, which may attain four feet, or half that height, is usually branched; and the entire plant is often downy to the point of silkiness.
Dense clusters of the yellowish-white flowers of the ROUND-HEADED BUSH CLOVER (L. capitata) are seated in the upper axils of the silvery-hairy, wand-like stem. Pink streaks at the base of the standard petal serve as pathfinders, and its infolded edges guide the bee's tongue straight to the opening in the stamen tube through which he sucks.
WILD or SPOTTED GERANIUM or CRANE'S-BILL; ALUM-ROOT(Geranium maculatum) Geranium family
Flowers - Pale magenta, purplish pink, or lavender, regular, 1 to 1 1/2 in. broad, solitary or a pair, borne on elongated peduncles, generally with pair of leaves at their base. Calyx of 5 lapping, pointed sepals; 5 petals, woolly at base; 10 stamens; pistil with 5 styles. Fruit: A slender capsule pointed like a crane's bill. In maturity it ejects seeds elastically far from the parent plant. Stem: 1 to 2 ft. high, hairy, slender, simple or branching above. Leaves: Older ones sometimes spotted with white; basal ones 3 to 6 in. wide, 3 to 5 parted, variously cleft and toothed; 2 stem leaves opposite. Preferred Habitat - Open woods, thickets, and shady roadsides. Flowering Season - April-July. Distribution - Newfoundland to Georgia, and westward a thousand miles.
Sprengel, who was the first to exalt flowers above the level of mere botanical specimens, had his attention led to the intimate relationship existing between plants and insects by studying out the meaning of the hairy corolla of the common wild geranium of Germany (G. sylvaticum), being convinced, as he wrote in 1787, that "the wise Author of Nature has not made even a single hair without a definite design." A hundred years before, Nehemias Grew had said that it was necessary for pollen to reach the stigma of a flower in order that it might set fertile seed; and Linnaeus had to come to his aid with conclusive evidence to convince a doubting world that this was true. Sprengel made the next step forward, but his writings lay neglected over seventy years because he advanced the then incredible and only partially true statement that a flower is fertilized by insects which carry its pollen from its anthers to its stigma. In spite of his discoveries that the hairs inside the geranium's corolla protect its nectar from rain for the insect's benefit, just as eyebrows keep perspiration from falling into the eye; that most flowers which secrete nectar have what he termed "honey guides" - spots of bright color, heavy veining, or some such pathfinder on the petals - in spite of the most patient and scientific research that shed great light on natural selection a half-century before Darwin advanced the theory, he left it for the author of "The Origin of Species" to show that cross-fertilization - the transfer of pollen from one blossom to another, not from anthers to stigma of the same flower - is the great end to which so much marvelous mechanism is chiefly adapted. Cross-fertilized blossoms defeat self-fertilized flowers in the struggle for existence.
No wonder Sprengel's theory was disproved by his scornful contemporaries in the very case of his wild geranium, which sheds its pollen before it has developed a stigma to receive any; therefore no insect that had not brought pollen from an earlier bloom could possibly fertilize this flower. How amazing that he did not see this! Our common wild crane's-bill, which also has lost the power to fertilize itself, not only ripens first the outer, then the inner, row of anthers, but actually drops them off after their pollen has been removed, to overcome the barest chance of self-fertilization as the stigmas become receptive. This is the geranium's and many other flowers' method to compel cross-fertilization by insects. In cold, stormy, cloudy weather a geranium blossom may remain in the male stage several days before becoming female; while on a warm, sunny day, when plenty of insects are flying, the change sometimes takes place in a few hours. Among others, the common sulphur or puddle butterfly, that sits in swarms on muddy roads and makes the clover fields gay with its bright little wings, pilfers nectar from the geranium without bringing its long tongue in contact with the pollen. Neither do the smaller bees and flies which alight on the petals necessarily come in contact with the anthers and stigmas. Doubtless the larger bees are the flowers' true benefactors.
The so-called geraniums in cultivation are pelargoniums, strictly speaking.
In barren soil, from Canada to the Gulf, and far westward, the CAROLINA CRANE'S-BILL (G. Carolinianum), an erect, much-branched little plant resembling the spotted geranium in general features, bears more compact clusters of pale rose or whitish flowers, barely half an inch across. As their inner row of anthers comes very close to the stigmas, spontaneous self-fertilization may sometimes occur; although in fine weather small bees, especially, visit them constantly. The beak of the seed vessel measures nearly an inch long.
HERB ROBERT; RED ROBIN; RED SHANKS; DRAGON'S BLOOD(Geranium Robertianum) Geranium family
Flowers - Purplish rose, about 1/2 in. across, borne chiefly in pairs on slender peduncles. Five sepals and petals; stamens 10; pistil with 5 styles. Stem: Weak, slender, much branched, forked, and spreading, slightly hairy, 6 to i8 in. high. Leaves: Strongly scented, opposite, thin, of 3 divisions, much subdivided and cleft. Fruit: Capsular, elastic, the beak 1 in. long, awn-pointed. Preferreed Habitat - Rocky, moist woods and shady roadsides Flowering Season - May-October Distribution - Nova Scotia to Pennsylvania, and westward to Missouri.
Who was the Robert for whom this his "holy herb" was named? Many suppose that he was St. Robert, a Benedictine monk, to whom the twenty-ninth of April - the day the plant comes into flower in Europe - is dedicated. Others assert that Robert Duke of Normandy, for whom the "Ortus Sanitatis," a standard medical guide for some hundred of years, was written, is the man honored; and since there is now no way of deciding the mooted question, we may take our choice.
Only when the stems are young are they green; later the plant well earns the name of red shanks, and when its leaves show crimson stains, of dragon's blood.
At any time the herb gives forth a disagreeable odor, but especially when its leaves and stem have been crushed until they emit a resinous secretion once an alleged cure for the plague. Flies, that never object to a noxious smell, constantly visit the flower, and have their tongues guided through passages between little ridge-like processes on each petal to the nectar secreted by the base of the filaments at the base of each sepal. To prevent self-fertilization the five stigmas are folded close together when the flower opens, nor do they spread apart and become receptive until after the outer row of anthers, then the inner row, have shed their pollen. When the elastic carpels have ripened their seed, bang! go the little guns, scattering them far and wide.
WHITE OR TRUE WOOD~SORREL; ALLELULA(Oxalis acetosella) Wood-sorrel family
Flowers - White or delicate pink, veined with deep pink, about 1/2 in. long. Five sepals; 5 spreading petals rounded at tips; 10 stamens, 5 longer, 5 shorter, all anther-bearing; 1 pistil with 5 stigmatic styles. Scape: Slender, leafless, 1-flowered, 2 to 5 in, high. Leaf: Clover-like, of 3 leaflets, on long petioles from scaly, creeping rootstock. Preferred Habitat - Cold, damp woods. Flowering Season - May-July. Distribution - Nova Scotia and Manitoba, southward to North Carolina. Also a native of Europe.
Clumps of these delicate little pinkish blossoms and abundant leaves, cuddled close to the cold earth of northern forests, usually conceal near the dry leaves or moss from which they spring blind flowers that never open - cleistogamous the botanists call them - flowers that lack petals, as if they were immature buds; that lack odor, nectar, and entrance; yet they are perfectly mature, self-fertilized, and abundantly fruitful. Fifty-five genera of plants contain one or more species on which these peculiar products are found, the pea family having more than any other, although violets offer perhaps the most familiar instance to most of us. Many of these species bury their offspring below ground; but the wood-sorrel bears its blind flowers nodding from the top of a curved scape at the base of the plant, where we can readily find them. By having no petals, and other features assumed by an ordinary flower to attract insects, and chiefly in saving pollen, they produce seed with literally the closest economy. It is estimated that the average blind flower of the wood-sorrel does its work with four hundred pollen grains, while the prodigal peony scatters with the help of wind and insect visitors over three and a half millions!
Yet no plant, however economically inclined, can afford to deteriorate its species through self-fertilization; therefore, to overcome the evils of in-breeding, the wood-sorrel, like other plants that bear cleistogamous flowers, takes special pains to produce showy blossoms to attract insects, on which they absolutely depend to transfer their pollen from flower to flower. These have their organs so arranged as to make self-fertilization impossible.
Every child knows how the wood-sorrel "goes to sleep" by drooping its three leaflets until they touch back to back at evening, regaining the horizontal at sunrise - a performance most scientists now agree protects the peculiarly sensitive leaf from cold by radiation. During the day, as well, seedling, scape, and leaves go through some interesting movements, closely followed by Darwin in his "Power of Movement in Plants," which should be read by all interested.
Oxalis, the Greek for sour, applies to all sorrels because of their acid juice; but acetosella = vinegar salt, the specific name of this plant, indicates that from it druggists obtain salt of lemons. Twenty pounds of leaves yield between two and three ounces of oxalic acid by crystallization. Names locally given the plant in the Old World are wood sour or sower, cuckoo's meat, sour trefoil, and shamrock - for this is St. Patrick's own flower, the true shamrock of the ancient Irish, some claim. Alleluia, another folk-name, refers to the joyousness of the Easter season, when the plant comes into bloom in England.
VIOLET WOOD-SORREL(Oxalis violacea) Wood-sorrel family
Flowers - Pinkish purple, lavender, or pale magenta; less than 1 in. long; borne on slender stems in umbels or forking clusters, each containing from 3 to 12 flowers. Calyx of 5 obtuse sepals; 5 petals; 10 (5 longer, 5 shorter) stamens; 5 styles persistent above 5-celled ovary. Stem: From brownish, scaly bulb 4 to 9 in. high. Leaves: About 1 in. wide, compounded of 3 rounded, clover-like leaflets with prominent midrib, borne at end of slender petioles, springing from root. Preferred Habitat - Rocky and sandy woods. Flowering Season - May-June. Distribution - Northern United States to Rocky Mountains, south to Florida and New Mexico; more abundant southward.
Beauty of Leaf and blossom is not the only attraction possessed by this charming little plant. As a family the wood-sorrels have great interest for botanists since Darwin devoted such exhaustive study to their power of movement, and many other scientists have described the several forms assumed by perfect flowers of the same species to secure cross-fertilization. Some members of the clan also bear blind flowers, which have been described in the account of the white wood-sorrel given above. Even the rudimentary leaves of the seedlings "go to sleep" at evening, and during the day are in constant movement up and down. The stems, too, are restless; and as for the mature leaves, every child knows how they droop their three leaflets back to back against the stem at evening, elevating them to the perfect horizontal again by day. Extreme sensitiveness to light has been thought to be the true explanation of so much activity, and yet this is not a satisfactory theory in many cases. It is certain that drooping leaves suffer far less from frost than those whose upper surfaces are flatly exposed to the zenith. This view that the sleep of leaves saves them from being chilled at night by radiation is Darwin's own, supported by innumerable experiments; and probably it would have been advanced by Linnaeus, too, since so many of his observations in "Somnus Plantarum" verify the theory, had the principle of radiation been discovered in his day. The violet wood-sorrel produces two sorts of perfect flowers reciprocally adapted to each other, but on different plants in the same neighborhood. The two are essentially alike, except in arrangement of stamens and pistil; one flower having high anthers and low stigmas, the other having lower anthers and higher stigmas; and as the high stigmas are fertile only when pollenized with grains from a flower having high anthers, it is evident insect aid to transfer pollen is indispensable here. Small bees, which visit these blossoms abundantly, are their benefactors; although there is nothing to prevent pollen from falling on the stigmas of the short-styled form. Hildebrand proved that productiveness is greatest, or exists only, after legitimate fertilization. To accomplish cross-pollination, many plants bear flowers of opposite sexes on different individuals; but the violet wood-sorrel's plan, utilized by the bluet and partridge-vine also, has the advantage in that both kinds of its flowers are fruitful.
COMMON, FIELD, or PURPLE MILKWORT; PURPLE POLYGALA(Polygala viridescens; P. sanguinca of Gray) Milkwort family
Flowers - Numerous, very small, variable; bright magenta, pink, or almost red, or pale to whiteness, or greenish, clustered in a globular clover-like head, gradually lengthening to a cylindric spike. Stem: 6 to 15 in. high, smooth, branched above, leafy. Leaves: Alternate, narrowly oblong, entire. Preferred Habitat - Fields and meadows, moist or sandy. Flowering Season - June-September. Distribution - Southern Canada to North Carolina, westward to the Mississippi.
When these bright clover-like heads and the inconspicuous greenish ones grow together, the difference between them is so striking it is no wonder Linnaeus thought they were borne by two distinct species, sanguinea and viridescens, whereas they are now known to be merely two forms of the same flower. At first glance one might mistake the irregular little blossom for a member of the pea family; two of the five very unequal sepals - not petals - are colored wings. These bright-hued calyx-parts overlap around the flower-head like tiles on a roof. Within each pair of wings are three petals united into a tube, split on the back, to expose the vital organs to contact with the bee, the milkwort's best friend.
Plants of this genus were named polygala, the Greek for much milk, not because they have milky juice - for it is bitter and clear - but because feeding on them is supposed to increase the flow of cattle's milk.
In sandy swamps, especially near the coast from Maine to the Gulf, and westward to the Mississippi, grows the MARSH or CROSS-LEAVED MILKWORT (P. cruciata). Most of its leaves, especially the lower ones, are in whorls of four, and from July to September its dense, bright purple-pink, white, or greenish flower-heads, the wings awn-pointed, are seated on the ends of the square branching stem of this low, mossy little plant.
FRINGED MILKWORT or POLYGALA; FLOWERING WINTERGREEN; GAY WINGS(Polygala paucifolia) Milkwort family
Flowers - Purplish rose, rarely white, showy, over 1/2 in. long, from 1 to 4 on short, slender peduncles from among upper leaves. Calyx of 5 unequal sepals, of which 2 are wing-like and highly colored like petals. Corolla irregular, its crest finely fringed; 6 stamens; pistil. Also pale, pouch-like, cleistogamous flowers underground. Stem: Prostrate, 6 to 15 in. long, slender, from creeping rootstock, sending up flowering shoots 4 to 7 in. high. Leaves: Clustered at summit, oblong, or pointed egg-shaped, 1 1/2 in. long or less; those on lower part of shoots scale-like. Preferred habitat - Moist, rich woods, pine lands, light soil. Flowering Season - May-July. Distribution - Northern Canada, southward and westward to Georgia and Illinois.
Gay companies of these charming, bright little blossoms hidden away in the woods suggest a swarm of tiny mauve butterflies that have settled among the wintergreen leaves. Unlike the common milkwort and many of its kin that grow in clover-like heads, each one of the gay wings has beauty enough to stand alone, Its oddity of structure, its lovely color and enticing fringe, lead one to suspect it of extraordinary desire to woo some insect that will carry its pollen from blossom to blossom and so enable the plant to produce cross-fertilized seed to counteract the evil tendencies resulting from the more prolific self-fertilized cleistogamous flowers buried in the ground below. It has been said that the fringed polygala keeps "one flower for beauty and one for use"; "one playful flower for the world, another for serious use and posterity"; but surely the showy flowers, the "giddy sisters," borne by all cleistogamous species to save them from degenerating through close inbreeding, are no idle, irresponsible beauties. Let us watch a bumblebee as she alights on the convenient fringe which edges the lower petal of this milkwort. Now the weight of her body so depresses the keel, or tubular petals, wherein the stamens and pistil lie protected from the rain and useless insects, that as soon as it is pressed downward a spoon-tipped pistil pushes out the pollen through the slit on the top on the bee's abdomen. The stigmatic surface of the pistil is on the opposite side of the spoon, nearest the base of the flower, to guard against self-pollination. After the pollen has been removed, a bumblebee, already dusted from other blossoms, must leave some on the stigma as she sucks the nectar. Indeed, every feature possessed by this pretty flower has been developed for the most serious purpose of life - the salvation of the species.
Only locally common throughout a wide area, embracing the eastern half of the United States and Canada, is the RACEMED MILKWORT (P. polygama), whose small, purple-pink, but showy flowers, clustered along the upper part of numerous leafy stems, are found in dry soil during June and July. Like the fringed milkwort, this one bears many cleistogamous, or blind flowers, on underground branches, flowers that always set an abundance of fertile self-planted seed in case of failure to form any on the part of their showy sisters, which are utterly dependent upon the bee's ministrations. During prolonged stormy weather few insects are abroad.
SWAMP ROSE-MALLOW; MALLOW ROSE(Hibiscus Moscheutos) Mallow family
Flowers - Very large, clear rose pink, sometimes white, often with crimson center, 4 to 7 in. across, solitary, or clustered on peduncles at summit of stems. Calyx 5-cleft, subtended by numerous narrow bractlets; 5 large, veined petals; stamens united into a valvular column bearing anthers on the outside for much of its length; 1 pistil partly enclosed in the column, and with five button-tipped stigmatic branches above. Stem: 4 to 7 ft. tall, stout, from perennial root. Leaves: 3 to 7 in. long, tapering, pointed, egg-shaped, densely white, downy beneath lower leaves, or sometimes all, lobed at middle. Preferred Habitat - Brackish marshes, riversides, lake shores, saline situations. Flowering Season - August-September. Distribution - Massachusetts to the Gulf of Mexico, westward to Louisiana; found locally in the interior, but chiefly along Atlantic seaboard.
Stately ranks of these magnificent flowers, growing among the tall sedges and "cat-tails" of the marshes, make the most insensate traveler exclaim at their amazing loveliness. To reach them one must don rubber boots and risk sudden seats in the slippery ooze; nevertheless, with spade in hand to give one support, it is well worthwhile to seek them out and dig up some roots to transplant to the garden. Here, strange to say, without salt soil or more water than the average garden receives from showers and hose, this handsomest of our wild flowers soon makes itself delightfully at home under cultivation. Such good, deep earth, well enriched and moistened, as the hollyhock thrives in, suits it perfectly. Now we have a better opportunity to note how the bees suck the five nectaries at the base of the petals and collect the abundant pollen of the newly opened flowers, which they perforce transfer to the five button-shaped stigmas intentionally impeding the entrance to older blossoms. Only its cousin the hollyhock, a native of China, can vie with the rose-mallow's decorative splendor among the shrubbery; and the ROSE OF CHINA (Hibiscus Rosa-Sinensis), cultivated in greenhouses here, eclipse it in the beauty of the individual blossom. This latter flower, whose superb scarlet corolla stains black, is employed by the Chinese married women, it is said, to discolor their teeth; but in the West Indies it sinks to even greater ignominy as a dauber for blacking shoes!
MARSH MALLOW (Althaea officinalis), a name frequently misapplied to the swamp rose-mallow, is properly given to a much smaller pink flower, measuring only an inch and a half across at the most, and a far rarer one, being a naturalized immigrant from Europe found only in the salt marshes from the Massachusetts coast to New York. It is also known as WYMOTE. This is a bushy, leafy plant, two to four feet high, and covered with velvety down as a protection against the clogging of its pores by the moisture arising from its wet retreats. Plants that live in swamps must "perspire" freely and keep their pores open. From the marsh mallow's thick roots the mucilage used in confectionery is obtained, a soothing demulcent long esteemed in medicine. Another relative, the OKRA or GUMBO PLANT of vegetable gardens (Hibiscus esculentus), has mucilage enough in its narrow pods to thicken a potful of soup. Its pale yellow, crimson-centered flowers are quite as beautiful as any hollyhock, but not nearly so conspicuous, because of the plant's bushy habit of growth. In spite of its name, the ALTHAEA of our gardens, or ROSE OF SHARON (Hibiscus Syriacus), is not so closely allied to Althaea officinalis as to the swamp rose-mallow.
Another immigrant from Europe and Asia sparingly naturalized in waste places and roadsides in Canada, the United States, and Mexico is the COMMON HIGH MALLOW, CHEESEFLOWER, or ROUND DOCK (Malva sylvestris). Its purplish-rose flowers, from which the French have derived their word mauve, first applied to this plant, appear in small clusters on slender pedicels from the leaf axils along a leafy, rather weak, but ascending stem, maybe only a foot high, or perhaps a yard, throughout the summer months. The leaf, borne on a petiole two to six inches long, is divided into from five to nine shallow, angular, or rounded saw-edged lobes. Country children eat unlimited quantities of the harmless little circular, flattened "cheeses" or seed vessels, a characteristic of the genus Malva. Since the flower invites a great number of insects to feast on its nectar, secreted in five little pits (protected for them from the rain by hairs at the base of the petals), and compels its visitors to wipe off pollen brought from the pyramidal group of anthers in a newly opened blossom to the exserted, radiating stigmas of older ones, the mallow produces more cheeses than all the dairies of the world. So rich is its store of nectar that the hive-bee, shut out from a legitimate entrance to the flower when it closes in the late afternoon, climbs up the outside of the calyx, and inserting his tongue between the five petals, empties the nectaries one after another - intelligent rogue that he is!
The LOW, DWARF, or RUNNING MALLOW (M. rotundifolia), a very common little weed throughout our territory, Europe, and Asia, depends scarcely at all upon insects to transfer its pollen, as might be inferred from its unattractive pale blue to white flowers, that measure only about half an inch across. In default of visitors, its pollen-laden anthers, instead of drooping to get out of the way of the stigmas, as in the showy high mallow, remain extended so as to come in contact with the rough, sticky sides of the long curling stigmas. The leaves of this spreading plant, which are nearly round, with five to nine shallow, saw-edged lobes, are thin, and furnished with long petioles; whereas the flowers which spring from their axils keep close to the main stem. Usually there are about fifteen rounded carpels that go to make up the Dutch, doll, or fairy cheeses, as the seed vessels are called by children. Only once is the mallow mentioned in the Bible, and then as food for the most abject and despised poor (Job 30: 4); but as eighteen species of mallow grow in Palestine, who is the higher critic to name the species eaten?
Occasionally we meet by the roadside in Canada, the Eastern, Middle, and Southern States pink, sometimes white, flowers, about two inches across, growing in small clusters at the top of a stem a foot or two high, the whole plant emitting a faint odor of musk. If the stem leaves are deeply divided into several narrow, much-cleft segments, and the little cheeses are densely hairy, we may safely call the plant MUSK MALLOW (M. moschata), and expect to find it blooming throughout the summer.
MARSH ST.-JOHN'S-WORT(Triadenum Virginicum; Elodea Virginica of Gray)St.-John's-wort family
Flowers - Pale magenta, pink, or flesh color, about 1/2 in. across, in terminal clusters, or from leaf axils. Calyx of 5 equal sepals, persistent on fruit; 5 petals; 9 or more stamens united in 3 sets; pistil of 3 distinct styles. Stem: to 1 1/2 ft. high, simple, leafy. Leaves: Opposite, pale, with black, glandular dots, broadly oblong, entire edged, seated on stem or clasping by heart-shaped base. Fruit: An oblong, acute, deep red capsule. Preferred Habitat - Swamps and cranberry bogs. Flowering Season - July-September. Distribution - Labrador to the Gulf, and westward to Nebraska.
Late in the summer, after the rather insignificant pink flowers have withered, this low plant, which almost never lacks some color in its green parts, greatly increases its beauty by tinting stems, leaves, and seed vessels with red. Like other members of the family, the flower arranges its stamens in little bundles of three, and when an insect comes to feast on the abundant pollen - no nectar being secreted - he cannot avoid rubbing some off on the stigmas that are on a level with the anthers. He may sometimes carry pollen from blossom to blossom, it is true, but certainly the St.-John's-wort takes no adequate precautions against self-fertilization at any time. Toward the close of its existence the flower draws its petals together toward the axils, thus bringing anthers and stigmas in contact.
SPIKED WILLOW-HERB; LONG PURPLES; SPIKED or PURPLE LOOSESTRIFE(Lythrum Salicaria) Loosestrife family
Flowers - Bright magenta (royal purple) or pinkish purple, about 1/2 in. broad, crowded in whorls around long bracted spikes. Calyx tubular, ribbed, 5 to 7 toothed, with small projections between. Corolla of 5 or 6 slightly wrinkled or twisted petals. Stamens, in 2 whorls of 5 or 6 each, and 1 pistil, occurring in three different lengths. Stem: 2 to 3 ft. high, leafy, branched. Leaves: Opposite, or sometimes in whorls of 3; lance-shaped, with heart-shaped base clasping stem. Preferred Habitat - Wet meadows, watery places, ditches, and banks of streams. Flowering Season - June-August. Distribution - Eastern Canada to Delaware, and westward through Middle States; also in Europe.
Through Darwin's patient study of this trimorphic flower, it has assumed so important a place in his theory of the origin of species that its fertilization by insects deserves special attention. On page 5, the method by which the pickerel weed, another flower whose stamens and pistil occur in three different lengths, should be read to avoid much repetition. Now the loosestrife produces six different kinds of yellow and green pollen on its two sets of three stamens; and when this pollen is applied by insects to the stigmatic surface of three different lengths of pistil, it follows that there are eighteen ways in which it may be transferred. But Darwin proved that only pollen brought from the shortest stamens to the shortest pistil, from the middle-length stamens to the middle-length pistil, and from the long stamens to the long pistil effectually fertilizes the flower. And as all the flowers on any one plant are of the same kind, we have here a marvelous mechanism to secure cross-fertilization. His experiments with this loosestrife also demonstrated that "reproductive organs, when of different length, behave to one another like different species of the same genus in regard both to direct productiveness and the character of the offspring; and that consequently mutual barrenness, which was once thought conclusive proof of difference of species, is worthless as such, and the last barrier that was raised between species and varieties is broken down." (Muller.)
Naturally the bright-hued, hospitable flower, which secretes abundant nectar at the base of its tube, attracts many insects, among others, bees of larger and middle size, and the butterflies for which it is especially adapted. They alight on the stamens and pistil on the upper side of the flower. Those with the longest tongues stand on one blossom to sip from the next one: this is the butterfly's customary attitude. But nearly every visitor comes in contact with at least one set of organs. When Darwin first interpreted the trimorphism of the loosestrife, we can realize something of the enthusiasm such a man must have felt in writing to Gray: "I am almost stark, staring mad over lythrum…. For the love of Heaven have a look at some of your species, and if you can get me some seed, do!"