Long ago this beautiful plant reached our shores from Europe, and year by year is extending its triumphal march westward, brightening its course of empire through low meadows and marshes with torches that lengthen even as they glow. It is not a spring flower, even in England; and so when Shakespeare, whose knowledge of floral nature was second only to that of human nature, wrote of Ophelia,
"With fantastic garlands did she come,Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples,"
is it probable he so combined flowers having different seasons of bloom? Dr. Prior suggests that the purple orchis (0. mascula) might have been the flower Ophelia wore; but, as long purples has been the folk name of this loosestrife from time immemorial in England, it seems likely that Shakespeare for once may have made a mistake.
BLUE WAX-WEED; CLAMMY CUPHEA; TAR-WEED (Parsonia petiolata; Cuphea viscosissima of Gray) Loosestrife family
Flowers - Purplish pink, about 1/4 in. across, on short peduncles from leaf axils, solitary or clustered. Calyx sticky, tubular, 12-ribbed, with 6 primary teeth, oblique at mouth, extending into a rounded swelling on upper side at base; 6 unequal, wrinkled petals, on short claws; 11 or 12 stamens inserted on calyx throat; pistil with 2-lobed stigma. Stem: 6 to 20 in. high, branched, very sticky-hairy. Leaves: Opposite, on slender petioles, lance-shaped, rounded at base, harsh to the touch. Preferred Habitat - Dry soil, waste places, fields, roadsides. Flowering Season - July-October. Distribution - Rhode Island to Georgia, westward to Louisiana, Kansas, and Illinois.
A first cousin of the familiar Mexican cigar plant, or fire-cracker plant (Cuphea platycentra), whose abundant little vermilion tubes, with black-edged lower lip tipped with white, brighten the borders of so many Northern flower-beds. Kyphos, the Greek for curved, from which cuphea was derived, has reference to the peculiar, swollen little seedpod. From a slit on one side of the clammy cuphea's capsule the placenta, set with tiny flattened seeds, sticks out like a handle. Probably the flower has already fertilized itself in the bud, although, from the fact that the plant has taken such pains to punish crawling insect foes by coating itself with sticky hairs, one might imagine it was wholly dependent upon winged insects to transfer its pollen. What an unworthy relative of the purple loosestrife, whose elaborate scheme to insure cross-fertilization is one of the botanical wonders!
MEADOW-BEAUTY; DEER GRASS(Rhexia Virginica) Meadow-beauty family
Flowers - Purplish pink, 1 to 1 1/2 in. across, pedicelled, clustered at top of stem. Calyx 4-lobed, tubular or urn-shaped, narrowest at neck; 4 rounded, spreading petals, joined for half their length; 8 equal, prominent stamens in 2 rows; pistil. Stem: 1 to 1 1/2 ft. high, square, more or less hairy, erect, sometimes branching at top. Leaves: Opposite, ascending, seated on stem, oval, acute at tip, mostly 5-nerved, the margins saw-edged. Preferred Habitat - Sandy swamps or near water. Flowering Season - July-September. Distribution - United States, chiefly east of Mississippi.
Suggesting a brilliant magenta evening primrose in form, the meadow-beauty is likewise a rather niggardly bloomer, only a few flowers in each cluster opening at once; but where masses adorn our marshes, we cannot wonder so effective a plant is exported to European peat gardens. Its lovely sister, the MARYLAND MEADOW-BEAUTY (R. Mariana), a smaller, less brilliant flower, found no farther north than the swamps and pine barrens of New Jersey, also goes abroad to be admired; yet neither is of any value for cutting, for the delicate petals quickly discolor and drop off when handled. Blossoms so attractively colored naturally have many winged visitors to transfer their pollen. All too soon after fertilization the now useless petals fall, leaving the pretty urn-shaped calyx, with the large yellow protruding stamens, far more conspicuous than some flowers. "Its seed-vessels are perfect little cream pitchers of graceful form," said Thoreau. Within the smooth capsule the minute seeds are coiled like snail-shells.
GREAT OR SPIKED WILLOW-HERB; FIRE-WEED(Chamaenerion angustifolium; Epilobium angustifolium of Gray)Evening Primrose family
Flowers - Magenta or pink, sometimes pale, or rarely white, more or less than 1 in. across, in an elongated, terminal, spike-like raceme. Calyx tubular, narrow, in 4 segments; 4 rounded, spreading petals; 8 stamens; 1 pistil, hairy at base; the stigma 4-lobed. Stem: 2 to 8 ft. high, simple, smooth, leafy. Leaves: Narrow, tapering, willow-like, 2 to 6 in. long. Fruit: A slender, curved, violet-tinted capsule, from 2 to 3 in. long, containing numerous seeds attached to tufts of fluffy, white, silky threads. Preferred Habitat - Dry soil, fields, roadsides, especially in burnt-over districts. Flowering Season - June-September. Distribution - From Atlantic to Pacific, with few interruptions; British Possessions and United States southward to the Carolinas and Arizona. Also Europe and Asia.
Spikes of these beautiful brilliant flowers towering upward above dry soil, particularly where the woodsman's axe and forest fires have devastated the landscape, illustrate Nature's abhorrence of ugliness. Other kindly plants have earned the name of fire-weed, but none so quickly beautifies the blackened clearings of the pioneer, nor blossoms over the charred trail in the wake of the locomotive. Beginning at the bottom of the long spike, the flowers open in slow succession upward throughout the summer, leaving behind the attractive seed-vessels, which, splitting lengthwise in September, send adrift white silky tufts attached to seeds that will one day cover far distant wastes with beauty. Almost perfect rosettes, made by the young plants, are met with on one's winter walks.
Epi, upon, and lobos, a pod, combine to make a name applicable to many flowers of this family. In general structure the fire-weed closely resembles its relative the evening primrose. Bees, not moths, however, are its benefactors. Coming to a newly opened flower, the bee finds abundant pollen on the anthers and a sip of nectar in the cup below. At this stage the flower keeps its still immature style curved downward and backward lest it should become self-fertilized - an evil ever to be guarded against by ambitious plants. In a few days, or after the pollen has been removed, up stretches the style, spreading its four receptive stigmas just where an incoming bee, well dusted from a younger flower, must certainly leave some pollen on their sticky surfaces.
The GREAT HAIRY WILLOW-HERB (Epilobium hirsutum), whose white tufted seeds came over from Europe in the ballast to be blown over Ontario and the Eastern States, spreads also by underground shoots, until it seems destined to occupy wide areas. In these showy magenta flowers, about one inch across, the stigmas and anthers mature simultaneously but cross-fertilization is usually insured because the former surpass the latter, and naturally are first touched by the insect visitor. In default of visits, however, the stigmas, at length curling backward, come in contact with the pollen-laden anthers. The fire-weed, on the contrary, is unable to fertilize itself.
A pale magenta-pink or whitish, very small-flowered, branching species, one to two feet high, found in swamps from New Brunswick to the Pacific, and southward to Delaware, is the LINEAR-LEAVED WILLOW-HERB (F. lineare), whose distinguishing features are its very narrow, acute leaves, its hoariness throughout, the dingy threads on its tiny seeds, and the occasional bulblets it bears near the base of the stem. It is scarcely to be distinguished by one not well up in field practice from another bog lover, the DOWNY or SOFT WILLOW-HERB (F. strictum), which, however, is a trifle taller, glandular throughout, and with sessile, not petioled, leaves. The PURPLE-LEAVED WILLOW-HERB (E. coloratum), common in low grounds, may best be named by the reddish-brown coma to which its seeds are attached. Both leaves and stem are often highly colored.
BOG WINTERGREEN(Pyrola uliginosa; P. rotundifolia, var. uliginosa of Gray)Wintergreen family
Flowers - Magenta pink, fragrant, about 1/2 in. across, 7 to 15 on a leafless scape 6 to 15 in. high. Calyx 5-parted; 5 concave petals; 10 stamens; style curved upward, exserted. Leaves: From the root, broadly oval or round, rather thick and dull, on petioles. Preferred Habitat - Swamps and bogs. Flowering Season - June. Distribution - Nova Scotia to British Columbia, southward to New York and Colorado.
Fragrant colonies of this little plant cuddled close to the moss of cool, northern peat bogs draw forth our admiration when we go orchid hunting in early summer. A similar species, the LIVER-LEAF WINTERGREEN (P. asarifolia), with shining, not dull, leaves and rose-colored flowers, not to mention minor differences, is likewise found in swamps and wet woods. These two wintergreens, formerly counted mere varieties of the white-flowered rotundifolia, a lover of dry woods, have now been given specific individuality by later-day systematists. Short-lipped bees and flies may be detected in the act of applying their mouths to the orifices of the anthers through which pollen is shed, and some must be carried to the stigma of another flower.
PIPSISSEWA; PRINCE'S PINE(Chimaphila umbellata) Wintergreen family
Flowers - Flesh-colored, or pinkish, fragrant, waxy, usually with deep pink ring around center, and the anthers colored; about 1/2 in. across; several flowers in loose, terminal cluster. Calyx 5-cleft; corolla of 5 concave, rounded, spreading petals; 10 stamens, the filaments hairy style short, conical, with a round stigma. Stem: Trailing far along ground, creeping, or partly subterranean, sending up sterile and flowering branches 3 to 10 in. high. Leaves: Opposite or in whorls, evergreen, bright, shining, spatulate to lance-shaped, sharply saw-edged. Preferred Habitat - Dry woods, sandy leaf-mould. Flowering Season - June-August. Distribution - British Possessions and the United States north of Georgia from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Also Mexico, Europe, and Asia.
A lover of winter indeed (cheima = winter and phileo = to love) is the prince's pine, whose beautiful dark leaves keep their color and gloss in spite of snow and intense cold. A few yards of the trailing stem, easily ripped from the light soil of its woodland home, make a charming indoor decoration, especially when the little brown seed-cases remain. Few flowers are more suggestive of the woods than these shy, dainty, deliciously fragrant little blossoms.
The SPOTTED WINTERGREEN, or PIPSISSEWA (C. maculata), closely resembles the prince's pine, except that its slightly larger white or pinkish flowers lack the deep pink ring; and the lance-shaped leaves, with rather distant saw-teeth, are beautifully mottled with white along the veins. When we see short-lipped bees and flies about these flowers, we may be sure their pollen-covered mouths come in contact with the moist stigma on the summit of the little top-shaped style, and so effect cross-fertilization.
WILD HONEYSUCKLE; PINK, PURPLE, or WILD AZALEA; PINXTER-FLOWER(Azalea nudiflora) Heath family
Flowers - Crimson pink, purplish or rose pink, to nearly white, 1 1/2 to 2 in. across, faintly fragrant, clustered, opening before or with the leaves, and developed from cone-like, scaly brown buds. Calyx minute, 5-parted; corolla funnel-shaped, the tube narrow, hairy, with 5 regular, spreading lobes; 5 long red stamens; 1 pistil, declined, protruding. Stem: Shrubby, usually simple below, but branching above, 2 to 6 ft. high. Leaves: Usually clustered, deciduous, oblong, acute at both ends, hairy on midrib. Preferred Habitat - Moist, rocky woods, or dry woods and thickets. Flowering Season - April-May. Distribution - Maine to Illinois, and southward to the Gulf.
Woods and hillsides are glowing with fragrant, rosy masses of this lovely azalea, the Pinxter-bloem or Whitsunday flower of the Dutch colonists, long before the seventh Sunday after Easter. Among our earliest exports, this hardy shrub, the swamp azalea, and the superb flame-colored species of the Alleghanies, were sent early in the eighteenth century to the old country, and there crossed with A. Pontica of southern Europe by the Belgian horticulturalists, to whom we owe the Ghent azaleas, the final triumphs of the hybridizer, that glorify the shrubberies on our own lawns to-day. The azalea became the national flower of Flanders. These hardy species lose their leaves in winter, whereas the hothouse varieties of A. Indica, a native of China and Japan, have thickish leaves, almost if not quite evergreen. A few of the latter stand our northern winters, especially the pure white variety now quite commonly planted in cemetery lots. In that delightfully enthusiastic little book, "The Garden's Story," Mr. Ellwanger says of the Ghent azalea "In it I find a charm presented by no other flower. Its soft tints of buff, sulphur, and primrose; its dazzling shades of apricot, salmon, orange, and vermilion are always a fresh revelation of color. They have no parallel among flowers, and exist only in opals, sunset skies, and the flush of autumn woods." Certainly American horticulturists were not clever in allowing the industry of raising these plants from our native stock to thrive on foreign soil.
Naturally the azalea's protruding style forms the most convenient alighting place for the female bee, its chief friend; and there she leaves a few grains of pollen, brought on her hairy underside from another flower, before again dusting herself there as she crawls over the pretty colored anthers on her way to the nectary. Honey produced from azaleas by the hive bee is in bad repute. All too soon after fertilization the now useless corolla slides along to the tip of the pistil, where it swings a while before dropping to earth.
Our beautiful wild honeysuckle, called naked (nudiflora), because very often the flowers appear before the leaves, has a peculiar Japanese grace on that account. Every farmer's boy's mouth waters at sight of the cool, juicy May-apple, the extraordinary pulpy growth on this plant and the swamp pink. This excrescence seems to have no other use than that of a gratuitous, harmless gift to the thirsty child, from whom it exacts no reward of carrying seeds to plant distant colonies, as the mandrake's yellow, tomato-like May-apple does. But let him beware, as he is likely to, of the similar looking, but hollow, stringy apples growing on the bushy Andromeda, which turn black with age.
>From Maine to Florida and westward to Texas, chiefly near the coast, in low, wet places only need we look for the SWAMP PINK or HONEYSUCKLE, WHITE or CLAMMY AZALEA (A. viscosa), a more hairy species than the Pinxter-flower, with a very sticky, glandular corolla tube, and deliciously fragrant blossoms, by no means invariably white. John Burroughs is not the only one who has passed "several patches of swamp honeysuckles, red with blossoms" ("Wake-Robin"). But as this species does not bloom until June and July, when the sun quickly bleaches the delicate flowers, it is true we most frequently find them white, merely tinged with pink. The leaves are well developed before the blossoms appear. Concerning azaleas' poisonous property, see the discussion under mountain laurel that follows.
RHODORA (Rhodora Canadensis; Rhododendron Rhodora of Gray) Heath family
Flowers - Purplish pink, rose, or nearly white, 1 1/2 in. broad or less, in clusters on short, stiff, hairy pedicels, and usually appearing before the leaves, from scaly, terminal buds. Calyx minute; corolla 2-lipped, upper lip unequally 2-3 lobed; lower lip 2-cleft; 10 stamens; pistil, the style slightly protruding. Stem: 1 to 3 ft. high, shrubby, branching. Leaves: Deciduous, oval to oblong, dark green above, pale and hairy beneath. Preferred Habitat - Wet hillsides, damp woods, beside sluggish streams, cool bogs. Flowering Season - May. Distribution - Newfoundland to Pennsylvania mountains.
A superficial glance at this low, little, thin shrub might mistake it for a magenta variety of the leafless Pinxter-flower. It does its best to console the New Englanders for the scarcity of the magnificent rhododendron, with which it was formerly classed. The Sage of Concord, who became so enamored of it that Massachusetts people often speak of it as "Emerson's flower," extols its loveliness in a sonnet:
"Rhodora! If the sages ask thee whyThis charm is wasted on the earth and sky,Tell them, dear, if eyes were made for seeing,Then Beauty is its own excuse for being."
AMERICAN or GREAT RHODODENDRON; GREAT LAUREL; ROSE TREE, or BAY(Rhododendron maximum) Heath family
Flowers - Rose pink, varying to white, greenish in the throat, spotted with yellow or orange, in broad clusters set like a bouquet among leaves, and developed from scaly, cone-like buds; pedicels sticky-hairy. Calyx 5-parted, minute; corolla 5-lobed, broadly bell-shaped, 2 in. broad or less usually 10 stamens, equally spreading; pistil. Stem: Sometimes a tree attaining a height of 40 ft., usually 6 to 20 ft., shrubby, woody. Leaves: Evergreen, drooping in winter, leathery, dark green on both sides, lance-oblong, 4 to 10 in. long, entire edged, narrowing into stout petioles. Preferred Habitat - Mountainous woodland, hillsides near streams. Flowering Season - June-July. Distribution - Uncommon from Ohio and New England to Nova Scotia; abundant through the Alleghanies to Georgia.
When this most magnificent of our native shrubs covers whole mountain sides throughout the Alleghany region with bloom, one stands awed in the presence of such overwhelming beauty. Nowhere else does the rhododendron attain such size or luxuriance. There it produces a tall trunk, and towers among the trees; it spreads its branches far and wide until they interlock and form almost impenetrable thickets locally called "hells;" it glorifies the loneliest mountain road with superb bouquets of its delicate flowers set among dark, glossy foliage scarcely less attractive. The mountain in bloom is worth travelling a thousand miles to see.
Farther south the more purplish-pink or lilac-flowered CAROLINA RHODODENDRON (R. Catawbiense) flourishes. This southern shrub, which is perfectly hardy, unlike its northern sister, has been used by cultivators as a basis for producing the fine hybrids now so extensively grown on lawns in this country and Europe. Crossed with the Nepal species (R. arboreum) the best results follow. Americans, ever too prone to make the eagle scream on their trips abroad, need not monopolize all the glory for the cultivated rhododendron, as they are apt to do when they see it on fine estates in England. The Himalayas, which are covered with rhododendrons of brighter hue than ours, furnish many of the shrubs of commerce. Our rhododendron produces one of the hardest and strongest of woods, weighing thirty-nine pounds per cubic foot.
Rhododendrons, azaleas, and laurels fall under a common ban pronounced by bee-keepers. The bees which transfer pollen from blossom to blossom while gathering nectar, manufacture honey said to be poisonous. Cattle know enough to let all this foliage alone. Apparently the ants fear no more evil results from the nectar than the bees themselves; and were it not for the sticky parts nearest the flowers, on which they crawl to meet their death, the blossom's true benefactors would find little refreshment left.
MOUNTAIN or AMERICAN LAUREL; CALICO BUSH; SPOONWOOD; CALMOUN;BROAD-LEAVED KALMIA(Kalmia latifolia) Heath family
Flowers - Buds and new flowers bright rose pink, afterward fading white, and only lined with pink, 1 in. across, or less, numerous, in terminal clusters. Calyx small, 5-parted, sticky corolla like a 5-pointed saucer, with 10 projections on outside; 10 arching stamens, an anther lodged in each projection; 1 pistil. Stem: Shrubby, woody, stiffly branched, 2 to 20 ft. high. Leaves: Evergreen, entire, oval to elliptic, pointed at both ends, tapering into petioles. Fruit: A round, brown capsule, with the style long remaining on it. Preferred Habitat - Sandy or rocky woods, especially in hilly or mountainous country. Flowering Season - May-June. Distribution - New Brunswick and Ontario, southward to the Gulf of Mexico, and westward to Ohio.
It would be well if Americans, imitating the Japanese in making pilgrimages to scenes of supreme natural beauty, visited the mountains, rocky, woody hillsides, ravines, and tree-girt uplands when the laurel is in its glory; when masses of its pink and white blossoms, set among the dark evergreen leaves, flush the landscape like Aurora, and are reflected from the pools of streams and the serene depths of mountain lakes. Peter Kalm, a Swedish pupil of Linnaeus, who traveled here early in the eighteenth century, was more impressed by its beauty than that of any other flower. He introduced the plant to Europe, where it is known as kalmia, and extensively cultivated on fine estates that are thrown open to the public during the flowering season. Even a flower is not without honor, save in its own country. We have only to prepare a border of leaf-mould, take up the young plant without injuring the roots or allowing them to dry, hurry them into the ground, and prune back the bush a little, to establish it in our gardens, where it will bloom freely after the second year.
All the kalmias resort to a most ingenious device for compelling insect visitors to carry their pollen from blossom to blossom. A newly opened flower has its stigma erected where the incoming bee must leave on its sticky surface the four minute orange-like grains carried from the anther of another flower on the hairy underside of her body. Now, each anther is tucked away in one of the ten little pockets of the saucer-shaped blossom, and the elastic filaments are strained upward like a bow. After hovering above the nectary, the bee has only to descend toward it, when her leg, touching against one of the hair-triggers of the spring trap, pop goes the little anther-gun, discharging pollen from its bores as it flies upward. So delicately is the mechanism adjusted, the slightest jar or rough handling releases the anthers; but, on the other hand, should insects be excluded by a net stretched over the plant, the flowers will fall off and wither without firing off their pollen-charged guns. At least, this is true in the great majority of tests. As in the case of hothouse flowers no fertile seed is set when nets keep away the laurel's benefactors. One has only to touch the hair-trigger with the end of a pin to see how exquisitely delicate is this provision for cross-fertilization.
However much we may be cautioned by the apiculturalists against honey made from laurel nectar, the bees themselves ignore all warnings and apparently without evil results - happily for flowers dependent upon them and their kin. Mr. Frank R. Cheshire, in "Bees and Bee-keeping," the standard English work on the subject, writes: "During the celebrated Retreat of the Ten Thousand, as recorded by Xenophon in his 'Anabasis,' the soldiers regaled themselves upon some honey found near Trebizonde where were many beehives. Intoxication with vomiting was the result. Some were so overcome, he states, as to be incapable of standing. Not a soldier died, but very many were greatly weakened for several days. Tournefort endeavored to ascertain whether this account was corroborated by anything ascertainable in the locality, and had good reason to be satisfied respecting it. He concluded that the honey had been gathered from a shrub growing in the neighborhood of Trebizonde, which is well known there as producing the before-mentioned effects. It is now agreed that the plants were species of rhododendron and azaleas. Lamberti confirms Xenophon's account by stating that similar effects are produced by honey of Colchis, where the same shrubs are common. In 1790, even, fatal cases occurred in America in consequence of eating wild honey, which was traced to Kahmia latifolia by an inquiry instituted under direction of the American government. Happily, our American cousins are now never likely to thus suffer, thanks to drainage, the plow, and the bee-farm."
One of the beautiful swallow-tail butterflies lays its eggs on laurel leaves, that the larvae may feed on them later; yet the foliage often proves deadly to more highly organized creatures. Most cattle know enough to let it alone; nevertheless some fall victims to it every year. Even the intelligent grouse, hard pressed with hunger when deep snow covers much of their chosen food are sometimes found dead and their crops distended by these leaves. How far more unkind than the bristly armored thistle's is the laurel's method of protecting itself against destruction! Even the ant, intent on pilfering sweets secreted for bees, it ruthlessly glues to death against its sticky stems and calices. According to Dr. Barton the Indians drink a decoction of kalmia leaves when they wish to commit suicide.
As laurel wood is very hard and solid, weighing forty-four pounds to the cubic foot, it is in great demand for various purposes, one of them indicated in the plant's popular name of Spoon-wood.
SHEEP-LAUREL, LAMB-KILL, WICKY, CALF-KILL, SHEEP-POISON NARROW-LEAVED LAUREL (K. angustifolia), and so on through a list of folk names testifying chiefly to the plant's wickedness in the pasture, may be especially deadly food for cattle, but it certainly is a feast to the eyes. However much we may admire the small, deep crimson-pink flowers that we find in June and July in moist fields or swampy ground or on the hillsides, few of us will agree with Thoreau, who claimed that it is "handsomer than the mountain laurel." The low shrub may be only six inches high, or it may attain three feet. The narrow evergreen leaves, pale on the underside, have a tendency to form groups of threes, standing upright when newly put forth, but bent downward with the weight of age. A peculiarity of the plant is that clusters of leaves usually terminate the woody stem, for the flowers grow in whorls or in clusters at the side of it below.
The PALE or SWAMP LAUREL (K. glauca), found in cool bogs from Newfoundland to New Jersey and Michigan, and westward to the Pacific Coast, coats the under side of its mostly upright leaves with a smooth whitish bloom like the cabbage's. It is a straggling little bush, even lower than the lamb-kill, and an earlier bloomer, putting forth its loose, niggardly clusters of deep rose or lilac-colored flowers in June.
TRAILING ARBUTUS; MAYFLOWER; GROUND LAUREL(Epigaea repens) Heath family
Flowers - Pink, fading to nearly white, very fragrant about 1/2 in. across when expanded, few or many in clusters at ends of branches. Calyx of 5 dry overlapping sepals; corolla salver-shaped, the slender, hairy tube spreading into 5 equal lobes; 10 stamens; 1 pistil with a column-like style and a 5-lobed stigma. Stem: Spreading over the ground (Epigaea = on the earth); woody, the leafy twigs covered with rusty hairs. Leaves: Alternate, oval, rounded at the base, smooth above, more or less hairy below, evergreen, weather-worn, on short, rusty, hairy petioles. Preferred Habitat - Light sandy loam in woods, especially under evergreen trees, or in mossy, rocky places. Flowering Season - March-May. Distribution - Newfoundland to Florida, west to Kentucky, and the Northwest Territory.
Can words describe the fragrance of the very breath of spring - that delicious commingling of the perfume of arbutus, the odor of pines, and the snow-soaked soil just warming into life? Those who know the flower only as it is sold in the city streets, tied with wet, dirty string into tight bunches, withered and forlorn, can have little idea of the joy of finding the pink, pearly blossoms freshly opened among the withered leaves of oak and chestnut, moss, and pine needles in which they nestle close to the cold earth in the leafless, windy northern forest. Even in Florida, where broad patches carpet the woods in February, one misses something of the arbutus's accustomed charm simply because there are no slushy remnants of snow drifts, no reminders of winter hardships in the vicinity. There can be no glad surprise at finding dainty spring flowers in a land of perpetual summer. Little wonder that the Pilgrim Fathers, after the first awful winter on the "stern New England coast," loved this early messenger of hope and gladness above the frozen ground at Plymouth. In an introductory note to his poem "The Mayflowers," Whittier states that the name was familiar in England, as the application of it to the historic vessel shows; but it was applied by the English, and still is, to the hawthorn. Its use in New England in connection with the trailing arbutus dates from a very early day, some claiming that the first Pilgrims so used it in affectionate memory of the vessel and its English flower association.
"Sad Mayflower I watched by winter stars,And nursed by winter gales,With petals of the sleeted spars,And leaves of frozen sails!
"But warmer suns ere long shall bringTo life the frozen sod,And through dead leaves of hope shall springAfresh the flowers of God!"
Some have attempted to show that the Pilgrims did not find the flowers until the last month of spring, and that, therefore, they were named Mayflowers. Certainly the arbutus is not a typical May blossom even in New England. Bryant associates it with the hepatica, our earliest spring flower, in his poem, "The, Twenty-seventh of March":
"Within the woodsTufts of ground laurel, creeping underneathThe leaves of the last summer, send their sweetsUpon the chilly air, and by the oak,The squirrel cups, a graceful companyHide in their bells a soft aerial blue."
There is little use trying to coax this shyest of sylvan flowers into our gardens where other members of its family, rhododendrons, laurels, and azaleas make themselves delightfully at home. It is wild as a hawk, an untamable creature that slowly pines to death when brought into contact with civilization. Greedy street venders, who ruthlessly tear up the plant by the yard, and others without even the excuse of eking out a paltry income by its sale, have already exterminated it within a wide radius of our Eastern cities. How curious that the majority of people show their appreciation of a flower's beauty only by selfishly, ignorantly picking every specimen they can find!
In many localities the arbutus sets no fruit, for it is still undergoing evolutionary changes looking toward the perfecting of an elaborate system to insure cross-fertilization. Already it has attained to perfume, nectar, and color to attract quantities of insects, chiefly flies and small female bees but in some flowers the anthers produce no pollen for them to carry, while others are filled with grains, yet all the stigmas in the neighboring clusters may be defective. The styles and the filaments are of several different lengths, showing a tendency toward trimorphism, perhaps, like the wonderful purple loosestrife; but at present the flower pursues a most wasteful method of distributing pollen, and in different sections of the country acts so differently that its phases are impossible to describe except to the advanced student. They may, however, be best summarized in the words of Professor Asa Gray: "The flowers are of two kinds, each with two modifications; the two main kinds characterized by the nature and perfection of the stigma, along with more or less abortion of the stamens; their modifications by the length of the style."
When our English cousins speak of the arbutus, they have in mind a very different species from ours. Theirs is the late flowering strawberry-tree, an evergreen shrub with clustering white blossoms and beautiful rough, red berries. Indeed, the name arbutus is derived from the Celtic word Arboise, meaning rough fruit.
LARGE or AMERICAN CRANBERRY(Oxycoccus macrocarpus; Vaccinium macrocarpon of Gray)Huckleberry family
Flowers - Light pink, about 1/2 in. across, nodding on slender pedicels from sides and tips of erect branches. Calyx round, 4-or 5-parted; corolla a long cone in bud, its four or five nearly separate, narrow petals turned far backward later; 8 or 10 stamens, the anthers united into a protruding cone, its hollow tubes shedding pollen by a pore at tip. Stem: Creeping or trailing, slender, woody, 1 to 3 ft. long, its leafy branches 8 in. high or less. Leaves: Small, alternate, oblong, evergreen, pale beneath, the edges rolled backward. Fruit: An oblong or ovoid, many seeded, juicy red berry (Oxycoccus = sour berry). Preferred Habitat - Bogs; sandy, swampy meadows. Flowering Season - June-August. Distribution - North Carolina, Michigan, and Minnesota northward and westward.
A hundred thousand people are interested in the berry of this pretty vine to one who has ever seen its flowers. Yet if the blossom were less attractive, to insects at least, and took less pains to shake out its pollen upon them as they cling to the cone to sip its nectar, few berries would accompany the festive Thanksgiving turkey. Cultivators of the cranberry know how important it is to have the flooded bogs well drained before the flowering season. Water (or ice) may cover the plants to the depth of a foot or more all winter and until the 10th of May; and during the late summer it is often advisable to overflow the bogs to prevent injury of the fine, delicate roots from drought, and to destroy the worm that is the plant's worst enemy; but until the flowers have wooed the bees, flies, and other winged benefactors, and fruit is well formed, every cultivator knows enough not to submerge his bog. With flowers under water there are no insect visitors, consequently no berries. Dense mats of the wiry vines should yield about one hundred and fifty bushels of berries to the acre, under skilful cultivation - a most profitable industry, since the cranberry costs less to cultivate, gather, and market than the strawberry or any of the small perishable fruits. Planted in muck and sand in the garden, the vines yield surprisingly good results. The Cape Cod Bell is the best known market berry. One of the interesting sights to the city loiterer about the New England coast in early autumn is the berry picking that is conducted on an immense scale. Men, women, and children drop all other work; whole villages are nearly depopulated while daylight lasts; temporary buildings set up on the edges of the bogs contain throngs of busy people sorting, measuring, and packing fruit; and lonely railroad stations, piled high with crates, give the branch line its heaviest freight business of the year.
SHOOTING STAR; AMERICAN COWSLIP; PRIDE OF OHIO(Dodecatheon Meadia) Primrose family
Flowers - Purplish pink or yellowish white, the cone tipped with yellow; few or numerous, hanging on slender, recurved pedicels in an umbel at top of a simple scape 6 in. to 2 ft. high. Calyx deeply 5-parted; corolla of 5 narrow lobes bent backward and upward; the tube very short, thickened at throat, and marked with dark reddish-purple dots; 5 stamens united into a protruding cone; 1 pistil, protruding beyond them. Leaves: Oblong or spatulate 3 to 12 in. long, narrowed into petioles, all from fibrous roots. Fruit: A 5-valved capsule on erect pedicels. Preferred Habitat - Prairies, open woods, moist cliffs. Flowering Season - April-May. Distribution - Pennsylvania southward and westward, and from Texas to Manitoba.
Ages ago Theophrastus called an entirely different plant by this same scientific name, derived from dodeka = twelve, and theos = gods; and although our plant is native of a land unknown to the ancients, the fanciful Linnaeus imagined he saw in the flowers of its umbel a little congress of their divinities seated around a miniature Olympus! Who has said science kills imagination? These handsome, interesting flowers so familiar in the Middle West and Southwest, especially, somewhat resemble the cyclamen in oddity of form, indeed, these prairie wildflowers are not unknown in florists' shops in Eastern cities.
Many flowers like the shooting star, cyclamen, and nightshade, with protruding cones made up of united stamens, are so designed that, as the bees must cling to them while sucking nectar, they receive pollen jarred out from the end of the cone on their undersides. The reflexed petals serve three purposes: First, in making the flower more conspicuous; secondly, in facilitating access to nectar and pollen; and, finally, in discouraging crawling intruders. Where the short tube is thickened, the bee finds her foothold while she forces her tongue between the anther tips. The nectar is well concealed and quite deeply seated, thanks to the rigid cone. Few bee workers are flying at the shooting star's early blooming season. Undoubtedly the female bumblebees, which, by striking the protruding stigma before they jar out any pollen, cross-fertilize it, are the flower's benefactors; but one frequently sees the little yellow puddle butterfly clinging to the pretty blossoms.
Very different from the bright yellow cowslip of Europe is our odd, misnamed blossom.
BITTER-BLOOM; ROSE-PINK; SQUARE-STEMMED SABBATIA; ROSY CENTAURY(Sabbatia angularis) Gentian family
Flowers - Clear rose pink, with greenish star in center, rarely white, fragrant, 1 1/2 in. broad or less, usually solitary on long peduncles at ends of branches. Calyx lobes very narrow; corolla of 5 rounded segments; stamens 5; style 2-cleft. Stem: Sharply 4-angled, 2 to 3 ft. high, with opposite branches, leafy. Leaves: Opposite, 5-nerved, oval, tapering at tip, and clasping stem by broad base. Preferred Habitat - Rich soil, meadows, thickets. Flowering Season - July-August. Distribution - New York to Florida, westward to Ontario, Michigan, and Indian Territory.
During the drought of midsummer the lovely rose-pink blooms inland with cheerful readiness to adapt itself to harder conditions than most of its moisture-loving kin will tolerate; but it may be noticed that although we may oftentimes find it growing in dry soil, it never spreads in such luxuriant clusters as when the roots are struck beside meadow runnels and ditches. Probably the plant would be commoner than it is about populous Eastern districts were it not so much sought after as a tonic medicine.
It was the Centaurea, represented here by the blue ragged sailor of gardens, and not our Centaury, a distinctly American group of plants, which, Ovid tells us, cured a wound in the foot of the Centaur Chiron, made by an arrow hurled by Hercules.
Three exquisite members of the Sabbatia tribe keep close to the Atlantic coast in salt meadows and marshes, along the borders of brackish rivers, and very rarely in the sand at the edges of fresh-water ponds a little way inland. From Maine to Florida they range, and less frequently are met along the shores of the Gulf of Mexico so far as Louisiana. How bright and dainty and are! Whole meadows are radiant with their blushing lovliness. Probably if they consented to live far away from the sea, they would lose some of the deep, clear pink from out their lovely petals, since all flowers show a tendency to brighten their colors as they approach the coast. In England some of the same wildflowers we have here are far deeper-hued, owing, no doubt to the fact that they live on a sea-girt, moisture-laden island, and also that the sun never scorches and blanches at the far north as it does in the United States.
As might be expected, blossoms so bright of hue as the marsh pinks attract many insects. Guided by the yellow eye that serves as a pathfinder to the nectary, they feast on the generour supply of sweets; but all unwittingly they must pay for their entertainment by carrying pollen from early to later flowers. Like so many other blossoms, the sabbatias guard themselves against the evils of self-fertilization by shedding their pollen before they mature and spread their two-cleft style, which is now ready to receive the golden, quickening dust on its stigmatic inner surfaces.
The SEA or MARSH PINK, or ROSE OF PLYMOUTH (S. stellaris), whose graceful alternate branching stem attains a height of two feet only under most favorable conditions, from July to September opens a succession of pink flowers that often fade to white. The yellow eye is bordered with carmine. They measure about one inch across, and are usually solitary at the ends of branches, or else sway on slender peduncles from the axils. The upper leaves are narrow and bract-like; those lower down gradually widen as they approach the root.
Similar to the Rose of Plymouth is the even more graceful SLENDER MARSH PINK (S. Campanulata - the S. gracilis of Gray), whose upper leaves are almost thread-like in their narrowness. Its five calyx lobes, too, are exceedingly slender, and often as long as the corolla lobes. One of our soldiers in Cuba, during the Spanish War, sent home to his sister in Massachusetts some of these same little flowers in a letter. "You would just love to see the marshes here," he wrote. "They are filled with beautiful little pink flowers. I wish I knew their names." That soldier had passed by New England marshes aglow with the blossoms all his life, but he had never noticed them until all his perceptions became quickened by the stimulus of travel and the excitement of war. How blind and deaf we all are in some directions; having eyes we see not, and ears we hear not, in the natural as in the spiritual realm.
No danger of confusing the LARGE MARSH PINK (S. dodecandra - S. chloroides of Gray) with its smaller, more branching relatives. It displays few flowers to a plant, but each measures two and a half inches or less across, and has from nine to twelve pink (or rarely white) petals. This sabbatia often chooses the sandy borders of ponds for its habitat.
SPREADING DOGBANE; FLY-TRAP DOGBANE; HONEY-BLOOM; BITTER-ROOT(Apocynum androsaemifolium) Dogbane family
Flowers - Delicate pink, veined with a deeper shade, fragrant, bell-shaped, about 1/3 in. across, borne in loose terminal cymes. Calyx 5-parted; corolla of 5 spreading, recurved lobes united into a tube; within the tube 5 tiny, triangular appendages alternate with stamens; the arrow-shaped anthers united around the stigma and slightly adhering to it. Stem: 1 to 4 ft. high, with forking, spreading, leafy branches. Leaves: Opposite, entire-edged, broadly oval, narrow at base, paler, and more or less hairy below. Fruit: Two pods about 4 in. long. Preferred Habitat - Fields, thickets, beside roads, lanes, and walls. Flowering Season - June-July. Distribution - Northern part of British Possessions south to Georgia, westward to Nebraska.
Everywhere at the North we come across this interesting, rather shrubby plant, with its pretty but inconspicuous little rose-veined bells suggesting pink lilies-of-the-valley. Now that we have learned to read the faces of flowers, as it were, we instantly suspect by the color, fragrance, pathfinders, and structure that these are artful wilers, intent on gaining ends of their own through their insect admirers. What are they up to?
Let us watch. Bees, flies, moths, and butterflies, especially the latter, hover near. Alighting, the butterfly visitor unrolls his long tongue and inserts it where the five pink veins tell him to, for five nectar-bearing glands stand in a ring around the base of the pistil. Now, as he withdraws his slender tongue through one of the V-shaped cavities that make a circle of traps, he may count himself lucky to escape with no heavier toll imposed than pollen cemented to it. This granular dust he is required to rub off against the stigma of the next flower entered. Some bees, too, have been taken with the dogbane's pollen cemented to their tongues. But suppose a fly call upon this innocent-looking blossom? His short tongue, as well as the butterfly's, is guided into one of the V-shaped cavities after he has sipped; but, getting wedged between the trap's horny teeth, the poor little victim is held a prisoner there until he slowly dies of starvation in sight of plenty. This is the penalty he must pay for trespassing on the butterfly's preserves! The dogbane, which is perfectly adapted to the butterfly, and dependent upon it for help in producing fertile seed, ruthlessly destroys all poachers that are not big or strong enough to jerk away from its vise-like grasp. One often sees small flies and even moths dead and dangling by the tongue from the wicked little charmers. If the flower assimilated their dead bodies as the pitcher plant, for example, does those of its victims, the fly's fate would seem less cruel. To be killed by slow torture and dangled like a scarecrow simply for pilfering a drop of nectar is surely an execution of justice medieval in its severity.
In July the most splendid of our native beetles, the green dandy (Eumolpus auratus) fastens itself to the dogbane's foliage in numbers until often the leaves appear to be studded with these brilliant little jewels. "It is not easy," says William Hamilton Gibson, "to describe its burnished hue, which is either shimmering green, or peacock blue, or purplish-green, or refulgent ruby, according to the position in which it rests." But it is not golden, as its specific name would imply. It confines itself exclusively to the dogbane. To prevent capture, it has a trick of drawing up its legs and rolling off into the grass its body so cleverly matches.
>From the silky coma on which the small seeds float away from long pods to found new colonies, from the opposite leaves, milky juice, and certain structural resemblances in the flowers, one might guess this plant belonged to the milkweed tribe. Formerly it was so classed; and although the botanists have now removed its family one step away, the milkweed butterflies, especially the Monarch (Anosia plexippus), ignoring the arbitrary dividing line of man, still includes the dogbane on its visiting list. We know that this plant derived its name from the fact that it was considered poisonous to dogs; and we also know that all the tribe of milkweed butterflies are provided with protective secretions which are distasteful to birds and predaceous insects, enjoying their immunity from attack, it is thought, from the acrid, poisonous character of the foliage on which the caterpillars feed.
COMMON MIIKWEED or SILKWEED(Asclepias Syriaca; A. cornuti of Gray) Milkweed family
Flowers - Dull pale greenish purple pink, or brownish pink, borne on pedicels, in many flowered, broad umbels. Calyx inferior, 5-parted; corolla deeply 5-cleft, the segments turned backward. Above them an erect, 5-parted crown, each part called a hood, containing a nectary, and with a tooth on either side, and an incurved horn projecting from within. Behind the crown the short, stout stamens, united by their filaments in a tube, are inserted on the corolla. Broad anthers united around a thick column of pistils terminating in a large, sticky, 5-angled disk. The anther sacs tipped with a winged membrane; a waxy, pear-shaped pollen-mass in each sac connected with the stigma in pairs or fours by a dark gland, and suspended by a stalk like a pair of saddle-bags. Stem: Stout, leafy, usually unbranched, 3 to 5 ft. high, juice milky. Leaves: Opposite, oblong, entire-edged smooth above, hairy below, 4 to 9 in. long. Fruit: 2 thick, warty pods, usually only one filled with compressed seeds attached to tufts of silky, white, fluffy hairs. Preferred Habitat - Fields and waste places, roadsides. Flowering Season - June-September Distribution - New Brunswick, far westward and southward to North Carolina and Kansas.
After the orchids, no flowers show greater executive ability, none have adopted more ingenious methods of compelling insects to work for them than the milkweeds. Wonderfully have they perfected their mechanism in every part until no member of the family even attempts to fertilize itself; hence their triumphal, vigorous march around the earth, the tribe numbering over nineteen hundred species located chiefly in those tropical and warm, temperate regions that teem with insect life.
Commonest of all with us is this rank weed, which possesses the dignity of a rubber plant. Much more attractive to human eyes, at least, than the dull, pale, brownish-pink umbels of flowers are its exquisite silky seed-tufts. But not so with insects. Knowing that the slightly fragrant blossoms are rich in nectar, bees, wasps, flies, beetles, and butterflies come to feast. Now, the visitor finding his alighting place slippery, his feet claw about in all directions to secure a hold, just as it was planned they should for in his struggles some of his feet must get caught in the fine little clefts at the base of the flower. His efforts to extricate his foot only draw it into a slot at the end of which lies a little dark-brown body. In a newly opened flower five of these little bodies may be seen between the horns of the crown, at equal distances around it. This tiny brown excrescence is hard and horny, with a notch in its face. It is continuous with and forms the end of the slot in which the visitor's foot is caught. Into this he must draw his foot or claw, and finding it rather tightly held, must give a vigorous jerk to get it free. Attached to either side of the little horny piece is a flattened yellow pollen-mass, and so away he flies with a pair of these pollinia, that look like tiny saddle-bags, dangling from his feet. One might think that such rough handling as many insects must submit to from flowers would discourage them from making any more visits; but the desire for food is a mighty passion. While the insect is flying off to another blossom, the stalk to which the saddlebags are attached twists until it brings them together, that, when his feet get caught in other slots, they may be in the position to get broken off in his struggles for freedom precisely where they will fertilize the stigmatic chambers. Now the visitor flies away with the stalks alone sticking to his claws. Bumblebees and hive-bees have been caught with a dozen pollen-masses dangling from a single foot. Outrageous imposition!
Does this wonderful mechanism always work to perfection? Alas! no. It is a common thing to find dead hive-bees and flies hanging from the flowers. While still struggling to escape, the unhappy victims will be attacked by ants, beetles, and spiders, or killed by heavy showers. Larger and stronger insects than honeybees are required to regularly effect pollination and free themselves, especially when they are so unfortunate as to catch several feet in the grooves. Doubtless it is the bumblebee that can transfer pollen with impunity; but very many other insects, not perfectly adapted to the flowers, occasionally benefit them. Among the large butterflies the Papilios, which suck with their wings in motion, are the most useful, because in using their legs to offset the motion of their wings they rapidly repeat those movements which are necessary to draw the pollinia from the anther cells and insert them in the stigmatic chambers of other flowers. "Large butterflies like Danais," says Professor Robertson, "hold their wings still in sucking, spending more time on an umbel, but generally carrying pollinia. Small butterflies are worse than useless. They remain long on the umbels sucking, but resting their feet superficially on the flowers.
Since several moths were found entrapped, pollination must often be brought about by night-flying Lepidoptera. As a rule, Diptera (flies) either do not transfer pollinia at all, or become hopelessly entangled when they do. "Occasionally pollen-masses are found on the tongues of insects, especially on those of bees and wasps, which move about with their unruly member sticking out. Probably no one has ever made the exhaustive and absorbingly interesting study of the milkweeds that Professor Robertson has.
Better than any written description of the milkweed blossom's mechanism is a simple experiment. If you have neither time nor patience to sit in the hot sun, magnifying glass in hand, and watch for an unwary insect to get caught, take an ordinary housefly, and hold it by the wings so that it may claw at one of the newly opened flowers from which no pollinia have been removed. It tries frantically to hold on, and with a little direction it may be led to catch its claws in the slots of the flower. Now pull it gently away, and you will find a pair of saddlebags slung over his foot by a slender curved stalk. If you are rarely skilful, you may induce your fly to withdraw the pollinia from all five slots on as many of his feet. And they are not to be thrown or scraped off, let the fly try as hard as he pleases. You may now invite the fly to take a walk on another flower in which he will probably leave one or more pollinia in its stigmatic cavities.
Dr. Kerner thought the milky juice in milkweed plants, especially abundant in the uppermost leaves and stems, serves to protect the flowers from useless crawling pilferers. He once started a number of ants to climb up a milky stalk. When they neared the summit, he noticed that at each movement the terminal hooks of their feet cut through the tender epiderm, and from the little clefts the milky juice began to flow, bedraggling their feet and the hind part of their bodies. "The ants were much impeded in their movements," he writes, "and in order to rid themselves of the annoyance, drew their feet through their mouths. Their movements however, which accompanied these efforts, simply resulted in making fresh fissures and fresh discharges of milky juice, so that the position of the ants became each moment worse and worse. Many escaped by getting to the edge of a leaf and dropping to the ground. Others tried this method of escape too late, for the air soon hardened the milky juice into a tough brown substance, and after this, all the strugglings of the ants to free themselves from the viscid matter were in vain." Nature's methods of preserving a flower's nectar for the insects that are especially adapted to fertilize it, and of punishing all useless intruders, often shock us yet justice is ever stern, ever kind in the largest sense.
If the asclepias really do kill some insects with their juice, others doubtless owe their lives to it. Among the "protected" insects are the milkweed butterflies and their caterpillars, which are provided with secretions that are distasteful to birds and predaceous insects. "These acrid secretions are probably due to the character of the plants upon which the caterpillars feed," says Dr. Holland, in his beautiful and invaluable "Butterfly Book." "Enjoying on this account immunity from attack, they have all, in the process of time, been mimicked by species in other genera which have not the same immunity." "One cannot stay long around a patch of milkweeds without seeing the monarch butterfly. (Anosia plexippus), that splendid, bright, reddish-brown winged fellow, the borders and veins broadly black, with two rows of white spots on the outer borders and two rows of pale spots across the tip of the fore wings. There is a black scent-pouch on the hind wings. The caterpillar, which is bright yellow or greenish yellow, banded with shining black, is furnished with black fleshy 'horns' fore and aft."
Like the dandelion, thistle, and other triumphant strugglers for survival, the milkweed sends its offspring adrift on the winds to found fresh colonies afar. Children delight in making pompons for their hats by removing the silky seed-tufts from pods before they burst, and winding them, one by one, on slender stems with fine thread. Hung in the sunshine, how charmingly fluffy and soft they dry!
Among the comparatively few butterfly flowers - although, of course, other insects not adapted to them are visitors - is the PURPLE MILKWEED (A. purpurasceus), whose deep magenta umbels are so conspicuous through the summer months. Hummingbirds occasionally seek it too. From Eastern Massachusetts to Virginia, and westward to the Mississippi, or beyond, it is to be found in dry fields, woods, and thickets.
The SWAMP MILKWEED (A. incarnata), on the other hand, rears its intense purplish-red or pinkish hoods in wet places. Its leaves are lance-shaped or oblong-lanceolate, whereas the purple milkweed's leaves are oblong or ovate-oblong. This is a smooth plant; and a similar species once reckoned as a mere variety (A. pulchra) is the HAIRY MILKWEED. It differs chiefly in having some hairs on the under side of its leaves, and a great many hairs on its stem. Both plants bear erect, rather slender, tapering pods.
The POKE or TALL MILKWEED (A. exaltata - A. phytolaecoides of Gray) may attain a height of six feet if the moist soil in which it grows be exactly to its liking. Drooping or spreading umbels of flowers whose corolla segments are pale purplish green, and whose crown is clear ivory white or pink, appear from June to August from Maine to Georgia and far westward. Sometimes the tapering oblong leaves may be nine inches long. The erect seedpods are drawn out to an unusually long point.
One may always distinguish the low-growing FOUR-LEAVED MILKWEED (A. quadrifolia) from its relatives of ranker growth by its general air of refinement, as well as by the two pairs of thin, tapering leaves that grow in an upright whorl near the middle of the slender stem. Usually there are no leaves on the lower part. Small terminal umbels of delicate pink and white fragrant flowers, which appear from May till July, give place to very narrow pointed pods in late summer. From Maine to Ontario southward to North Carolina and Arkansas is its range, in woods and thickets chiefly.
HEDGE or GREAT BINDWEED; WILD MORNING-GLORY; RUTLAND BEAUTY;BELL-BIND; LADY'S NIGHTCAP
(Convolvulus sepium; Calystegia sepium of Gray) Morning-gloryfamily
Flowers - Light pink, with white stripes or all white, bell-shaped, about 2 in. long, twisted in the bud, solitary, on long peduncles from leaf axils. Calyx of 5 sepals, concealed by 2 large bracts at base. Corolla 5-lobed, the 5 included stamens inserted on its tube; style with 2 oblong stigmas. Stem: Smooth or hairy, 3 to 10 ft. long, twining or trailing over ground. Leaves: Triangular or arrow-shaped, 2 to 5 in. long, on slender petioles. Preferred Habitat - Wayside hedges, thickets, fields, walls. Flowering Season - June-September. Distribution - Nova Scotia to North Carolina, westward to Nebraska. Europe and Asia.
No one need be told that the pretty, bell-shaped pink and white flower on the vigorous vine clambering over stone walls and winding about the shrubbery of wayside thickets in a suffocating embrace is akin to the morning-glory of the garden trellis (C. major). An exceedingly rapid climber, the twining stem often describes a complete circle in two hours, turning against the sun, or just contrary to the hands of a watch. Late in the season, when an abundance of seed has been set, the flower can well afford to keep open longer hours, also in rainy weather; but early in the summer, at least, it must attend to business only while the sun shines and its benefactors are flying. Usually it closes at sundown. On moonlight nights, however, the hospitable blossom keeps open for the benefit of certain moths. In Europe the plant's range is supposed to be limited to that of a crepuscular moth (Sphinx convolvuli), and where that benefactor is rare, as in England, the bindweed sets few seeds where it does not occur, as in Scotland, this convolvulus is seldom found wild; whereas in Italy Delpino tells of catching numbers of the moths in hedges overgrown with the common plant, by standing with thumb and forefinger over a flower, ready to close it when the insect has entered. We know that every floral clock is regulated by the hours of flight of its insect friends. When they have retired, the flowers close to protect nectar and pollen from useless pilferers. In this country various species of bees chiefly fertilize the bindweed blossoms. Guided by the white streaks, or pathfinders, they crawl into the deep tube and sip through one of the five narrow passages leading to the nectary. A transverse section of the flower cut to show these five passages standing in a circle around the central ovary looks like the end of a five-barreled revolver. Insects without a suitably long proboscis are, of course, excluded by this arrangement.
>From July until hard frost look for that exquisite little beetle, Cassida aurichalcea, like a drop of molten gold, clinging beneath the bindweed's leaves. The small perforations reveal his hiding places. "But you must be quick if you would capture him," says William Hamilton Gibson, "for he is off in a spangling streak of glitter. Nor is this golden sheen all the resource of the little insect; for in the space of a few seconds, as you hold him in your hand, he has become a milky, iridescent opal, and now mother-of-pearl, and finally crawls before you in a coat of dull orange." A dead beetle loses all this wonderful luster. Even on the morning-glory in our gardens we may sometimes find these jeweled mites, or their fork-tailed, black larvae, or the tiny chrysalids suspended by their tails, although it is the wild bindweed that is ever their favorite abiding place.
The small FIELD BINDWEED (C. arvensis), a common immigrant from Europe, which has taken up its abode from Nova Scotia and Ontario southward to New Jersey, and westward to Kansas, trails over the ground with a deathless persistency which fills farmers with dismay. It is like a small edition of the hedge bind weed, only its calyx lacks the leaf-like bracts at its base, its slender stem rarely exceeds two feet in length, and the little pink and white flowers often grow in pairs. Their habit of closing both in the evening and in rainy weather indicates that they are adapted for diurnal insects only; but if the bell hang down, or if the corolla drop off, the pollen must fall on the stigma and effect self-fertilization. Many more insects visit this flower than the large bindweed, attracted by the peculiar fragrance, and led by the white streaks to the orange-colored under surface of the ovary, where the nectar lies concealed. Stigmas and anthers mature at the same time; but as the former are slightly the longer, they receive pollen brought from another flower before the visitor gets freshly dusted.
GROUND OR MOSS PINK(Phlox subulata) Phlox family
Flowers - Very numerous, small, deep purplish pink, lavender or rose, varying to white, with a darker eye, growing in simple cymes, or solitary in a Western variety. Calyx with 5 slender teeth; corolla salver-form with 5 spreading lobes; 5 stamens inserted on corolla tube; style 3-lobed. Stems: Rarely exceeding 6 in. in height, tufted like mats, much branched, plentifully set with awl-shaped, evergreen leaves barely 1/2 in. long, growing in tufts at joints of stem. Preferred Habitat - Rocky ground, hillsides. Flowering Season - April-June Distribution - Southern New York to Florida, westward to Michigan and Kentucky.
A charming little plant, growing in dense evergreen mats with which Nature carpets dry, sandy, and rocky hillsides, is often completely hidden beneath its wealth of flowers. Far beyond its natural range, as well as within it, the moss pink glows in gardens, cemeteries and parks, wherever there are rocks to conceal or sterile wastes to beautify. Very slight encouragement induces it to run wild. There are great rocks in Central Park, New York, worth travelling miles to see in early May, when their stern faces are flushed and smiling with these blossoms.
Another low ground species is the CRAWLING PHLOX (P. reptans). It rarely exceeds six inches in height; nevertheless its larger pink, purple, or white flowers, clustered after the manner of the tall garden phloxes, are among the most showy to be found in the spring woods. A number of sterile shoots with obovate leaves, tapering toward the base, rise from the runners and set off the brilliant blossoms among their neat foliage. From Pennsylvania southward and westward is its range, especially in mountainous regions; but this plant, too, was long ago transplanted from Nature's gardens into man's.
Large patches of the DOWNY PHLOX (P. pilosa) brighten dry prairie land with its pinkish blossoms in late spring. Britton and Brown's botany gives its range as "Ontario to Manitoba, New Jersey, Florida, Arkansas, and Texas." The plant does its best to attain a height of two feet; usually its flowers are much nearer the ground. Butterflies, the principal visitors of most phloxes, although long-tongued bees and even flies can sip their nectar, are ever seen hovering above them and transferring pollen, although in this species the style is so short pollen must often fall into the tube and self-fertilize the stigma. To protect the flowers from useless crawling visitors, the calices are coated with sticky matter, and the stems are downy.
OBEDIENT PLANT; FALSE DRAGONHEAD; LION'S HEART(Physostegia Virginiana) Mint family
Flowers - Pale magenta, purplish rose, or flesh-colored, often variegated with white, 1 in. long or over, in dense spikes from 4 to 8 in. long. Calyx a 5-toothed oblong bell, swollen and remaining open in fruit, held up by lance-shaped bracts. Corolla tubular and much enlarged where it divides into 2 lips, the upper lip concave, rounded, entire, the lower lip 3 lobed. Stamens 4, in two pairs under roof of upper lip, the filaments hairy; 1 pistil. Stem: 1 to 4 ft. high, simple or branched above, leafy. Leaves: Opposite, firm, oblong to oblong-lanceolate, narrowing at base, deeply saw-edged. Preferred Habitat - Moist soil. Flowering Season - July-September. Distribution - Quebec to the Northwest Territory, southward to the Gulf of Mexico as far west as Texas.
Bright patches of this curious flower enliven railroad ditches, gutters, moist meadows and brooksides - curious, for it has the peculiarity of remaining in any position in which it is placed. With one puff a child can easily blow the blossoms to the opposite side of the spike, there to stay in meek obedience to his will. "The flowers are made to assume their definite position," says Professor W. W. Bailey in the "Botanical Gazette," "by friction of the pedicels against the subtending bracts. Remove the bracts, and they at once fall limp."
Qf course the plant has some better reason for this peculiar obedience to every breath that blows than to amuse windy-cheeked boys and girls. Is not the ready movement useful during stormy weather in turning the mouth of the flower away from driving rain, and in fair days, when insects are abroad, in presenting its gaping lips where they can best alight? We all know that insects, like birds, make long flights most easily with the wind, but in rising and alighting it is their practice to turn against it. When bees, for example, are out for food on windy days, and must make frequent stops for refreshment among the flowers, they will be found going against the wind, possibly to catch the whiffs of fragrance borne on it that guide them to feast, but more likely that they may rise and alight readily. One always sees bumblebees conspicuous among the obedient plant's visitors. After the anthers have shed their pollen - and tiny teeth at the edges of the outer pair aid its complete removal by insects - the stigma comes up to occupy their place under the roof. Certainly this flower; which is so ill-adapted to fertilize itself, has every reason to court insect messengers in fair and stormy 'weather.
MOTHERWORT(Leonurus Cardiaca) Mint family.
Flowers - Dull purple pink, pale purple, or white, small, clustered in axils of upper leaves. Calyx tubular, bell-shaped, with 5 rigid awl-like teeth; corolla 2-lipped, upper lip arched, woolly without; lower lip 3-lobed, spreading, mottled; the tube with oblique ring of hairs inside. Four twin-like stamens, anterior pair longer, reaching under upper lip; style 2-cleft at summit. Stem: 2 to 5 ft. tall, straight, branched, leafy, purplish. Leaves: Opposite, on slender petioles; lower ones rounded, 2 to 4 in. broad, palmately cut into 2 to 5 lobes; upper leaves narrower, 3-cleft or 3- toothed. Preferred Habitat - Waste places near dwellings. Flowering Season - June-September. Distribution - Nova Scotia southward to North Carolina, west to Minnesota and Nebraska. Naturalized from Europe and Asia.
"One is tempted to say that the most human plants, after all, are the weeds," says John Burroughs. "How they cling to man and follow him around the world, and spring up wherever he sets foot How they crowd around his barns and dwellings, and throng his garden, and jostle and override each other in their strife to be near him! Some of them are so domestic and familiar, and so harmless withal, that one comes to regard them with positive affection. Motherwort, catnip, plantain, tansy, wild mustard - what a homely, human look they have! They are an integral part of every old homestead. Your smart, new place will wait long before they draw near it."
How the bees love this generous, old-fashioned entertainer! One nearly always sees them clinging to the close whorls of flowers that are strung along the stem, and of course transferring pollen, in recompense, as they journey on. A more credulous generation imported the plant for its alleged healing virtues. What is the significance of its Greek name, meaning a lion's tail? Let no one suggest, by a far-stretched metaphor, that our grandmothers, in Revolutionary days, enjoyed pulling it to vent their animosity against the British.
WILD BERGAMOT(Monarda fisiulosa) Mint family
Flowers - Extremely variable, purplish, lavender, magenta, rose, pink, yellowish pink, or whitish, dotted; clustered in a solitary, nearly flat terminal head. Calyx tubular, narrow, 5-toothed, very hairy within. Corolla 1 to 1 1/2 in. long, tubular, 2-lipped, upper lip erect, toothed; lower lip spreading, 3-lobed, middle lobe longest; 2 anther-bearing stamens protruding; 1 pistil; the style 2-lobed. Stem: 2 to 3 ft. high, rough, branched. Leaves: Opposite, lance-shaped, saw-edged, on slender petioles, aromatic, bracts and upper leaves whitish or the color of flower. Preferred Habitat - Open woods, thickets, dry rocky hills. Flowering Season - June-September. Distribution - Eastern Canada and Maine, westward to Minnesota, south to Gulf of Mexico.
Half a dozen different shades of bloom worn by this handsome, robust perennial afford an excellent illustration of the trials that beset one who would arbitrarily group flowers according to color. If the capricious blossom shows a decided preference for any shade, it is for magenta, the royal purple of the ancients, scarcely tolerated now except by Hoboken Dutch and the belles of the kitchen, whose Sunday hats are resplendent with intense effects.
Only a few bergamot flowers open at a time; the rest of the slightly rounded head, thickly set with hairy calices, looks as if it might be placed in a glass cup and make an excellent pen wiper. If the cultivated human eye (and stomach) revolt at magenta, It is ever a favorite shade with butterflies. They flutter in ecstasy over the gay flowers; indeed, they are the principal visitors and benefactors, for the erect corollas, exposed organs, and level-topped heads are well adapted to their requirements. That exquisite little feathered jewel, the ruby-throated hummingbird, flashes about the bright patches an instant, and is gone; but he too has paid for his feast in transferring pollen. Insects which land anywhere they please on the flowers, receive pollen on various places, just as in the case of the scarlet Oswego tea, of similar formation. Small bees, which if unable to drain the brimming tubes of nectar, at least sip from them and help themselves to pollen also, without paying the flower's price; and certain mischievous wasps, forever bent on nipping holes in tubes they cannot honestly drain, give a score of other pilferers an opportunity to steal sweets.
SNAKE-HEAD; TURTLE-HEAD; BALMONY; SHELL-FLOWER; COD-HEAD(Chelone glabra) Figwort family
Flowers - White tinged with pink, or all white, about 1 in. long, growing in a dense terminal cluster. Calyx 5-parted, bracted at base; corolla irregular, broadly tubular, 2-lipped; upper lip arched, swollen, slightly notched; lower lip 3-lobed, spreading, woolly within; 5 stamens, sterile, 4 in pairs, anther-bearing, woolly; 1 pistil. Stem: 1 to 3 ft. high, erect, smooth, simple, leafy. Leaves: Opposite, lance-shaped, saw-edged. Preferred Habitat - Ditches, beside streams, swamps. Flowering Season - July-September. Distribution - Newfoundland to Florida, and half way across the continent.
It requires something of a struggle for even so strong and vigorous an insect as the bumblebee to gain admission to this inhospitable-looking flower before maturity; and even he abandons the attempt over and over again in its earliest stage before the little heart-shaped anthers are prepared to dust him over. As they mature, it opens slightly, but his weight alone is insufficient to bend down the stiff, yet elastic, lower lip. Energetic prying admits first his head, then he squeezes his body through, brushing past the stamens as he finally disappears inside. At the moment when he is forcing his way in, causing the lower lip to spring up and down, the eyeless turtle seems to chew and chew until the most sedate beholder must smile at the paradoxical show. Of course it is the bee that is feeding, though the flower would seem to be masticating the bee with the keenest relish The counterfeit tortoise soon disgorges its lively mouthful, however, and away flies the bee, carrying pollen on his velvety back to rub on the stigma of an older flower. After the anthers have shed their pollen and become effete, the stigma matures, and occupies their place. By this time the flower presents a wider entrance, and as the moisture-loving plant keeps the nectaries abundantly filled, what is to prevent insects too small to come in contact with anthers and stigma in the roof from pilfering to their heart's content? The woolly throat discourages many, to be sure; but the turtle-head, like its cousins the beard-tongues, has a sterile fifth stamen, whose greatest use is to act as a drop-bar across the base of the flower. The long-tongued bumblebee can get his drink over the bar, but smaller, unwelcome visitors are literally barred out.