RED CHOKE-BERRY; DOGBERRY TREE(Aronia arbutifolia; Pyrus arbutifolia of Gray) Apple family
Flowers - White or magenta tinged, 1/2 in. across or less, in terminal, compound cymes, finally overtopped by young sterile shoots. Calyx 5-lobed, hairy; 5 concave, spreading petals; stamens numerous; 3 to 5 styles united at base; ovary woolly. Stem: Shrubby, branching, usually low, rarely 12 ft. high. Leaves: Alternate, petioled, oval to oblong, finely cut-edged, smooth above, matted with woolly hairs underneath. Fruit: Small, round or top-shaped, bright red berries. Preferred Habitat - Swamps, low ground, wet thickets. Flowering Season - March-May. Distribution - Nova Scotia to Gulf of Mexico, westward to the Mississippi.
Another common species often found in the same haunts, the BLACK CHOKE-BERRY (A. nigra), with similar flowers, the berries very dark purple, was formerly confounded with the red choke-berry. But because it sometimes elects to live in dry ground its leaves require no woolly mat on the underside to absorb vapors arising from wet retreats. No wonder that the insipid little berries. related to apples, pears, and other luscious fruits, should share with a cousin, the mountain ash, or rowan, the reproachful name of dogberry.
JUNEBERRY; SERVICEBERRY; MAY-CHERRY(Amelanchier Canadensis) Apple family
Flowers - Pure white, over 1 in. across, on long, slender pedicels, in spreading or drooping racemes, with silky, reddish bracts, early falling, among them. Calyx persistent, 5-parted; 5 long, narrow, tapering petals, 3 or 4 times the length of calyx; numerous stamens inserted on calyx throat; 2 to 5 styles, hairy at base. Stem: A large shrub or tree, usually much less than 25 ft. high, rarely twice that height, wood very hard and heavy. Leaves: Alternate, oval, tapering at tip, finely saw-edged, smooth (like the pear tree's), often hairy when young. Fruit. Round, crimson, sweet, edible, seedy berries, ripe in June and July. Preferred Habitat - Woodland borders, pasture thickets, dry soil. Flowering Season - March-May. Distribution - Newfoundland to the Gulf of Mexico, westward over a thousand miles.
Silvery-white chandeliers, hanging from the edges of the woods, light Flora's path in earliest spring, before the trees and shrubbery about them have begun to put forth foliage, much less flowers. Little plants that hug the earth for protection while rude winds rush through the forest and across the hillsides, are already starring her way with fragile, dainty blossoms; but what other shrub, except the serviceberry's twin sister the shadbush, or perhaps the spicebush, has the temerity to burst into bloom while March gusts howl through the naked forests? Little female bees of the Andrena tribe, already at work collecting pollen and nectar for generations yet unborn, buzz their gratitude about the beautiful feathery clusters that lean away from the crowded thicket with a wild, irregular grace. Nesting birds have abundant cause for gratitude also, for the attractive, sweet berries, that ripen providentially early; but, of course, the bees which transfer pollen from flower to flower, and the birds which drop the seeds far and wide, are not the receivers of wholly disinterested favors.
The SHADBUSH or SWAMP SUGAR-PEAR (A. Botryapium), because it was formerly accounted a mere variety (oblongifolia) of the preceding species, still shares with it its popular names; but swamps, river banks, brook sides, and moist thickets are its habitat. Consequently both its inflorescence and pale green, glossy foliage are covered with a sort of whitish cotton, absorbent when young, to prevent the pores from clogging with vapors arising from its damp retreats. Late in the season, when streams narrow or dry up altogether, and the air becomes drier, as the sun rises higher in the heavens, the foliage is usually quite smooth. It will be noticed that, lovely as the shadbush is, its smaller flowers have shorter pedicels than the serviceberry's; consequently its feathery sprays, which are flung outward to the sunshine in April and May, lack something of the grace for which its sister stands preeminent. Under cultivation both species assume conventional form, and lose the wild irregularities of growth that charm us in Nature's garden. Indians believed, what is an obvious fact, that when this bush whitens the swampy river banks, shad are swimming up the stream from the sea to spawn. Then, too, the nighthawk, returning from its winter visit south, booms forth its curious whirring, vibrating, jarring sound as it drops through the air at unseen heights, a dismal, weird noise which the red man thought proceeded from the shad spirits come to warn the schools of fish of their impending fate.
COMMON HAWTHORN: WHITE THORN; SCARLET-FRUITED THORN; RED HAW;MAYFLOWERS(Cratoegus coccinea) Apple family
Flowers - White, rarely pinkish, usually less than 1 in. across, numerous, in terminal corymbs. Calyx 5-lobed; 5 spreading petals inserted in its throat numerous stamens; styles 3 to 5. Stem: A shrub or small tree, rarely attaining 30 ft. in height (Kratos = strength, in reference to hardness and toughness of the wood); branches spreading, and beset with stout spines (thorns) nearly 2 in. long. Leaves: Alternate, petioled, 2 to 3 in. long, ovate, very sharply cut or lobed, the teeth glandular-tipped. Fruit: Coral red, round or oval; not edible. Preferred Habitat - Thickets, fence-rows, woodland borders. Flowering Season - May. Distribution - Newfoundland and Manitoba southward to the Gulf of Mexico.
"The fair maid who, the first of May,Goes to the fields at break of dayAnd washes in dew from the hawthorn treeWill ever after handsome be."
Here is a popular recipe omitted from that volume of heart-to-heart talks entitled "How to Be Pretty though Plain"!
The sombre-thoughted Scotchman, looking for trouble, tersely observes:
"Mony haws,Mony snaws."
But in delicious, blossoming May, when the joy of living fairly intoxicates one, and every bird's throat is swelling with happy music, who but a Calvinist would croak dismal prophecies? In Ireland, old crones tell marvelous tales about the hawthorns, and the banshees which have a predilection for them. So much for folklore.
As one might suspect from the rather disagreeable odor of these blossoms, they are most attractive to flies and beetles, which, carrying pollen from older flowers, leave some on the stigmas that are already mature in newly-opened ones. A concave nectar-secreting disk, not concealed by the filaments in this case, is eagerly pilfered by numerous little short-lipped insects which render no benefit in return; but many others assist in self-pollination after the anthers ripen. The splendid monarch butterfly (Anosia plexippus), the banded purple (Basilarchia arthemis), whose caterpillar feeds on hawthorn foliage, and the light brown hunter's butterfly [American painted lady] (Pyrameis huntera [Vanessa virginiensis]) are, among the visitors seen flitting about this exquisite little tree in early May, when it is fairly white with bloom.
The RED-FRUITED THORN (C. mollis), more hairy on its twigs, petioles, calices, and fruit than the preceding, but so like it in most respects it was formerly accounted a mere variety, is an earlier and even more prolific bloomer, the generous, large clusters of malodorous flowers coming with the leaves in April, and lasting until the common hawthorn starts into lively competition with it for insect trade.
Numerous long, slender thorns, often measuring a finger-length, distinguish the COCKSPUR or NEWCASTLE THORN (C. Crus-Galli), whose abundant small flowers and shining, leathery leaves, dull underneath, are conspicuous in thickets from Quebec to the Gulf. Immense numbers of little bees, among many other visitors, may be noted on a fine day in May and early June about this showy shrub or tree. Because it blooms later than its rival sisters, it has the insect wooers then abroad all to itself.
While most of our beautiful native hawthorns have been introduced to European gardens, it is the WHITE THORN or MAY (C. Oxyacantha) of Europe and Asia which is most commonly cultivated here. Truly a shrub, like a prophet, is not without honor save in its own country.
WHITE SWEET CLOVER; BOKHARA or TREE CLOVER; WHITE MELILOT; HONEYLOTUS(Melilotus alba) Pea family
Flowers - Small, white, fragrant, papilionaceous, the standardpetal a trifle longer than the wings; borne in slender racemes.Stem: 3 to 10 ft. tall, branching. Leaves: Rather distant,petioled, compounded of 3 oblong, saw-edged leaflets; fragrant,especially when dry.Preferred Habitat - Wastelands, roadsides.Flowering Season - June-November.Distribution - United States, Europe, Asia.
Happy must the honeybees have been to find that the sweet clover, one of their dearest delights in the Old World, had preceded them in immigrating to the New. Immense numbers of insects - bees in great variety, wasps, flies, moths, and beetles - visit the little blossoms that provide entertainment so generous and accessible; but honey-bees are ever especially abundant. Slight weight depresses the keel, releasing the stigma and anthers therefore, so soon as a bee alights and opens the flower, he is hit below the belt by the projecting stigma. Pollen carried by him there from other clovers comes off on its sticky surface before his abdomen gets freshly dusted from the anthers, which are necessarily rubbed against while he sips nectar. On the removal of his pressure, the floret springs back to its closed condition, to protect the precious nectar and pollen from rain and pilferers. As the stigma projects too far beyond the anthers to be likely to receive any of the flower's own pollen, good reason is there for the blossoms guarding their attractions for the benefit of their friends, which transfer the vitalizing dust from one floret to another. By clustering its small flowers in spikes, to make them conspicuous, as well as to facilitate dining for its benefactors; by prolonging its season of bloom, to get relief from the fiercest competition for insect trade, and so to insure an abundance of vigorous cross-fertilized seed, this plant reveals at a glance some of the reasons why it has been able to establish itself so quickly throughout our vast area.
Both the white and the yellow sweet clover put their leaves to sleep at night in a remarkable manner: the three leaflets of each leaf twist through an angle of 90 degrees, until one edge of each vertical blade is uppermost. The two side leaflets, Darwin found, always tend to face the north with their upper surface, one facing north-northwest and the other north-northeast, while the terminal leaflet escapes the chilling of its sensitive upper surface through radiation by twisting to a vertical also, but bending to either east or west, until it comes in contact with the vertical upper surface of either of the side leaflets. Thus the upper surface of the terminal and of at least one of the side leaflets is sure to be well protected through the night; one is "left out in the cold."
The dried branches of sweet clover will fill a room with delightful fragrance; but they will not drive away flies, nor protect woolens from the ravages of moths, as old women once taught us to believe.
The ubiquitous WHITE or DUTCH CLOVER (Trifolium repens), whose creeping branches send up solitary round heads of white or pinkish flowers on erect, leafless stems, from May to December, in fields, open waste land, and cultivated places throughout our area, Europe, and Asia, devotes itself to wooing bees, since these are the only insects that effect cross-fertilization regularly, other visitors aiding it only occasionally. When nets are stretched over these flowers to exclude insects, only one-tenth the normal quantity of fertile seed is set. Therefore, for the bee's benefit, does each little floret conceal nectar in a tube so deep that small pilferers cannot reach it; but when a honeybee, for example, depresses the keel of the papilionaceous blossom, abundant reward awaits him in consideration of his services in transferring pollen. After the floret which he has been the means of fertilizing closes over its seed-vessel on his departure, it gradually withers, grows brown, and hangs downward, partly to indicate to the next bee that comes along which fords in the head still contain nectar, and which are done for; partly to hide the precious little vigorous green seed-pod in the center of each withered, papery corolla from the visitation of certain insects whose minute grubs destroy countless millions of the progeny of less careful plants. Thus the erect florets in a head stand awaiting their benefactors; those drooping around the outer edge are engaged in the most serious business of life. Sometimes a solitary old maid remains standing, looking anxiously for a lover, at the end of the season. Usually all the florets are then bent down around the stem in a brown and crumpled mass. But however successfully the clover guards its seeds from annihilation, its foliage is the favorite food of very many species of caterpillars and of all grazing cattle the world around. This is still another plant frequently miscalled shamrock. Good luck or bad attends the finding of the leaves, when compounded of an even or an odd number of leaflets more than the normal count, according to the saying of many simple-minded folk.
The little RABBIT'S-FOOT, PUSSY, OLD-FIELD, or STONE CLOVER (T. arvense) has silky plumed calices to hold its minute whitish florets, giving the dense, oblong heads a charming softness and dove color after it has gone to seed. Like most other clovers, it has come to us from the Old World.
FLOWERING SPURGE(Euphorbia corollata) Spurge family
Flowers - (Apparently) white, small, borne in forked, long-stalked umbels, subtended by green bracts; but the true flowers are minute, and situated within the white cup-shaped involucre, usually mistaken for a corolla. Staminate flowers scattered over inner surface of involucre, each composed of a single stamen on a thread-like pedicel with a rudimentary calyx or tiny bract below it. A solitary pistillate flower at bottom of involucre, consisting of 3-celled ovary; 3 styles, 2-cleft, at length forming an erect 3-lobed capsule separating into 3 2-valved carpels. Stem: 1 to 3 ft. high, often brightly spotted, simple below, umbellately 5-branched above (usually). Leaves: Linear, lance-shaped or oblong, entire; lower ones alternate, upper ones whorled. Preferred Habitat - Dry soil, gravelly or sandy. Flowering Season - April-October. Distribution - From Kansas and Ontario to the Atlantic.
A very commonplace and uninteresting looking weed is this spurge, which no one but a botanist would suspect of kinship with the brilliant vermilion poinsettia, so commonly grown in American greenhouses. Examination shows that these little bright white cups of the flowering spurge, simulating a five-cleft corolla, are no more the true flowers in the one case than the large red bracts around the poinsettia's globular greenish blossom involucres are in the other. From the milky juice alone one might guess the spurge to be related to the rubber plant. Still another familiar cousin is the stately castor-oil plant; and while the common dull purplish IPECAC SPURGE (E. Ipecacuanhae) also suggests unpleasant doses, it is really a member of quite another family that furnishes the old-fashioned emetic. The flowering spurge, having its staminate and pistillate flowers distinct, depends upon flies, its truest benefactors, to transfer pollen from the former to the latter.
STAGHORN SUMAC; VINEGAR TREE(Rhus hirta; R. typhina of Gray) Sumac family
Flowers - Greenish or yellowish white, very small, usually 5-parted, and borne in dense upright, terminal, pyramidal clusters. Stem: A shrub or small tree, 6 to 40 ft. high, the ends of branches forked somewhat like a stag's horns. Leaves. Compounded of 11 to 31 lance-shaped, saw-edged leaflets, dark green above, pale below; the petioles and twigs often velvety-hairy. Fruit: Small globules, very thickly covered with crimson hairs. Preferred Habitat - Dry, rough or rocky places, banks, roadsides. Flowering Season - June. Distribution - Nova Scotia to Georgia, and westward 1500 miles.
Painted with glorious scarlet, crimson, and gold, the autumnal foliage of the sumacs, and even the fruit, so far eclipse their inconspicuous flowers in attractiveness that one quite ignores them. Not so the small, short-tongued bees (chiefly Andrenidae) and flies (Dipteria) seeking the freely exposed nectar secreted in five orange-colored glands in the shallow little cups. As some of the flowers are staminate and some pistillate, although others show a tendency to revert to the perfect condition of their ancestors, it behooves them to entertain their little pollen-carrying visitors generously, otherwise no seed can possibly be set. And how the autumnal landscape would suffer from the loss of the decorative, dark-red, velvety panicles! Beware only of the poison sumac's deadly, round grayish-white berries.
Most sumacs contain more or less tannin in their bark and leaves, that are therefore eagerly sought by agents for the leather merchants. The beautiful SMOKE or MIST TREE (R. cotinus), commonly imported from southern Europe to adorn our lawns (although a similar species grows wild in the Southwest), serves a more utilitarian purpose in supplying commerce with a rich orange-yellow dye-wood known as young fustic. All this tribe of shrubs and trees contain resinous, milky juice, drying dark like varnish, which in a Japanese species is transformed by the clever native artisans into their famous lacquer. With a commercial instinct worthy of the Hebrew, they guard this process as a national secret.
The SMOOTH, UPLAND, or SCARLET SUMAC (R. glabra), similar to the staghorn, but lacking its velvety down, and usually of much lower growth, is the very common and widely distributed shrub of dry roadsides, railroad banks, and barren fields. Another low-growing, but more or less downy upland sumac, the DWARF, BLACK, or MOUNTAIN SUMAC (R. copallina), may be known by its dark, glossy green foliage, pale on the underside, and by the broadening of the stem into wings between the leaflets. Hungry migrating birds alight to feast on the harmless acid red fruit when the gorgeous autumnal foliage illuminates their route southward. But while they are, of course, the natural agents for distributing the plants over the country, men find that by cutting bits of any sumac root and planting them in good garden soil, strong specimens are secured within a year. An exquisite cut-leaved variety of the smooth sumac adorns many fine lawns.
Everyone should know the POISON SUMAC (R. Vernix - R. venenata of Gray) as the shrub above all others to avoid. Like its cousin, the POISON or THREE-LEAVED IVY (R. radicans), which once had the specific name Toxicodendron, although Linnaeus applied that title to a hairy shrub of the Southern States, the poison sumac causes most painful swelling and irritation to the skin of some people, though they do nothing more than pass it by when the wind is blowing over it. Others may handle both these plants with impunity. In spring they are especially noisome; but when the pores of the skin are opened by perspiration, people who are at all sensitive should give them a wide berth at any season. Usually the poison sumac grows in wet or swampy ground; its bark is gray, its leaf-stalks are red; the leaves are compounded, of fewer leaflets than those of the innocent sumacs - that is, of from seven to thirteen - which are green on both sides; the flowers, which are dull whitish-green, grow in loose panicles from the axils of the leaves, and naturally the berries follow them in the same unusual situation. "By their fruits ye shall know them:" all the harmless sumacs have red fruit clusters at the ends of the branches, whereas both the poison sumac's and the poison ivy's axillary clusters are dull grayish-white.
AMERICAN HOLLY(Ilex opaca) Holly family
Flowers - Very small, greenish or yellowish white, from 3 to 10 staminate ones in a short cyme; fertile flowers usually solitary, scattered. Stem: A small tree of very slow growth, rarely attaining any great height. Leaves: Evergreen, thick, rigid, glossy, elliptical, scalloped edged, spiny-tipped. Fruit: Round, red berries. Preferred Habitat - Moist woods and thickets. Flowering Season - April-June. Distribution - Maine to the Gulf of Mexico, west to Texas, chiefly near the coast and south of New York.
Happily we continue to borrow all the beautiful Old World associations, poetical and legendary, that cluster about the holly at Christmas time, although our native tree furnishes most of our holiday decorations. So far back as Pliny's day, the European holly had all manner of supernatural qualities attributed to it: its insignificant little flowers caused water to freeze, he tells us; because it was believed to repel lightning, the Romans planted it near their houses; and a branch of it thrown after any refractory animal, even if it did not hit him, would subdue him instantly, and cause him to lie down meekly beside the stick! Can it be that the Italian peasants, who still believe cattle kneel in their stalls at midnight on the anniversary of Jesus' birth, decorate the mangers on Christmas eve with holly, among other plants, because of a survival of this old pagan notion about its subduing effect on animals?
Would that the beautiful holly of English gardens (I. Aquifolium), more glossy and spiny of leaf and redder of berry than our own, might live here; but it is too tender to withstand New England winters, and the hot, dry summers farther south soon prove fatal. Ilex was the ancient name, not of these plants, but of the holly oak.
The MOUNTAIN HOLLY (Ilicioides mucronata - Nemopanthes Canadensis of Gray) a shrub of the northern swamps, about six feet high, and by no means confined to mountainous regions, since it is also abundant in the middle West, has smooth-edged, elliptic, petioled leaves, ash-colored bark, small, solitary, narrow-petalled staminate and pistillate flowers on long, threadlike pedicels from the leaf-axils in May. In August dull pale-red berries appear. Darwin proved that seed set with the help of pollen brought from distinct plants produces offspring that vanquishes the offspring of seed set with pollen brought from another flower on the same plant in the struggle for existence. Thus we see, in very many ambitious plants besides those of the holly tribe, a tendency to separate the male and the female flowers as widely as possible.
BLACK ALDER; WINTERBERRY FEVER-BUSH(Ilex verticillata) Holly family
Flowers - Small, greenish white, the staminate clusters 2 to 10 flowered the fertile ones 1 to 3 flowered. Stem: A shrub 6 to 25 ft. high. Leaves: Oval, tapering to a point, about 1 in. wide, saw-edged, dark green, smooth above, hairy, especially along veins underneath. Fruit: Bright red berries, about the size of a pea, apparently whorled around the twigs. Preferred Habitat - Swamps, ditches, fencerows, and low thickets. Flowering Season - June-July. Distribution - Nova Scotia to Florida, west to Missouri.
Beautiful bright red berries, dotted or clustered along the naked twigs of the black alder, add an indispensable cheeriness to the somber winter landscape. Bunches of them, commonly sold in the city streets for household decoration, bring twenty-five cents each; hence the shrubs within a large radius of each market get ample pruning every autumn. The leaves turn black before dropping off.
The SMOOTH WINTERBERRY (I. laevigata), a similar species, but of more restricted range, ripens its larger, orange-red berries earlier than the preceding, and before its leaves, which turn yellow, not black, in autumn, have fallen. Another distinguishing feature is that its small, greenish-white staminate flowers grow on long, very slender pedicels; whereas the solitary fertile flowers are much nearer the stern.
BITTERSWEET; WAX-WORK; STAFF-TREE(Celastrus scandens) Staff-tree family
Flowers - Small, greenish-white, 5-parted, some staminate, some pistillate only; in terminal compound racemes 4 in. long or less. Stem: Woody, twining. Leaves: Alternate, oval, tapering, finely toothed, thin, with a tendency to show white variations. Fruit: A yellow-orange berry-like capsule, splitting at maturity and curling back to display the scarlet, pulpy coating of the seeds within. Preferred Habitat - Rich soil of thickets, fence rows, and wayslde tangles. Flowering Season - June. Distribution - North Carolina, New Mexico, and far north.
Not to be hung above mirror and picture frames in farmhouse parlors, as we have been wont to think, do the brilliant clusters of orange-red wax-work berries attract the eye, where they brighten old walls, copses, and fence rows in autumn; but to advertise their charming wares to hungry migrating birds, which will drop the seeds concealed within the red berry perhaps a thousand miles away, and so plant new colonies. On the smaller, less specialized bees and flies the vine depends in June to carry pollen from its staminate flowers to the fertile ones, whose thick, erect pistil would wither without fruiting without their help.
But the best laid plans of other creatures than mice and men "gang aft a-gley." What mean the little cottony tufts all along the stems of so very many bittersweet vines, but that these have foes as well as friends? Curious little parasitic tree-hoppers (Membracis binotata), which spend their entire lives on the stems, sucking the juices through their little beaks, just as the aphids moor themselves to the tender rose-twigs, might be mistaken for thorns during one of their protective masquerades. Again they look like diminutive flocks of fowl, their heads ever pointing in one direction, no matter how the vine may twist and turn - always toward the top of the branch, that they may the better siphon the sap down their tiny throats. Toward the end of summer the females, which have a sharp instrument at the rear of their bodies, cut deeply into the juicy food-store, the cambium layer of bark, and there deposit their eggs. Presently, a nest being filled, the mother emits a substantial froth at the end of her ovipositor, and proceeds to construct the cottony, corrugated dome over her nursery which first attracted our attention. This is especially skilful work, for she works behind her, evidently not from sight, but from instinct only. Inasmuch as the young hoppers will not come forth until the following summer, some such snug protection is required during winter's cold and snows. With hordes of little parasites constantly preying on its juices, is it any wonder the vine is often too enfeebled to produce seed, or that the leaves lose part of their color and become, as we say, variegated? Occasionally one finds the cottony nursery domes of this little hopper on the locust tree - the favorite home of its big, noisy relative, the so-called locust, or cicada.
NEW JERSEY TEA; WILD SNOWBALL; RED-ROOT(Ceanothus Americanus) Buckthorn family
Flowers - Small, white, on white pedicels, crowded in dense, oblong, terminal clusters. Calyx white, hemispheric, 5-lobed; petals, hooded and long-clawed; 5 stamens with long filaments; style short, 3-cleft. Stems: Shrubby, 1 to 3 ft. high, usually several, from a deep reddish root. Leaves: Alternate, ovate-oblong, acute at tip, finely saw-edged, 3-nerved, on short petioles. Preferred Habitat - Dry, open woods and thickets. Flowering Season - May-July. Distribution - Ontario south and west to the Gulf of Mexico.
Light, feathery clusters of white little flowers crowded on the twigs of this low shrub interested thrifty colonial housewives of Revolutionary days not at all; the tender, young, rusty, downy leaves were what they sought to dry as a substitute for imported tea. Doubtless the thought that they were thereby evading George the Third's tax and brewing patriotism in every kettleful added a sweetness to the homemade beverage that sugar itself could not impart. The American troops were glad enough to use New Jersey tea throughout the war. A nankeen or cinnamon-colored dye is made from the reddish root.
NORTHERN, WILD, FOX, or PLUM GRAPE(Vitis Labrusca) Grape family
Flowers - Greenish, small, deliciously fragrant, some staminate, some pistillate, rarely perfect; the fertile flowers in more compact panicles than the sterile ones. Stem: Climbing with the help of tendrils; woody, bark loose. Leaves: Large, rounded or lobed, toothed, rusty-hairy underneath, especially when young, each leathery leaf opposite a tendril or a flower cluster. Fruit: Clusters containing a few brownish, purple, musky-scented grapes, 3/4 in. across. Ripe, August-September. Preferred Habitat - Sunny thickets, loamy or gravelly soil. Flowering Season - June. Distribution - New England to Georgia, west to Minnesota and Tennessee.
Aesop's fox may never have touched the grapes of fable, but this, our wild species, certainly retains a strong foxy odor, which at least suggests that he came very near them. Tough pulp and thick skin by no means deter birds and beasts from feasting on this fruit, and so dispersing the seeds; but mankind prefers the tender, delightful flavored Isabella, Catawba, and Concord grapes derived from it. The Massachusetts man who produced the Concord variety in the town whose name he gave it, declares he would be a millionaire had he received only a penny royalty on every Concord grapevine planted.
What fragrance is more delicious than that of the blossoming grape? To swing in a loop made by some strong old vine, when the air almost intoxicates one with its sweetness on a June evening, is many a country child's idea of perfect bliss. Not until about nine o'clock do the leaves "go to sleep" by becoming depressed in the center like saucers. This was the signal for bedtime that one child, at least, used to wait for. We have seen in the clematis how its sensitive leafstalks hook themselves over any support they rub against; but the grapevine has gone a step farther, and by discarding an occasional flower cluster and prolonging the flower stalk into a coiling, forking tendril it moors itself to the thicket. We know that all tendrils are either transformed leaves, as in the case of the pea vine, where each branch of its tendril represents a modified leaflet; or they are transformed flower stalks or other organs. Occasionally the tendril of a grapevine reveals its ancestry by bearing a blossom or a cluster of flowers, and sometimes even fruit, about midway on the coil, which attempts to fill all offices at once like Pooh Bah.
The phylloxera having destroyed many of the finest vineyards in Europe, it would seem that Americans have the best of chances to supply the world with high-class wines, for there is not a State in the Union where the vine will not flourish. Here its worst enemy is mildew, a parasitical fungus which attacks the leaves, revealing itself in yellowish-brown patches on the upper side, and thin, frosty patches underneath. Soon the leaves become sere, and then they fall. The microscope reveals a miniature forest of growth in each leaf, with the threadlike roots of the fungi searching about the leaf cells for food. To burn old leaves, and to blow sulphur over the vine while it is wet, are efficacious remedies. Bees and wasps which puncture grapes to feast on them, are the innocent means of destroying quantities.
Both the RIVERSIDE or SWEET-SCENTED GRAPE (V. vulpina; formerly V. cordifolia, var. riparia) - whose bluish-black, bloom-covered fruit begins to ripen in July; and the FROST, CHICKEN, POSSUM, or WINTER GRAPE (V. cordifolia), whose smaller, shining black berries are not at their best till after frost, grow along streams and preferably in rocky situations. The shining, light green, thin leaves of the sweet-scented species are sharply lobed, the three to seven lobes have acute teeth, and the tendrils are intermittent. The frost grape's leaves, which are commonly three or four inches wide, are deeply heart-shaped, entire (rarely slightly three-lobed), tapering to a long point and acutely toothed.
Another familiar member of the Grape family, the VIRGINIA CREEPER, FALSE GRAPE, AMERICAN or FIVE-LEAVED IVY, also erroneously called WOODBINE (Parthenocissus quinquefolia; formerly Ampelopsis quinquefolia) - is far more charming in its glorious autumnal foliage, when its small dark blue berries hang from red peduncles, than when its insignificant greenish flower clusters appear in July. The leaves, compounded of five leaflets, should sufficiently distinguish the harmless vine from the three-leaved poison ivy, sometimes confounded with it. From Manitoba and Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean, and even in Cuba, the Virginia creeper rambles over thickets, fences, and walls, ascends trees, festoons rocky woodlands, drapes our verandas, making its way with the help of modified flower stalks that are now branching tendrils, each branch bearing an adhesive disk at the end. "In the course of about two days after a tendril has arranged its branches so as to press upon any surface," says Darwin, "its curved tips swell, become bright red, and form on their undersides little disks or cushions with which they adhere firmly." It is supposed that these disks secrete a cement. At any rate, we know that they have a very tenacious hold, because often one contracting tendril, as elastic as a steel spring, supports, by means of these little disks, the entire weight of the branch it lifts up. Darwin concluded that a tendril with five disk-bearing branches, on which he experimented, would stand a strain of ten pounds, even after ten years' exposure to high winds and softening rains.
WHITE VIOLETS(Viola) Violet family
Three small-flowered, white, purple-veined, and almost beardless species which prefer to dwell in moist meadows, damp, mossy places, and along the borders of streams, are the LANCE-LEAVED VIOLET (V. lanceolata), the PRIMROSE-LEAVED VIOLET (V. prirnulaefolia), and the SWEET WHITE VIOLET (V. blanda), whose leaves show successive gradations from the narrow, tapering, smooth, long-petioled blades of the first to the oval form of the second and the almost circular, cordate leaf of the delicately fragrant, little white blanda, the dearest violet of all. Inasmuch as these are short-spurred species, requiring no effort for bees to drain their nectaries, no footholds in the form of beards on the side petals are provided for them. The purple veinings show the stupidest visitor the path to the sweets.
The sprightly CANADA VIOLET (V. Canadensis), widely distributed in woodlands, chiefly in hilly and mountainous regions, rears tall, leafy stems terminated by faintly fragrant white or pale lavender blossoms, purple-tinged without and purple veined, the side petals bearded, the long sepals tapering to sharp points. Here we see a violet in the process of changing from the white ancestral type to the purple color which Sir John Lubbock, among other scientists, considers the highest step in chromatic evolution. This species has heart-shaped, saw-edged leaves which taper acutely. From May even to July is its regular blooming season; but the delightful family eccentricity of flowering again in autumn appears to be a confirmed habit with the Canada violet.
ENCHANTER'S NIGHTSHADE(Circaea Lutetiana) Evening Primrose family
Flowers - Very small, white, slender pedicelled, in terminal and lateral racemes. Calyx 2-parted, hairy 2 petals, 2 alternate stamens. Stem: 1 to 2 ft. high, slender, branching, swollen at nodes. Leaves: Opposite, tapering to a point, distantly toothed, 2 to 4 in. long, slender petioled. Fruit: Pear-shaped, 2-celled, densely covered with stiff, hooked hairs. Preferred Habitat - Woods; shady roadsides. Flowering Season - June-August. Distribution - Nova Scotia to Georgia, westward to Nebraska. Europe and Asia.
Why Circe, the enchantress, skilled in the use of poisonous herbs, should have had her name applied to this innocent and insignificant looking little plant is not now obvious; neither is the title of nightshade any more appropriate.
Each tiny flower having a hairy calyx, that acts as a stockade against ants and other such crawling pilferers, we suspect there are abundant sweets secreted in the fleshy ring at the base of the styles for the benefit of the numerous flies seen hovering about. Among other visitors, watch the common housefly alighting on the knobby stigma, a most convenient landing place, where he leaves some pollen carried on his underside from other nightshade blossoms. In clasping the bases of the two pliable stamens, his only available supports as he sucks, he will surely get well dusted again, that he may fertilize the next blossom he flies to for refreshment. The nightshade's little pear-shaped seed vessels, armed with hooked bristles by which they steal a ride on any passing petticoat or trouser leg, reveal at a glance how this plant has contrived to travel around the globe.
A smaller, weaker species (Circaea alpina), found in cool, moist woods, chiefly north, has thin, shining leaves and soft, hooked hairs on its vagabond seeds. Less dependence seems to be placed on these ineffective hooks to help perpetuate the plant than on the tiny pink bulblets growing at the end of an exceedingly slender thread sent out by the parent roots.
AMERICAN SPIKENARD; INDIAN ROOT; SPIGNET(Aralia racemosa) Ginseng family
Flowers - Greenish white, small, 5-parted, mostly imperfect, in a drooping compound raceme of rounded clusters. Stem: 3 to 6 ft. high, branches spreading. Roots: Large, thick, fragrant. Leaves: Compounded of heart-shaped, sharply tapering, saw-edged leaflets from 2 to 5 in. long, often downy underneath. Lower leaves often enormous. Fruit: Dark reddish-brown berries. Preferred Habitat - Rich open woods, wayside thickets, light soil. Flowering Season - July-August. Distribution - New Brunswick to Georgia, west to the Mississippi.
A striking, decorative plant, once much sought after for its medicinal virtues - still another herb with which old women delight to dose their victims for any malady from a cold to a carbuncle. Quite a different plant, but a relative, is the one with hairy, spike-like shoots from its fragrant roots, from which the "very precious" ointment poured by Mary upon the Saviour's head was made. The nard, an Indian product from that plant, which is still found growing on the distant Himalayas, could then be imported into Palestine only by the rich.
The wild spikenard, or false Solomon's seal, has not the remotest connection with this tribe of plants. Inasmuch as some of the American spikenard's tiny flowers are staminate and some pistillate, while others again are perfect, they depend upon flies chiefly - but on some wasps and beetles, too - to transfer pollen and enable the fertile ones to set seed. How certain of the winter birds gormandize on the resinous, spicy little berries! A flock of juncos will strip the fruit from every spikenard in the neighborhood the first day it arrives from the North.
The WILD or FALSE SARSAPARILLA (A. nudicaulis), so common in woods, hillsides, and thickets, shelters its three spreading umbels of greenish-white flowers in May and June beneath a canopy formed by a large, solitary, compound leaf. The aromatic roots, which run horizontally sometimes three feet or more through the soil, send up a very short, smooth proper stem which lifts a tall leafstalk and a shorter, naked flower stalk. The single large leaf, of exquisite bronzy tints when young, is compounded of from three to five oval, toothed leaflets on each of its three divisions. The tiny five-parted flowers have their petals curved backward over the calyx to make their refreshments more accessible for the flies, on which they chiefly rely for aid in producing those close clusters of dark-purple berries on which migrating birds feast in early autumn. By these agents the plant has been distributed from Newfoundland to the Carolinas, westward from Manitoba to Missouri, which is not surprising when we remember that certain birds travel from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes in a single night. While the true sarsaparilla of medicine should come from a quite different herb that flourishes in Mexico and South America, this one furnishes a commercial substitute enormously used as a blood purifier and cooling summer drink. Burrowing rabbits delight to nibble the long, slender, fragrant roots.
The GINSENG (Panax quinquefolium; Aralia quinquefolia of Gray) found in rich woods from Quebec to Alabama, and westward to Nebraska - that is, where found at all, for much hunting has all but exterminated it in many regions - bears a solitary umbel of small yellowish-green, five-parted, polygamous flowers in July and August at the end of a smooth stem about a foot high. Bright crimson berries follow the clusters on the female plants in early autumn. Three long-petioled leaves, which grow in a whorl at the top of the low stem, are palmately divided into five thin, ovate, pointed, and irregularly toothed leaflets. But it is the deep fusiform root, simple or branched, about which the Americanized Chinese, at least, are most concerned. For centuries Chinese physicians have ascribed miraculous virtues to the Manchurian ginseng. Not only can it remove fatigue and restore lost powers, but by its use veterans became frisky youths again according to these wise men of the East. In short, they consider it the panacea for all ills (Panax: pan = all, akos = remedy) - the source of immortality. Naturally the roots were and are in great demand, especially such as branch so as to resemble the human form. (Both the Chinese name Schin-sen, and Garan-toguen, the Indian one, are said to mean like a man. Here is an interesting clue for the ethnologists to follow !) Imperial edict prohibited the Chinese from digging up their native plant lest it be exterminated. So Jesuit missionaries, who discovered our similar ginseng, were not slow in exporting it to China when it was literally worth its weight in gold. Indeed, it is always sold by weight - a fact on which the heathen Chinee "with ways that are dark and tricks that are vain" not infrequently relies. Chinamen, who gather large quantities in our Western States to sell to the wholesale druggists for export, sometimes drill holes into the largest roots, pour in melted lead, and plug up the drills so ingeniously that druggists refuse to pay for a Chinaman's diggings until they have handled and weighed each root separately.
The DWARF GINSENG, OR GROUND NUT (P. trifolium; Aralia trifolia of Gray) whose little white flowers are clustered in feathery, fluffy balls above the whorl of three compound leaves in April and May, chooses low thickets and moist woods for its habitat - often in the same neighborhood with its larger relative. Yellowish berries follow the fragrant white pompons. One must burrow deep, like the rabbits, to find its round, pungent, sweet, nut-like root, measuring about half an inch across, which few have ever seen.
WILD CARROT; QUEEN ANNE'S LACE; BIRD'S-NEST(Daucus Carota) Carrot family
Flowers - Small, of unequal sizes (polygamous), white, rarely pinkish gray, 5-parted, in a compound, flat, circular umbel, the central floret often dark crimson; the umbels very concave in fruit. An involucre of narrow, pinnately cut bracts. Stem: 1 to 3 ft. high, with stiff hairs; from a deep, fleshy, conic root. Leaves: Cut into fine, fringy divisions; upper ones smaller and less dissected. Preferred Habitat - Wastelands, fields, roadsides. Flowering Season - June-September. Distribution - Eastern half of United States and Canada. Europe and Asia.
A pest to farmers, a joy to the flower lover, and a welcome signal for refreshment to hosts of flies, beetles, bees, and wasps, especially to the paper-nest builders, the sprangly wild carrot lifts its fringy foliage and exquisite lacy, blossoms above the dry soil of three continents. From Europe it has come to spread its delicate wheels over our summer landscape, until whole fields are whitened by them east of the Mississippi. Having proved fittest in the struggle for survival in the fiercer competition of plants in the over-cultivated Old World, it takes its course of empire westward year by year, Finding most favorable conditions for colonizing in our vast, uncultivated area; and the less aggressive, native occupants of our soil are only too readily crowded out. Would that the advocates of unrestricted immigration of foreign peasants studied the parallel examples among floral invaders!
What is the secret of the wild carrots' triumphal march? As usual, it is to be sought chiefly in the flower's scheme to attract and utilize visitors. Nectar being secreted in open disks near to one another, the shortest-tongued insects can lick it up from the Umbelliferae with even less loss of time than from the tubular florets of the Cornpositae. Over sixty distinct species of insects may be taken on the wild carrot by any amateur, since it blooms while insect life is at its height but, as might be expected, the long-tongued and color-loving, specialized bees and butterflies do not often waste time on florets so easily drained by the mob. Ants find the stiff hairs on the stem disagreeable obstacles to pilfering; but no visitors seem to object to the flowers' suffocating odor.
One of these lacy, white umbels must be examined under a lens before its delicate structure and perfection of detail can be appreciated. Naturally a visitor is attracted first by the largest, most showy florets situated around the outer edge of the wheel, on which he leaves pollen, brought from another umbel; and any vitalizing dust remaining on his under side may be left on the less conspicuous hermaphrodite blossoms as he makes his way toward the center, where the tiny, pollen-bearing florets are grouped. From the latter, as he flies away, he will carry fresh pollen to the outer row of florets on another umbel, and so on - at least this is the usual and highly advantageous method. After general fertilization, the slender flower-stalks curl inward, and the umbel forms a hollow nest that gradually contracts as it dries, almost, if not quite, closing at the top, albeit the fiction that bees and spiders make their home in the seeding umbels circulates freely.
Still another fiction is that the cultivated carrot, introduced to England by the Dutch in Queen Elizabeth's reign, was derived from this wild species. Miller, the celebrated English botanist and gardener, among many others, has disproved this statement by utterly failing again and again to produce an edible vegetable from this wild root. When cultivation of the garden carrot lapses for a few generations, it reverts to the ancestral type -a species quite distinct from Daucus Carota.
SMOOTHER SWEET CICELY(Washingtonia longistylis; Osmorrhiza longistylis of Gray)Carrot family
Flowers - Small, white, 5-parted; in few rayed, long-peduncled umbels, with small bracts below them. Stem: 1 1/2 to 3 ft. high, branching, from thick, fleshy, fragrant, edible roots. Leaves: Lower ones often very large, long-petioled, thrice-compound, and again divided, the leaflets ovate, pointed, deeply toothed, slightly downy; upper leaves less compound, nearly sessile. Preferred Habitat - Rich, moist woods and thickets. Flowering Season - May-June. Distribution - Nova Scotia to the Carolinas, westward to Dakota.
Graceful in gesture, with delicate, fernlike leaves and anise-scented roots that children, like rabbits, delight to nibble, the sweet cicely attracts attention by its fragrance, however insignificant its flowers. In wooded places, such as it prefers to dwell in, white blossoms, which are far more noticeable in a dim light than colored ones, and finely cut leaves that can best withstand the drip from trees, abound. These white umbels bear a large proportion of male, or pollen-bearing, florets to the number of hermaphrodite, or two-sexed, florets; but as the latter mature their pollen before their stigmas become susceptible to it, self-fertilization is well guarded against, and cross-fertilization is effected with the help of as many flies as small bees, which come in numbers to lick up the nectar so freely exposed in consideration of their short tongues. We have to thank these little creatures for the long, slender seeds, armed with short bristles along the ribs, that they may snatch rides on our garments, together with the beggar-ticks, burdock, cleavers, and other vagabond colonists in search of unoccupied ground. Be sure you know the difference between sweet cicely and the poisonous water hemlock before tasting the former's spicy root.
Was there no more important genus - containing, if possible, red, white, and blue flowers - to have named in honor of the Father of his Country?
Another member of the Carrot family, the SANICLE or BLACK SNAKEROOT (Sanicula Marylandica), found blooming from May to July in such rich, moist woodlands and shrubbery as the sweet cicely prefers, lifts spreading, two to four rayed umbels of insignificant-looking but interesting little greenish-white florets. At first the tips of the five petals are tucked into the center of each little flower; underneath them the stamens are now imprisoned while any danger of self-fertilizing the stigma remains. The few hermaphrodite florets have their styles protruding from the start, and incoming insects leave pollen brought from staminate florets on the early-maturing stigmas. After cross-fertilization has been effected, it is the pistil's turn to keep out of the way, and give the imprisoned stamens a chance: the styles curve until the stigmas are pressed against the sides of the ovary, that not a grain of pollen may touch them; the petals spread and release the stamens; but so great is the flower's zeal not to be fertilized with its own pollen that it sometimes holds the anthers tightly between the petals until all the vitalizing dust has been shed! Around the hermaphrodite florets are a large number of male florets in each hemispheric cluster. Hooked bristles and slender, curved styles protrude from the little burr-like seeds, that any creature passing by may give them a lift to fresh colonizing land! The firm bluish-green leaves, palmately divided into from five to seven oblong, irregularly saw-edged segments, the upper leaves seated on the stem, the lower ones long-petioled, help us to identify this common weed.
With splendid, vigorous gesture the COW-PARSNIP (Heracleum lanatum) rears itself from four to eight feet above moist, rich soil from ocean to ocean in circumpolar regions as in temperate climes. A perfect Hercules for coarseness and strength does it appear when contrasted with some of the dainty members of the carrot tribe. In June and July, when a myriad of winged creatures are flying, large, compound, many-rayed umbels of both hermaphrodite and male white flowers are spread to attract their benefactors the flies, of which twenty-one species visit them regularly, besides small bees, wasps, and other short-tongued insects, which have no difficulty in licking up the freely exposed nectar. The anthers, maturing first, compel cross-fertilization which accounts for the plant's vigor and its aggressive march across the continent. A very stout, ridged, hairy stem, the petioled leaves compounded of three broadly ovate, lobed and saw-edged divisions, downy on the underside, and the great umbels, which sometimes measure a foot across, all bear out the general impression of a Hercules of the fields.
FOOL'S PARSLEY, or CICELY, or DOG-POISON (Aethusa cynapium), a European immigrant found in waste ground and rubbish heaps from Nova Scotia to New Jersey and westward to the Mississippi, should be known only to be avoided. The dark bluish-green, finely divided, rather glossy leaves when bruised do not give out the familiar fragrance of true parsley; the little narrow bracts, turned downward around each separate flower-cluster, give it a bearded appearance, otherwise the white umbel suggests a small wild carrot head of bloom. Cows have died from eating this innocent-looking little plant among the herbage; but most creatures know by instinct that it must not be touched.
Strange that a family which furnishes the carrot, parsnip, parsley, fennel, caraway, coriander, and celery to mankind, should contain many members with deadly properties. Fortunately the large, coarse WATER HEMLOCK, SPOTTED COWBANE, MUSQUASH ROOT, or BEAVER-POISON (Cicuta maculata) has been branded as a murderer. Purple streaks along its erect branching stem correspond to the marks on Cain's brow. Above swamps and low ground it towers. Twice or thrice pinnate leaves, the lower ones long-stalked and often enormous, the leaflets' conspicuous veins apparently ending in the notches of the coarse, sharp teeth, help to distinguish it from its innocent relations sometimes confounded with it. Its several tuberiform fleshy roots contain an especially deadly poison; nevertheless, some highly intelligent animals, beavers, rabbits, and the omnivorous small boy among others have mistaken it for sweet-cicely with fatal results. Indeed, the potion drunk by Socrates and other philosophers and criminals at Athens, is thought to have been a decoction made from the roots of this very hemlock. Many little white flowers in each cluster make up a large umbel; and many umbels to a plant attract great numbers of flies, small bees, and wasps, which sip the freely exposed nectar apparently with only the happiest consequences, as they transfer pollen from the male to the proterandrous hermaphrodite flowers. Just as the cow-parsnip shows a preponderance of flies among its visitors, so the water hemlock seems to attract far more bees and wasps than any of the umbel-bearing carrot tribe. It blooms from the end of June through August.
Still another poisonous species is the HEMLOCK WATER-PARSNIP (Sium cicutaefolium), found in swampy places throughout Canada and the United States from ocean to ocean. The compound, long-rayed umbels of small white flowers, fringy-bracted below, which measure two or three inches across; the extremely variable pinnate leaves, which may be divided into from three to six pairs of narrow and sharply toothed leaflets (or perhaps the lower long-stalked ones as finely dissected as a wild carrot leaf where they grow in water), and the stout, grooved, branching stem, from two to six feet tall, are its distinguishing characteristics. In these umbels it will be noticed there are far more hermaphrodite, or two-sexed, florets (maturing their anthers first), than there are male ones; consequently quantities of unwelcome seed are set with the help of small bees, wasps, and flies, which receive generous entertainment from July to October.
The MOCK BISHOP'S-WEED (Ptilimnium capillaceum), a slender, delicate, dainty weed found chiefly in saltwater meadows from Massachusetts to Florida and around the Gulf coast to Texas, has very finely dissected, fringy leaves and compound umbels two to four inches across, of tiny white florets, with threadlike bracts below. It blooms throughout the summer.
FLOWERING DOGWOOD(Cornus florida) Dogwood family
Flowers - (Apparently) large, white or pinkish, the four conspicuous parts simulating petals, notched at the top, being really bracts of an involucre below the true flowers, clustered, in the center, which are very small, greenish yellow, 4-parted, perfect. Stem: A large shrub or small tree, wood hard, bark rough. Leaves: Opposite, oval, entire-edged, petioled, paler underneath. Fruit: Clusters of egg-shaped scarlet berries, tipped with the persistent calyx. Preferred Habitat - Woodlands rocky thickets, wooded roadsides. Flowering Season - April-June. Distribution - Maine to Florida, west to Ontario and Texas.
Has Nature's garden a more decorative ornament than the flowering dogwood, whose spreading flattened branches whiten the woodland borders in May as if an untimely snowstorm had come down upon them, and in autumn paint the landscape with glorious crimson, scarlet, and gold, dulled by comparison only with the clusters of vivid red berries among the foliage? Little wonder that nurserymen sell enormous numbers of these small trees to be planted on lawns. The horrors of pompous monuments, urns, busts, shafts, angels, lambs, and long-drawn-out eulogies in stone in many a cemetery are mercifully concealed in part by these boughs, laden with blossoms of heavenly purity.
"Let dead names be eternized in dead stone,But living names by living shafts be known.Plant thou a tree whose leaves shall singThy deeds and thee each fresh, recurrent spring."
Fit symbol of immortality! Even before the dogwood's leaves fall in autumn, the round buds for next year's bloom appear on the twigs, to remain in consoling evidence all winter with the scarlet fruit. When the buds begin to swell in spring, the four reddish-purple, scale-like bracts expand, revealing a dozen or more tiny green flowers clustered within for the large, white, petal-like parts, with notched, tinted, and puckered lips, into which these reddish bracts speedily develop, and which some of us have mistaken for a corolla, are not petals at all - not the true flowers - merely appendages around the real ones, placed there, like showy advertisements, to attract customers. Nectar, secreted in a disk on each minute ovary, is eagerly sought by little Andrena and other bees, besides flies and butterflies. Insects crawling about these clusters, whose florets are all of one kind, get their heads and undersides dusted with pollen, which they transfer as they suck. Hungry winter birds, which bolt the red fruit only when they can get no choicer fare, distribute the smooth, indigestible stones far and wide.
When the Massachusetts farmers think they hear the first brown thrasher in April advising them to plant their Indian corn, reassuringly calling, "Drop it, drop it - cover it up, cover it up - pull it up, pull it up, pull it up" (Thoreau), they look to the dogwood flowers to confirm the thrasher's advice before taking it.
The LOW or DWARF CORNEL, or BUNCHBERRY (C. canadensus) whose scaly stem does its best to attain a height of nine inches, bears a whorl of from four to six oval, pointed, smooth leaves at the summit. From the midst of this whorl comes a cluster of minute greenish florets, encircled by four to six large, showy, white petal-like bracts, quite like a small edition of the flowering dogwood blossom. Tight clusters of round berries, that are lifted upward on a gradually lengthened peduncle after the flowers fade (May-July), brighten with vivid touches of scarlet shadowy, mossy places in cool, rich woods, where the dwarf cornels, with the partridge vine, twin flower, gold thread, and fern, form the most charming of carpets.
Other common dogwoods there are - shrubs from three to ten feet in height - which bear flat clusters of small white flowers without the showy petal-like bracts, imitating a corolla, as in the two preceding species, but each little four-parted blossom attracting its miscellaneous crowd of benefactors by association with dozens of its counterparts in a showy cyme. Because these flowers expand farther than the minute florets of the dwarf cornel or the flowering dogwood, and the sweets are therefore more accessible, all the insects which fertilize them come to the shrub dogwoods too, and in addition very many beetles, to which their odor seems especially attractive. ("Odore carabico o scarabeo" - Delpino.) The ROUND-LEAVED CORNEL or DOGWOOD [now ROUNDLEAF DOGWOOD] (C. circinata), found on shady hillsides, in open woodlands, and roadside thickets - especially in rocky districts - from Nova Scotia to Virginia, and westward to Iowa, may be known by its greenish, warty twigs; its broadly ovate, or round petioled, opposite leaves, short-tapering to a point, and downy beneath; and, in May and June, by its small, flat, white flower-clusters about two inches across, that are followed by light-blue (not edible) berries.
Even more abundant is the SILKY CORNEL, KINNIKINNICK, or SWAMP DOGWOOD [now SILKY DOGWOOD] (C. amonum; C. sericca of Gray) found in low, wet ground, and beside streams, from Nebraska to the Atlantic Ocean, south to Florida and north to New Brunswick. Its dull-reddish twigs, oval or oblong leaves, rounded at the base but tapering to a point at the apex, and usually silky-downy with fine, brownish hairs underneath (to prevent the pores from clogging with vapors arising from its damp habitat); its rather compact, flat clusters of white flowers from May to July, and its bluish berries are its distinguishing features. The Indians loved to smoke its bark for its alleged tonic effect.
The RED-OSIER CORNEL or DOGWOOD (C. stolonifera), which has spread, with the help of running shoots, through the soft soil of its moist retreats, over the British Possessions north of us and throughout the United States from ocean to ocean, except at the extreme south, may be known by its bright purplish-red twigs; its opposite, slender, petioled leaves, rather abruptly pointed at the apex, roughish on both sides, but white or nearly so beneath; its small, flat-topped white flower-clusters in June or July; and finally, by its white or lead-colored fruit.
In good, rich, moist soil another white-fruited species, the PANICLED CORNEL or DOGWOOD (C. candidissima; C. paniculata of Gray) rears its much-branched, smooth, gray stems. In May or June the shrub is beautiful with numerous convex, loose clusters of white flowers at the ends of the twigs. So far do the stamens diverge from the pistil that self-pollination is not likely; but an especially large number of the less specialized insects, seeking the freely exposed nectar, do all the necessary work as they crawl about and fly from shrub to shrub. This species bears comparatively long and narrow leaves, pale underneath. Its range is from Maine to the Carolinas and westward to Nebraska.
WHITE ALDER; SWEET PEPPERBUSH; ALDER-LEAVED CLETHRA(Clethra alnifolia) White Alder family
Flowers - Very fragrant, white, about 1/3 in. across, borne in long, narrow, upright, clustered spikes, with awl-shaped bracts. Calyx of 5 sepals; 5 longer petals; 10 protruding stamens, the style longest. Stem: A much-branched shrub, 3 to 10 ft. high. Leaves: Alternate, oblong or ovate, finely saw-edged above the middle at least, green on both sides, tapering at base into short petioles. Preferred Habitat - Low, wet woodland and roadside thickets; swamps; beside slow streams; meadows. Flowering Season - July-August. Distribution - Chiefly near the coast, in States bordering the Atlantic Ocean.
Like many another neglected native plant, the beautiful sweet pepperbush improves under cultivation; and when the departed lilacs, syringa, snowball, and blossoming almond, found with almost monotonous frequency in every American garden, leave a blank in the shrubbery at midsummer, these fleecy white spikes should exhale their spicy breath about our homes. But wild flowers, like a prophet, may remain long without honor in their own country. This and a similar but more hairy species found in the Alleghany region, the MOUNTAIN SWEET PEPPERBUSH (C. acuminata), with pointed leaves, pale beneath, and spreading or drooping flower-spikes, go abroad to be appreciated. Planted beside lakes and streams on noblemen's estates, how overpowering must their fragrance be in the heavy, moisture-laden air of England! Even in our drier atmosphere, it hangs about the thickets like incense.
ROUND-LEAVED PYROLA; PEAR-LEAVED, or FALSE WINTERGREEN; INDIAN orCANKER LETTUCE(Pyrola rolundifolia) Wintergreen family
Flowers - Very fragrant, white, in a spike; 6 to 20, nodding from an erect, bracted scape 6 to 20 in. high. Calyx 5-parted corolla, over 1/2 in. across, of 5 concave, obtuse petals 10 stamens, protruding pistil, style curved, stigma 5-lobed. Leaves: All spreading from the base by margined petioles; shining leathery green, round or broadly oval, obtuse, 1 1/2 to 3 in. long, persistent through the winter. Preferred Habitat - Open woods. Flowering Season - June-July. Distribution - Nova Scotia to Georgia, west to Ohio and Minnesota.
Deliciously fragrant little flowers, nodding from an erect, slender stalk, when seen at a distance are often mistaken for lilies-of-the-valley growing wild. But closer inspection of the rounded, pearlike leaves in a cluster from the running root, and the concave, not bell-shaped, white, waxen blossoms, with the pistil protruding and curved, indicate the commonest of the pyrolas. Some of its kin dwell in bogs and wet places, but this plant and the shin-leaf carpet drier woodland where dwarf cornels, partridge vines, pipsissewa, and goldthread weave their charming patterns too. Certain of the lovely pyrola clan, whose blossoms range from greenish white, flesh-color, and pink to deep purplish rose, have so many features in common they were once counted mere varieties of this round-leaved wintergreen - an easygoing classification broken up by later-day systematists, who now rank the varieties as distinct species. It will be noticed that all these flowers have their anthers erect in the bud but reversed at flowering time, each of the two sacs opening by a pore which, in reality, is at the base of the sac, though by reversion it appears to be at the top. To these pores small bees and flies fasten their short lips to feed on pollen, some of which will be necessarily .jarred out on them as they struggle for a foothold on the stamens, and will be carried by them to another flower's protruding stigma, which impedes their entrance purposely to receive the imported pollen.
By reason of the old custom of clapping on a so-called "shinplaster" to every bruise, regardless of its location on the human body, a lovely little plant, whose leaves were once counted a first aid to the injured, still suffers instead under an unlovely name. The SHIN-LEAF (P. elliptica) sends up a naked flower-stalk, scaly at the base, often with a bract midway, and bearing at the top from seven to fifteen very fragrant, nodding, waxen, greenish-white blossoms, similar to the round-leaved wintergreen's. But on the thinner, dull, dark-green, upright leaves, with slight wavy indentations, scarcely to be called teeth, on the margins, their shorter leaf-stalks often reddish, one chiefly depends to name this common plant. It is usually found, in company with a few or many of its fellows, in rich woodlands so far west as the Rocky Mountains, blooming from June to August, according to the climate of its wide range.
When the little SERRATED or ONE-SIDED WINTERGREEN (P. secunda) first sends up its slender raceme in June or July, it is erect but presently the small, greenish-white flowers, opening irregularly along one side, appear to weigh it downward into a curve. Usually several bracted scapes rise from a running, branched rootstock, to a height of from three to (rarely) ten inches above a cluster of basal evergreen leaves. These latter are rather thin, oval, slightly pointed, wavy or slightly saw-edged, the midrib prominent above and below. A peculiarity of the flowers is, that their petals are partially welded together into little bells, with the clapper (alias the straight green pistil) protruding, and the stamens united around its base. After the blossoms have been fertilized, the tiny, round, five-scalloped seed capsules, with the pistil still protruding, remain in evidence for months, as is usual in the pyrola clan. Small as the plant is, it has managed to distribute itself over Europe, Asia, and the woods and thickets of our own land from Labrador to Alaska, southward to California, Mexico, and the District of Columbia.
Another little globe-trotter, so insignificant in size that one is apt to overlook it until its surprisingly large blossom appears in June or July, is the ONE-FLOWERED WINTERGREEN (Moneses uniflora), found in cool northern woods, especially about the roots of pines, in such yielding soil as will enable its long stem to run just below the surface. ONE-FLOWERED PYROLA, it is often called, although it belongs to a genus all its own. A boldly curved stalk, like a miniature Bo-peep crook, enables the solitary white or pink widely open flower to droop from the tip, thus protecting its precious contents from rain, and from crawling pilferers, to whom a pendent blossom is as inaccessible as a hanging bird's nest is to snakes. This five-petalled waxen flower, half an inch across or over, with its ten white, yellow-tipped stamens, and green, club-shaped pistil projecting from a conspicuous round ovary, never nods more than six inches above the ground, often at only half that height. When there is no longer need for the stalk to crook, that is to say, after the flower has begun to fruit, it gradually straightens itself out so that the little seed capsule, with the style and its five-lobed stigma still persistent, is held erect. The thin, rounded, finely notched leaves, measuring barely an inch in length, are clustered in whorls next the ground. Whether one comes upon colonies of this gregarious little plant, or upon a lonely straggler, the "single delight" (moneses), as Dr. Gray called the solitary flower, is one of the joys of a tramp through the summer woods.
INDIAN PIPE; ICE-PLANT; GHOST-FLOWER; CORPSE-PLANT(Monotropa uniflora) Indian-pipe family
Flowers - Solitary, smooth, waxy, white (rarely pink), oblong-bell shaped, nodding from the tip of a fleshy, white, scaly scape 4 to 10 in. tall. Calyx of 2 to 4 early-falling white sepals; 4 or 5 oblong, scale-like petals; 8 or 10 tawny, hairy stamens; a 5-celled, egg-shaped ovary, narrowed into the short, thick style. Leaves: None. Roots: A mass of brittle fibers, from which usually a cluster of several white scapes arises. Fruit: A 5-valved, many-seeded, erect capsule. Preferred Habitat - Heavily shaded, moist, rich woods, especially under oak and pine trees. Flowering Season - June-August. Distribution - Almost throughout temperate North America.
Colorless in every part, waxy, cold, and clammy, Indian pipes rise like a company of wraiths in the dim forest that suits them well. Ghoulish parasites, uncanny saprophytes, for their matted roots prey either on the juices of living plants or on the decaying matter of dead ones, how weirdly beautiful and decorative, they are! The strange plant grows also in Japan, and one can readily imagine how fascinated the native artists must be by its chaste charms.
Yet to one who can read the faces of flowers, as it were, it stands a branded sinner. Doubtless its ancestors were industrious, honest creatures, seeking their food in the soil, and digesting it with the help of leaves filled with good green matter (chlorophyll) on which virtuous vegetable life depends; but some ancestral knave elected to live by piracy, to drain the already digested food of its neighbors; so the Indian pipe gradually lost the use of parts for which it had need no longer, until we find it today without color and its leaves degenerated into mere scaly bracts. Nature has manifold ways of illustrating the parable of the ten pieces of money. Spiritual law is natural law: "From him that hath not, even that he hath shall be taken away." Among plants as among souls, there are all degrees of backsliders. The foxglove, which is guilty of only sly, petty larceny, wears not the equivalent of the striped suit and the shaved head; nor does the mistletoe, which steals crude food from the tree, but still digests it itself, and is therefore only a dingy yellowish green. Such plants, however, as the broomrape, pinesap, beechdrops, the Indian pipe, and the dodder - which marks the lowest stage of degradation of them all - appear among their race branded with the mark of crime as surely as was Cain.
No wonder this degenerate hangs its head; no wonder it grows black with shame on being picked, as if its wickedness were only just then discovered! To think that a plant related on one side to many of the loveliest flowers in Nature's garden- - the azaleas, laurels, rhododendrons, and the bonny heather - and on the other side to the modest but no less charming wintergreen tribe, should have fallen from grace to such a depth! Its scientific name, meaning a flower once turned, describes it during only a part of its career. When the minute, innumerable seeds begin to form, it proudly raises its head erect, as if conscious that it had performed the one righteous act of its life.
LABRADOR TEA(Ledum Groenlandicum; L. latifolium of Gray) Heath family
Flowers - White, 5-parted, 1/2 in. across or less, numerous, borne in terminal, umbellate clusters rising from scaly, sticky bud-bracts. Stem: A compact shrub 1 to 4 ft. high, resinous, the twigs woolly-hairy. Leaves: Alternate, thick, evergreen, oblong, obtuse, small, dull above, rusty-woolly beneath, the margins curled. Preferred Habitat - Swamps, bogs, wet mountain woods. Flowering Season - May-June. Distribution - Greenland to Pennsylvania, west to Wisconsin.
Whoever has used the homeopathic lotion distilled from the leaves of Ledum palustre, a similar species found at the far North, knows the tea-like fragrance given forth by the leaves of this common shrub when crushed in a warm hand. But because the homeopathists claim that like is cured by like, are we to assume that these little bushes, both of which afford a soothing lotion, also irritate and poison? It may be; for they are next of kin to the azaleas, laurels, and rhododendrons, known to be injurious since Xenophon's day. At the end of May, when the Labrador tea is white with abundant flower clusters, one cannot but wonder why so desirable an acquisition is never seen in men's gardens here among its relatives. Over a hundred years ago the dense, compact little shrub was taken to England to adorn sunny bog gardens on fine estates. Doubtless the leaves have woolly mats underneath for the reason given in reference to the Steeple-bush.