If bees are the preferred visitors of the turtle-head, why do we find the Baltimore butterfly, that very beautiful, but freaky, creature (Melitaea phaeton) hovering near? - that is, when we find it at all; for where it is present, it swarms, and keeps away from other localities altogether. On the under side of the leaves we shall often see patches of its crimson eggs. Later the caterpillars use the plant as their main, if not exclusive, food store. They are the innocent culprits which nine times out of ten mutilate the foliage.
LARGE PURPLE GERARDIA(Gerardia purpurea) Figwort family
Flowers - Bright purplish pink, deep magenta, or pale to whitish, about 1 in. long and broad, growing along the rigid, spreading branches. Calyx 5-toothed; corolla funnel-form, the tube much inflated above and spreading into 5 unequal, rounded lobes, spotted within, or sometimes downy; 4 stamens in pairs, the filaments hairy; 1 pistil. Stem: 1 to 2 1/2 ft. high, slender, branches erect or spreading. Leaves: Opposite, very narrow, 1 to 1 1/2 in. long. Preferred Habitat - Low fields and meadows; moist, sandy soil. Flowering Season - August-October. Distribution - Northern United States to Florida, chiefly along Atlantic coast.
Low-lying meadows gay with gerardias were never seen by that quaint old botanist and surgeon, John Gerarde, author of the famous "Herball or General Historie of Plants," a folio of nearly fourteen hundred pages, published in London toward the close of Queen Elizabeth's reign. He died without knowing how much he was to be honored by Linnaeus in giving his name to this charming American genus.
Large patches of the lavender-pink gerardia, peeping above the grass, make the wayfarer pause to feast his eyes, while the practical bee, meanwhile, takes a more substantial meal within the spreading funnels. It is his practice to hang upside down while sucking, using the hairs on the filaments as footholds. Naturally he receives the pollen on his underside - just where it will be rubbed off against the stigma impeding his entrance to the next funnel visited. Any of the very dry pollen that may have fallen on the hairy filaments drops upon him.
"And 'tis my faith that every flowerEnjoys the air it breathes,"
chanted Wordsworth. It is a special pity to gather the gerardias, which, as they grow, seem to enjoy life to the full, and when picked, to be so miserable they turn black as they dry. Like their relatives the foxgloves, they are difficult to transplant, because it is said they are more or less parasitic, fastening their roots on those of other plants. When robbery becomes flagrant, Nature brands sinners in the vegetable kingdom by taking away their color, and perhaps their leaves, as in the case of the broom-rape and Indian pipe; but the fair faces of the gerardias and foxgloves give no hint of the petty thefts committed under cover of darkness in the soil below.
The SMALL-FLOWERED GERARDIA (G. Paupercula) so like the preceding species it was once thought to be a mere variety, ranges westward as far as Wisconsin, especially about the Great Lakes. But it is a lower plant, with more erect branches, smaller flowers, quite woolly within, and with a decided preference for bogs as well as low meadows.
In salt marshes along the Atlantic Coast and the Gulf of Mexico, from Maine to Louisiana, the SEA-SIDE GERARDIA (G. maritima) flowers in midsummer, or a few weeks ahead of the autumnal, upland species. The plant, which rarely exceeds a foot in height, is sometimes only four inches above ground; and although at the North the paler magenta blossoms are only about half the length of the purple gerardias, in the South they are sometimes quite as long.
In dry woods and thickets, on banks and hills from Quebec to Georgia, and westward to the Mississippi we find the SLENDER GERARDIA (G. tenuifolia), its pale magenta, spotted, compressed corolla about half an inch long; its very slender, low stem set with exceedingly narrow leaves.
TWIN-FLOWER; GROUND VINE(Linnaea borealis) Honeysuckle family
Flowers - Delicate pink or white tinged with rose, bell-shaped, about 1/2 in. long, fragrant, nodding in pairs on slender, curved pedicels from an erect peduncle, 2-bracted where they join. Calyx 5-toothed, sticky; corolla 5-lobed, bell-shaped, hairy within; 4 stamens in pairs inserted near base of tube; 1 pistil. Stem: Trailing, 6 in. to 2 ft. long; the branches erect. Leaves: Opposite, rounded, petioled, evergreen. Preferred Habitat - Deep, cool, mossy woods. Flowering Season - May-July. Distribution - Northern parts of America, Europe, and Asia. In the United States southward as far as the mountains of Maryland, and the Sierra Nevadas in California.
With the consent of modest Linnaeus himself, Dr. Gronovius selected this typical woodland blossom to transmit the great master's flame to posterity -
"Monument of the man of flowers."
But small and shy as it is, does Nature's garden contain a lovelier sight than scores of these deliciously fragrant pink bells swaying above a carpet of the little evergreen leaves in the dim aisle of some deep, cool, lonely forest? Trailing over prostrate logs and mossy rocks, racing with the partridge vine among the ferns and dwarf cornels, the plant sends up "twin-born heads" that seem more fair and sweet than the most showy pampered darlings of the millionaire's conservatory. Little wonder that Linnaeus loved these little twin sisters, or that Emerson enshrined them in his verse.
Contrary to popular impression, this vine, that suggests the dim old forest and exhales the very breath of the spring woods, will consent to run about our rock gardens, although it seems almost a sacrilege to move it from natural surroundings so impressively beautiful. Unlike the arbutus, which remains ever a wildling, pining slowly to death on close contact with civilization, the twin-flower thrives in light, moist garden soil where the sun peeps for a little while only in the morning. By nodding its head the flower protects its precious contents from rain, the hairs inside exclude small pilferers; but bees, attracted by the fragrance and color, are guided to the nectary by five dark lines and a patch of orange color near it.
JOE-PYE WEED; TRUMPET WEED; PURPLE THOROUGHWORT; GRAVEL orKIDNEY-ROOT; TALL or PURPLE BONESET(Eupatorium purpureum) Thistle family
Flower-heads - Pale or dull magenta or lavender pink, slightly fragrant, of tubular florets only, very numerous, in large, terminal, loose, compound clusters, generally elongated. Several series of pink overlapping bracts form the oblong involucre from which the tubular floret and its protruding fringe of style-branches arise. Stem: 3 to 10 ft. high, green or purplish, leafy, usually branching toward top. Leaves: In whorls of 3 to 6 (usually 4), oval to lance-shaped, saw-edged, petioled, thin, rough. Preferred Habitat - Moist soil, meadows, woods, low ground. Flowering Season - August-September. Distribution - New Brunswick to the Gulf of Mexico, westward to Manitoba and Texas.
Towering above the surrounding vegetation of low-lying meadows, this vigorous composite spreads clusters of soft, fringy bloom that, however deep or pale of tint, are ever conspicuous advertisements, even when the goldenrods, sunflowers, and asters enter into close competition for insect trade. Slight fragrance, which to the delicate perception of butterflies is doubtless heavy enough, the florets' color and slender tubular form indicate an adaptation to them, and they are by far the most abundant visitors, which is not to say that long-tongued bees and flies never reach the nectar and transfer pollen, for they do. But an excellent place for the butterfly collector to carry his net is to a patch of Joe-Pye weed in September. As the spreading style-branches that fringe each tiny floret are furnished with hairs for three-quarters of their length, the pollen caught in them comes in contact with the alighting visitor. Later, the lower portion of the style-branches, that is covered with stigmatic papillae along the edge, emerges from the tube to receive pollen carried from younger flowers when the visitor sips his reward. If the hairs still contain pollen when the stigmatic part of the style is exposed, insects self-fertilize the flower; and if in stormy, weather no insects are flying, the flower is nevertheless able to fertilize itself, because the hairy fringe must often come in contact with the stigmas of neighboring florets. It is only when we study flowers with reference to their motives and methods that we understand why one is abundant and another rare. Composites long ago utilized many principles of success in life that the triumphant Anglo-Saxon carries into larger affairs today.
Joe-Pye, an Indian medicine-man of New England, earned fame and fortune by curing typhus fever and other horrors with decoctions made from this plant.
COMMON BURDOCK; COCKLE-BUR; BEGGARS BUTTONS; CLOT-BUR; CUCKOOBUTTON(Arctium minus; Lappa officinalis: var. minor of Gray) Thistlefamily
Flower-heads - Composite of tubular florets only, about 1/2 in. broad; magenta varying to purplish or white; the prominent round involucre of many overlapping leathery bracts, tipped with hooked bristles. Stem: 2 to 5 ft. high, simple or branching, coarse. Leaves: Large, the lower ones often 1 ft. long, broadly ovate, entire edged, pale or loosely cottony beneath, on hollow petioles. Preferred Habitat - Waste ground, waysides, fields, barnyards. Flowering Season - July-October. Distribution - Common throughout our area. Naturalized from Europe.
A larger burdock than this (A. Lappa) may be more common in a few localities of the East, but wherever one wanders, this plebeian boldly asserts itself. In close-cropped pastures it still flourishes with the well-armed thistles and mulleins, for the great leaves contain an exceedingly bitter, sour juice, distasteful to grazers. Nevertheless the unpaid cattle, like every other beast and man, must nolens volens transplant the burs far away from the parent plant to found new colonies. Literally by hook or by crook they steal a ride on every switching tail, every hairy dog and woolly sheep, every trouser-leg or petticoat. Even the children, who make dolls and baskets of burdock burs, aid them in their insatiate love of travel. Wherever man goes, they follow, until, having crossed Europe - with the Romans? - they are now at home throughout this continent. Their vitality is amazing; persecution with scythe and plow may retard, but never check their victorious march. Opportunity for a seed to germinate may not come until late in the summer; but at once the plant sets to work putting forth flowers and maturing seed, losing no time in developing superfluous stalk and branches. Butterflies, which, like the Hoboken Dutch, ever delight in magenta, and bees of various kinds, find these flowers, with a slight fragrance as an additional attraction, generous entertainers.
Pink, of all colors, is the most unstable in our flora, and the most likely to fade. Magentas incline to purple, on the one hand, or to pure pink on the other, and delicate shades quickly blanch when long exposed to the sun's rays. Thus we frequently find white blossoms of the once pink rhododendron, laurel, azalea, bouncing Bet, and turtle-head. Albinos, too, regularly occur in numerous species. Many colored flowers show a tendency among individuals to revert to the white type of their ancestors. The reader should bear these facts in mind, and search for his unidentified flower in the previous section or in the following one if this group does not contain it.
"The transition from wind-fertilization to insect-fertilization and the first traces of adaptation to insects, could only be due to the influence of quite short-lipped insects with feebly developed color sense. The most primitive flowers are therefore for the most part simple, widely open, regular, devoid of nectar or with their nectar unconcealed and easily accessible, and greenish, white, or yellow in color…. Lepidoptera, by the thinness, sometimes by the length, of their tongues, were able to produce special modifications. Through their agency were developed flowers with long and narrow tubes, whose colors and time of opening were in relation to the tastes and habits of their visitors." - Hermann Muller.
"Of all colors, white is the prevailing one; and of white flowers a considerably larger proportion smell sweetly than of any other color, namely, 14.6 per cent; of red only 8.2 per cent are odoriferous. The fact of a large proportion of white flowers smelling sweetly may depend in part on those which are fertilized by moths requiring the double aid of conspicuousness in the dusk and of odor. So great is the economy of Nature, that most flowers which are fertilized by crepuscular or nocturnal insects emit their odor chiefly or exclusively in the evening." - Charles Darwin.
WATER-PLANTAIN(Alisma Plantago-aquatica) Water-plantain family
Flowers - Very small and numerous, white, or pale pink, whorled in bracted clusters forming a large, loose panicle 6 to 15 in. long on a usually solitary scape 1/2 to 3 ft. high. Calyx of 3 sepals corolla of 3 deciduous petals; 6 or more stamens; many carpels in a ring on a small flat receptacle. Leaves: Erect or floating, oblong or ovate, with several ribs, or lance-shaped or grass-like, petioled, all from root. Perferred Habitat - Shallow water, mud, marshes. Flowering Season - June-September. Distribution - North America, Europe, Asia.
Unlike its far more showy, decorative cousin the arrow-head, this wee-blossomed plant, whose misty white panicles rise with compensating generosity the world around, bears only perfect, regular flowers. Twelve infinitesimal drops of nectar, secreted in a fleshy ring around the center, are eagerly sought by flies. As the anthers point obliquely outward and away from the stigmas, an incoming fly, bearing pollen on his under side, usually alights in the center, and leaves some of the vitalizing dust just where it is most needed. But a "fly starting from a petal," says Muller, "usually applies its tongue to the nectar-drops one by one, and after each it strokes an anther with its labellae; in so doing it may bring various parts of its body in contact with the anthers. As a rule, however, the parts which come in contact with the anthers are not those which come in contact with the stigmas in the same flower." Any plant that lives in shallow water, which may dry up as summer advances, is under special necessity to produce an extra quantity of cross-fertilized seed to guard against extinction during drought. For the same reason it bears several kinds of leaves adapted to its environment: broad ones that spread their surfaces to the sunshine, and long grass-like ones to glide through currents of water that would tear those of any other shape. What diversity of leaf-form and structure we meet daily, and yet how very little does the wisest man of science understand of the reasons underlying such marvellous adaptability!
BROAD-LEAVED ARROWHEAD (Sagittaria latifolia; S. variabilis of Gray) Water-plantain family
Flowers - White, 1 to 1 1/2 in. wide, in 3-bracted whorls of 3, borne near the summit of a leafless scape 4 in. to 4 ft. tall. Calyx of 3 sepals corolla of 3 rounded, spreading petals. Stamens and pistils numerous, the former yellow in upper flowers usually absent or imperfect in lower pistillate flowers. Leaves: Exceedingly variable; those under water usually long and grasslike; upper ones sharply arrow-shaped or blunt and broad, spongy or leathery, on long petioles. Preferred Habitat - Shallow water and mud. Flowering Season - July-September. Distribution - From Mexico northward throughout our area to the circumpolar regions.
Wading into shallow water or standing on some muddy shore, like a heron, this striking plant, so often found in that bird's haunts, is quite as decorative in a picture, and, happily, far more approachable in life. Indeed, one of the comforts of botany as compared with bird study is that we may get close enough to the flowers to observe their last detail, whereas the bird we have followed laboriously over hill and dale, through briers and swamps, darts away beyond the range of field-glasses with tantalizing swiftness.
While no single plant is yet thoroughly known to scientists, in spite of the years of study devoted by specialists to separate groups, no plant remains wholly meaningless. When Keppler discovered the majestic order of movement of the heavenly bodies, he exclaimed, "Oh God, I think Thy thoughts after Thee!" - the expression of a discipleship every reverent soul must be conscious of in penetrating, be it ever so little a way, into the inner meaning of the humblest wayside weed.
Fragile, delicate, pure white, golden-centered flowers of the arrowhead, usually clustered about the top of the scape, naturally are the first to attract the attention whether of man or insect. Below these, dull green, unattractive collections of pistils, which by courtesy only may be called flowers, also form little groups of three. Like the Quakers at meeting, the male and female arrowhead flowers are separated, often on distinct plants. Of course the insect visitors - bees and flies chiefly - alight on the showy staminate blossoms first, and transfer pollen from them to the dull pistillate ones later, as it was intended they should, to prevent self-fertilization. How endless are the devices of the flowers to guard against this evil and to compel insects to cross-pollinate them! The most minute detail of the mechanism involved, which the microscope reveals, only increases our interest and wonder.
Any plant which elects to grow in shallow water must be amphibious; it must be able to breathe beneath the surface as the fish do, and also be adapted to thrive without those parts that correspond to gills; for ponds and streams have an unpleasant way of drying up in summer, leaving it stranded on the shore. This accounts in part for the variable leaves on the arrowhead, those underneath the water being long and ribbon-like, to bring the greatest possible area into contact with the air with which the water is charged. Broad leaves would be torn to shreds by the current through which grass-like blades glide harmlessly; but when this plant grows on shore, having no longer use for its lower ribbons, it loses them, and expands only broad arrow-shaped surfaces to the sunny air, leaves to be supplied with carbonic acid to assimilate, and sunshine to turn off the oxygen and store up the carbon into their system.
WATER ARUM; MARSH CALLA(Calla palustris) Arum family
Flowers - Minute, greenish yellow, clustered on a cylinder-like, fleshy spadix about 1 in. long, partly enfolded by a large, white, oval, pointed, erect spathe, the whole resembling a small calla lily open in front. The solitary "flower" on a scape as long as the petioles of leaves, and, like them, sheathed at base. Leaves: Thick, somewhat heart-shaped, their spreading or erect petioles 4 to 8 in. long. Fruit: Red berries clustered in a head. Preferred Habitat - Cool Northern bogs; in or beside sluggish water. Flowering Season - May-June. Distribution - Nova Scotia southward to Virginia, westward to Minnesota and Iowa.
At a glance one knows this beautiful denizen of Northern bogs and ditches to be a poor relation of the stately Ethiopian calla lily of our greenhouses. Where the arum grows in rich, cool retreats, it is apt to be abundant, its slender rootstocks running hither and thither through the yielding soil with thrifty rapidity until the place is carpeted with its handsome dark leaves, from which the pure white "flowers" arise; and yet many flower lovers well up in field practice know it not. Thoreau, for example, was no longer young when he first saw, or, rather, noticed it. "Having found this in one place," he wrote, "I now find it in another. Many an object is not seen, though it falls within the range of our visual ray, because it does not come within the range of our intellectual ray. So, in the largest sense, we find only the world we look for."
Now, the true flowers of the arum and all its spadix-bearing kin are so minute that one scarcely notices them where they are clustered on the club-shaped column in the center of the apparent "flower." The beautiful white banner of the marsh calla, or the green and maroon striped pulpit from which Jack preaches, is no more the flower proper than the papery sheath below the daffodil is the daffodil. In the arum the white advertisement flaunted before flying insects is not even essential to the florets' existence, except as it helps them attract their pollen-carrying friends. Almost all waterside plants, it will be noticed, depend chiefly upon flies and midges, and these lack aesthetic taste. "Such plants have usually acquired small and inconspicuous separate flowers," says Grant Allen; "and then, to make up for their loss in attractiveness, like cheap sweetmeats, they have very largely increased their numbers. Or, to put the matter more simply and physically, in waterside situations those plants succeed best which have a relatively large number of individually small and unnoticeable flowers massed together into large and closely serried bundles. Hence, in such situations, there is a tendency for petals to be suppressed, and for blossoms to grow minute; because the large and bright flowers seldom succeed in attracting big land insects like bees or butterflies, while the small and thick-set ones usually do succeed in attracting a great many little flitting midges." Flies, which are guided far more by their sense of smell than by sight, resort to the petalless, insignificant florets of the ill-scented marsh calla in numbers; and as the uppermost clusters are staminate only, while the lower florets contain stamens and pistil, it follows they must often effect cross-pollination as they crawl over the spadix. But here is no trap to catch the tiny benefactors such as is set by wicked Jack-in-the-pulpit, or the skunk-cabbage, or another cousin, a still more terrible executioner, the cuckoo-pint (Arum maculatum) of Europe.
Few coroner's inquests are held over the dead bodies of our feathered friends; and it is not known whether the innocent-looking marsh calla really poisons the birds on which it depends to carry its bright seeds afar or not. The cuckoo-pint, as is well known, destroys the winged messenger bearing its offspring to plant fresh colonies in a distant bog, because the decayed body of the bird acts as the best possible fertilizer into which the seedling may strike its roots. Most of our noxious weeds, like our vermin, have come to us from Europe; but Heaven deliver us from this cannibalistic pest!
The very common GREEN ARROW-ARUM (Peltandra Virginica), found in shallow water, ditches, swamps, and the muddy shores of ponds throughout the eastern half of the United States, attracts us more by its stately growth and the beauty of its bright, lustrous green arrow-shaped leaves (which have been found thirty inches long), than by the insignificant florets clustered on the spadix within a long pointed green sheath that closely enfolds it. Pistillate florets cover it for only about one-fourth its length. To them flies carry pollen from the staminate florets covering the rest of the spadix. After the club is set with green berries - green, for this plant has no need to attract birds with bright red ones - the flower stalk curves, bends downward, and the pointed leathery sheath acting as an auger, it bores a hole into the soft mud in which the seeds germinate with the help of their surrounding jelly as a fertilizer.
AMERICAN WHITE HELLEBORE; INDIAN POKE; ITCH-WEED(Veratrum viride) Bunch-flower family
Flowers - Dingy, pale yellowish or whitish green, growing greener with age, 1 in. or less across, very numerous, in stiff-branching, spike-like, dense-flowered panicles. Perianth of 6 oblong segments; 6 short curved stamens; 3 styles. Stem: Stout, leafy, 2 to 8 ft. tall. Leaves: Plaited, lower ones broadly oval, pointed, 6 to 12 in. long; parallel ribbed, sheathing the stem where they clasp it; upper leaves gradually narrowing; those among flowers small. Preferred Habitat - Swamps, wet woods, low meadows. Flowering Season - May-July. Distribution - British Possessions from ocean to ocean; southward in the United States to Georgia, Tennessee, and Minnesota.
"Borage and hellebore fill two scenes -Sovereign plants to purge the veinsOf melancholy, and cheer the heartOf those black fumes which make it smart."
Such are the antidotes for madness prescribed by Burton in his "Anatomie of Melancholy." But like most medicines, so the homeopaths have taught us, the plant that heals may also poison; and the coarse, thick rootstock of this hellebore sometimes does deadly work. The shining plaited leaves, put forth so early in the spring they are especially tempting to grazing cattle on that account, are too well known by most animals, however, to be touched by them - precisely the end desired, of course, by the hellebore, nightshade, aconite, cyclamen, Jamestown weed, and a host of others that resort, for protection, to the low trick of mixing poisonous chemicals with their cellular juices. Pliny told how the horses, oxen, and swine of his day were killed by eating the foliage of the black hellebore. Flies, which visit the dirty, yellowish-green flowers in abundance, must cross-fertilize them, as the anthers mature before the stigmas are ready to receive pollen. Apparently the visitors suffer no ill effects from the nectar. We nave just seen how the green arrow-arum bores a hole in the mud and plants its own seeds in autumn. The hellebore uses its auger in the spring, when we find the stout, shining, solid tool above ground with the early skunk-cabbage.
STAR OF BETHLEHEM; TEN O'CLOCK(Ornithogalum umbellatum) Lily family
Flowers - Opening in the sunshine, white within, greenish on the outside, veined, borne on slender pedicels in an erect, loose cluster. Perianth of 6 narrowly oblong divisions, 1/2 in. long or over, or about twice as long as the flattened stamens; style short, 3-sided. Scape: Slender, 4 to 12 in. high, with narrow, blade-like bracts above. Leaves: Narrow, grass-like with white midvein, fleshy, all from coated, egg-shaped bulb. Preferred Habitat - Moist, grassy meadows, old lawns. Flowering Season - May-June. Distribution - Escaped from gardens from Massachusetts to Virginia.
The finding of these exquisite little flowers, growing wild among the lush grass of a meadow not far from some old homestead where their ancestors, with crocuses and grape hyacinths, once brightened the lawn in early spring, makes one long to start a Parkinson Society instantly. Some school children not far from New York, receiving their inspiration from Mrs. Ewing's little book, "Mary's Meadow," have spread the gospel of beauty, like the true missionaries they are, by systematically planting in lanes and fields sweet violets, golden coreopsis, hardy poppies, blue corn-flowers, Japanese roses, orange day-lilies, larkspurs, and many other charming garden flowers that need only the slightest encouragement to run wild. Immense quantities of seed, that go to loss in every garden, might so easily be sprinkled at large on our walks. Nearly all the beautiful hardy perennials cultivated here grow in Nature's garden in Europe or Asia, and will do so in America if they are but given the chance. The Star of Bethlehem is a case in point. Several members of the large group of charming spring flowers to which it belongs grow in such abundance in the Old World that for centuries the bulbs have furnished food to the omnivorous Italian and Asiatic peasants. If we cannot spare offsets from the garden, and will wait a few years for seeds to bear, the rich, light loam of our grassy meadows, too, will be streaked with a Milky Way of floral stars, as they are in Italy.
The Greek generic name of the Star of Bethlehem, meaning "bird's milk" (a popular folk expression in Europe for some marvellous thing) was applied by Linnaeus because of the flower's likeness to the wonderful star in the East which guided the Wise Men to the manger where Jesus lay.
STAR-GRASS; COLIC-ROOT(Aletris farinosa) Lily family
Flowers - Small, oblong-tubular, pure white or yellowish, about 1/4 in. long, set obliquely in a long, wand-like, spiked raceme, at the end of a slender scape 2 to 3 ft. tall. Perianth somewhat bell-shaped, 6-pointed, rough or mealy outside; 6 stamens, inserted below each point; style 3-cleft at tip. (A Southern form or distinct species (?) has yellower, fragrant flowers.) Leaves: >From the base, lance-shaped, 2 to 6 in. long, thin, pale yellowish green, in a spreading cluster. Preferred Habitat - Dry soil; roadsides; open, grassy, sandy woods. Flowering Season - May-July. Distribution - From Ontario and the Mississippi eastward to the Atlantic.
Herb gatherers have searched far and wide for this plant's bitter, fibrous root, because of its supposed medicinal virtues. What decoctions have not men swallowed from babyhood to old age to get relief from griping colic! In partial shade, colonies of the tufted yellow-green leaves send up from the center gradually lengthening spikes of bloom that may finally attain over a foot in length. The plant is not unknown in borders of men's gardens. The Greek word (aletron = meal) from which its generic title is derived, refers to the rough, granular surface of the little oblong white flower.
WILD SPIKENARD; FALSE SOLOMON'S SEAL; SOLOMON'S ZIG-ZAG(Vagnera racemosa; Smilacina racemosa of Gray)Lily-of-the-Valley family
Flowers - White or greenish, small, slightly fragrant, in a densely flowered terminal raceme. Perianth of 6 separate, spreading segments; 6 stamens; 1 pistil. Stem: Simple, somewhat angled, 1 to 3 ft. high, scaly below, leafy, and sometimes finely hairy above. Leaves: Alternate and seated along stem, oblong, lance-shaped, 3 to 6 in. long, finely hairy beneath. Rootstock: Thick, fleshy. Fruit: A cluster of aromatic, round, pale red speckled berries. Preferred Habitat - Moist woods, thickets, hillsides. Flowering Season - May-July. Distribution - Nova Scotia to Georgia; westward to Arizona and British Columbia.
As if to offer opportunities for comparison to the confused novice, the true Solomon's seal and the so-called false species - quite as honest a plant - usually grow near each other. Grace of line, rather than beauty of blossom, gives them both their chief charm. But the feathery plume of greenish-white blossoms that crowns the false Solomon's seal's somewhat zig-zagged stem is very different from the small, greenish, bell-shaped flowers, usually nodding in pairs along the stem, under the leaves, from the axils of the true Solomon's seal. Later in summer, when hungry birds wander through the woods with increased families, the wild spikenard offers them branching clusters of pale red speckled berries, whereas the latter plant feasts them with blue-black fruit, in the hope that they will drop the seeds miles away.
By clustering its small, slightly fragrant flowers at the end of its stem, the wild spikenard offers a more taking advertisement to its insect friends than its cousin can show. A few flies and beetles visit them; but apparently the less specialized bees, chiefly those of the Halictus tribe, which predominate in May, are the principal guests. These alight in the center of the widely expanded blossoms set on the upper side of the branching raceme so as to make their nectar and pollen easily accessible; and as the newly opened flower has its stigma already receptive to pollen brought to it while its own anthers are closed, it follows the plant is dependent upon the bees' help, as well as the birds', to perpetuate itself.
The STAR-FLOWERED SOLOMON'S SEAL (V. stellata), found from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Newfoundland as far south as Kansas, has larger, but fewer, flowers than the wild spikenard, at the end of its erect, low-growing stem. Where the two species grow together - and they often do - it will be noticed that the star-flowered one frequently forms colonies on rich, moist banks, its leaves partly clasp the stem, and its berries, which may be entirely black, are more frequently green, with six black stripes.
The TWO-LEAVED SOLOMON'S SEAL, or FALSE LILY-OF-THE-VALLEY (Unifolium Canadense), very common in moist woods and thickets North and West, is a curious little plant, sometimes with only a solitary, long-petioled leaf; but where many of these sterile plants grow together, forming shining beds. Other individuals lift a white-flowered raceme six inches above the ground; and on the slender, often zig-zagged flowering stem there may be one to three, but usually two, ovate leaves, pointed at the apex, heart-shaped at the base, either seated on it, one above the other, or standing out from it on distinct but short petioles. This flower has only four segments and four stamens. Like the wild spikenard, the little plant bears clusters of pale red speckled berries in autumn.
HAIRY or TRUE or TWIN-FLOWERED SOLOMON'S SEAL(Polygonatum biftorum) Lily-of-the-Valley family
Flowers - Whitish or yellowish green, tubular, bell-shaped, 1 to 4, but usually 2, drooping on slender peduncles from leaf axils. Perianth 6-lobed at entrance, but not spreading; 6 stamens, the filaments roughened; 1 pistil. Stem: Simple, slender, arching, leafy, 8 in. to 3 ft. long. Leaves: Oval, pointed, or lance-shaped, alternate, 2 to 4 in. long, seated on stem, pale beneath and softly hairy along veins. Rootstock: Thick, horizontal, jointed, scarred. (Polygonatum = many joints). Fruit: A blue-black berry. Preferred Habitat - Woods, thickets, shady banks. Flowering Season - April-June. Distribution - New Brunswick to Florida, westward to Michigan.
>From a many-jointed, thick rootstock a single graceful curved stem arises each spring, withers after fruiting, and leaves a round scar, whose outlines suggested to the fanciful man who named the genus the seal of Israel's wise king. Thus one may know the age of a root by its seals, as one tells that of a tree by the rings in its trunk.
The dingy little cylindric flowers, hidden beneath the leaves, may be either self-pollenized or cross-pollenized by the bumblebees to which they are adapted. "We may suppose," says Professor Robertson, "that the pendulous position of the flowers owes its origin to the fact that it renders them less convenient to other insects, but equally convenient to the higher bees which are the most efficient pollinators; and that the resulting protection to pollen and nectar is merely an incidental effect." Certain Lepidoptera, and small insects which crawl into the cylinder, visit all the Solomon's seals.
The SMOOTH SOLOMON'S SEAL (P. commutatum; P.giganteum of Gray), with much the same range as its smaller relative, grows in moist woods and along shaded streams. It is a variable, capricious plant, with a stout or slender stem, perhaps only one foot high, or again towering above the tallest man's head; the oval leaves also vary greatly in breadth and length; and a solitary flower may droop from an axil, or perhaps eight dingy greenish cylinders may hang in a cluster. But the plant is always smooth throughout. Even the incurved filaments which obstruct the entrance to this flower are smooth where those of the preceding species are rough-hairy. The style is so short that it may never come in contact with the anthers, although the winged visitors must often leave pollen of the same flower on the stigma.
EARLY or DWARF WAKE-ROBIN(Trillium nivale) Lily-of-the-Valley family
Flowers - Solitary, pure white, about 1 in. long, on an erect or curved peduncle, from a whorl of 3 leaves at summit of stem. Three spreading, green, narrowly oblong sepals; 3 oval or oblong petals; 6 stamens, the anthers about as long as filaments; 3 slender styles stigmatic along inner side. Stem: 2 to 6 in. high, from a short, tuber-like rootstock. Leaves: 3 in a whorl below the flower, 1 to 2 in. long, broadly oval, rounded at end, on short petioles. Fruit: A 3-lobed reddish berry, about 1/2 in. in diameter, the sepals adhering. Preferred Habitat - Rich, moist woods and thickets. Flowering Season - March-May. Distribution - Pennsylvania, westward to Minnesota and Iowa, south to Kentucky.
Only this delicate little flower, as white as the snow it sometimes must push through to reach the sunshine melting the last drifts in the leafless woods, can be said to wake the robins into song; a full chorus of feathered love-makers greets the appearance of the more widely distributed, and therefore better known, species.
By the rule of three all the trilliums, as their name implies, regulate their affairs. Three sepals, three petals, twice three stamens, three styles, a three-celled ovary, the flower growing out from a whorl of three leaves, make the naming of wake-robins a simple matter to the novice. Rarely do the parts divide into fours, or the petals and sepals revert to primitive green leaves. With the exception of the painted trillium which sometimes grows in bogs, all the clan live in rich, moist woods. It is said the roots are poisonous. In them the next year's leaves lie curled through the winter, as in the iris and Solomon's seal, among others.
One of the most chastely beautiful of our native wild flowers - so lovely that many shady nooks in English rock-gardens and ferneries contain imported clumps of the vigorous plant - is the LARGE-FLOWERED WAKE-ROBIN, or WHITE WOOD LILY (T. grandiflorum). Under favorable conditions the waxy, thin, white, or occasionally pink, strongly veined petals may exceed two inches; and in Michigan a monstrous form has been found. The broadly rhombic leaves, tapering to a point, and lacking petioles, are seated in the usual whorl of three, at the summit of the stem, which may attain a foot and a half in height; from the center the decorative flower arises on a long peduncle. At first the entrance to the blossom is closed by the long anthers which much exceed the filaments; and hive-bees, among other insects, in collecting pollen, transfer it to older and now expanded flowers, in which the low stigmas appear between the tall separated stamens. Nectar stored in septal glands at the base invites the visitor laden with pollen from young flowers to come in contact with the three late maturing stigmas. The berry is black. From Quebec to Florida and far westward we find this tardy wake-robin in May or June.
Certainly the commonest trillium in the East, although it thrives as far westward as Ontario and Missouri, and south to Georgia, is the NODDING WAKE-ROBIN (T. cernuum), whose white or pinkish flower droops from its peduncle until it is all but hidden under the whorl of broadly rhombic, tapering leaves. The wavy margined petals, about as long as the sepals - that is to say, half an inch long or over - curve backward at maturity. According to Miss Carter, who studied the flower in the Botanical Garden at South Hadley, Mass., it is slightly proterandrous, maturing its anthers first, but with a chance of spontaneous self-pollination by the stigmas recurving to meet the shorter stamens. She saw bumblebees visiting it for nectar. In late summer an egg-shaped, pendulous red-purple berry swings from the summit. One finds the plant in bloom from April to June, according to the climate of its long range,
Perhaps the most strikingly beautiful member of the tribe is the PAINTED TRILLIUM (T. undulatum; T. erythrocarpum of Gray). At the summit of the slender stem, rising perhaps only eight inches, or maybe twice as high, this charming flower spreads its long, wavy-edged, waxy-white petals veined and striped with deep pink or wine color. The large ovate leaves, long-tapering to a point, are rounded at the base into short petioles. The rounded, three-angled, bright red, shining berry is seated in the persistent calyx. With the same range as the nodding trillium's, the painted wake-robin comes into bloom nearly a month later - in May and June - when all the birds are not only wide awake, but have finished courting, and are busily engaged in the most serious business of life.
SHOWY LADY'S SLIPPER(Cypripedium reginae; C. spectabile of Gray) Orchid family
Flowers - Usually solitary, at summit of stem, white, or the inflated white lip painted with purplish pink and white stripes; sepals rounded oval, spreading, white, not longer than the lip; petals narrower, white; the broad sac-shaped pouch open in front, 1 in. long or over. Stem: Stout, leafy, 1 to 2 ft. high. Leaves: 3 to 8 in. long, downy, elliptic, pointed, many ribbed. Preferred Habitat - Peat-bogs; rich, low, wet woods. Flowering Season - June-September. Distribution - Nova Scotia to Georgia, westward to the Mississippi. Chiefly North.
Quite different from the showy orchis, is this far more chaste showy lady's slipper which Dr. Gray has called "the most beautiful of the genus." Because the plants live in inaccessible swampy places, where only the most zealous flower lover penetrates, they have a reputation for rarity at which one who knows a dozen places to find colonies of the stately exquisites during a morning's walk, must smile with superiority. Wine appears to overflow the large white cup and trickle down its sides. Sometimes unstained, pure white chalices are found. C. album is the name by which the plant is known in England. See note after Common Daisy.
LARGE ROUND-LEAVED or GREATER GREEN ORCHIS(Habenaria orbiculata) Orchid family
Flowers - Greenish white, in a loosely set spike; the upper sepal short, rounded; side ones spreading; petals smaller, arching; the lip long, narrow, drooping, white, prolonged into a spur often 1 1/2 in. long, curved and enlarged at base; anther sacs prominent, converging. Scape: 1 to 2 ft. high. Leaves: 2, spreading flat on ground, glossy above, silvery underneath, parallel-veined, slightly longer than wide, very large, from 4 to 7 in. across. Preferred Habitat - Rich, moist woods in mountainous regions, especially near evergreens. Flowering Season - July-August. Distribution - From British Columbia to the Atlantic; eastern half of the United States southward to the Carolinas.
Wonderfully interesting structure and the comparative rarity of this orchid, rather than superficial beauty, are responsible for the thrill of pleasure one experiences at the sight of the spike of unpretentious flowers. Two great leaves, sometimes as large as dinner plates, attract the eye to where they glisten on the ground. The spur of the blossom, the nectary, "implies a welcome to a tongue two inches long, and will reward none other," says William Hamilton Gibson. "This clearly shuts out the bees, butterflies, and smaller moths. What insect, then, is here implied? The sphinx moth, one of the lesser of the group. A larger individual might sip the nectar, it is true, but its longer tongue would reach the base of the tube without effecting the slightest contact with the pollen, which is, of course, the desideratum." How the moth, in sipping the nectar, thrusts his head against the sticky buttons to which the pollen messes are attached, and, in trying to release himself, loosens them; how he flies off with these little clubs sticking to his eyes; how they automatically adjust themselves to the attitude where they will come in contact with the stigma of the next flower visited, and so cross-fertilize it, has been told in the account of the great purple-fringed orchis of similar construction. To that species the interested reader is, therefore, referred; or, better still, to the luminous description by Dr. Asa Gray.
WHITE-FRINGED ORCHIS(Habenaria blephariglottis) Orchid family
Flowers - Pure white, fragrant, borne on a spike from 3 to 6 in.long. Spur long, slender; oval sepals; smaller petals toothed;the oblong lip deeply fringed. Stem: Slender, 1 to 2 ft. high.Leaves: Lance-shaped, parallel-veined, clasping the stem; upperones smallest.Preferred Habitat - Peat-bogs and swamps.Flowering Season - July-August.Distribution - Northeastern United States and eastern Canada toNewfoundland.
One who selfishly imagines that all the floral beauty of the earth was created for man's sole delight will wonder why a flower so exquisitely beautiful as this dainty little orchid should be hidden in inaccessible peat-bogs, where overshoes and tempers get lost with deplorable frequency, and the water-snake and bittern mock at man's intrusion of their realm by the ease with which they move away from him. Not for man, but for the bee, the moth, and the butterfly, are orchids where they are and what they are. The white-fringed orchis grows in watery places that it may more easily manufacture nectar, and protect itself from crawling pilferers; its flowers are clustered on a spike, their lips are fringed, they have been given fragrance and a snowy-white color that they may effectually advertise their sweets on whose removal by an insect benefactor that will carry pollen from flower to flower as he feeds depends their chance of producing fertile seed. It is probable the flower is white that night-flying moths may see it shine in the gloaming. From the length and slenderness of its spur it is doubtless adapted to the sphinx moth.
At the entrance to the nectary, two sticky disks stand on guard, ready to fasten themselves to the eyes of the first moth that inserts his tongue; and he finds on withdrawing his head that two pollen-masses attached to these disks have been removed with them. This plastering over of insects' eyes by the orchids might be serious business, indeed, were not the lepidoptera gifted with numerous pairs. The fragrance of many orchids, however, would be a sufficient guide even to a blind insect. With the pollen-masses sticking to his forehead, the moth enters another flower and necessarily rubs off some grains from the pollen masses, that have changed their attitude during his flight that they may be in the precise position to fertilize the viscid stigma. In almost the same way the similar Yellow-Fringed Orchis (H. ciliaris) and the great green orchids compel insects to work for them.
A larger-flowered species, the PRAIRIE WHITE-FRINGED ORCHIS (H. lepicophea), found in bloom in June and July, on moist, open ground from western New York to Minnesota and Arkansas, differs from the preceding chiefly in having larger and greenish-white flowers, the lip cleft into wedge-shaped segments deeply fringed. The hawk-moth removes on its tongue one, but not often both, of the pollinia attached to disks on either side of the entrance to the spur.
NODDING LADIES' TRESSES or TRACES(Gyrostachys cernua; Spiranthes cernua of Gray) Orchid family
Flowers - Small, white or yellowish, without a spur, fragrant, nodding or spreading in 3 rows on a cylindrical, slightly twisted spike 4 or 5 in. long. Side sepals free, the upper ones arching, and united with petals; the oblong, spreading lip crinkle-edged, and bearing minute, hairy callosities at bases Stem: 6 in. to 2 ft. tall, with several pointed, wrapping bracts. Leaves: From or near the base, linear, almost grass-like. Preferred Habitat - Low meadows, ditches, and swamps. Flowering Season - July-October. Distribution - Nova Scotia to the Gulf of Mexico, and westward to the Mississippi.
This last orchid of the season, and perhaps the commonest of its interesting tribe in the eastern United States, at least, bears flowers that, however insignificant in size, are marvelous pieces of mechanism, to which such men as Charles Darwin and Asa Gray have devoted hours of study and, these two men particularly, much correspondence.
Just as a woodpecker begins at the bottom of a tree and taps his way upward, so a bee begins at the lower and older flowers on a spike and works up to the younger ones; a fact on which this little orchid, like many another plant that arranges its b1ossoms in long racemes, depends. Let us not note for the present what happens in the older flowers, but begin our observations, with the help of a powerful lens, when the bee has alighted on the spreading lip of a newly opened blossom toward the top of the spire. As nectar is already secreted for her in its receptacle, she thrusts her tongue through the channel provided to guide it aright, and by the slight contact with the furrowed rostellum, it splits, and releases a boat-shaped disk standing vertically on its stern in the passage. Within the boat is an extremely sticky cement that hardens almost instantly on exposure to the air. The splitting of the rostellum, curiously enough, never happens without insect aid; but if a bristle or needle be passed over it ever so lightly, a stream of sticky, milky fluid exudes, hardens, and the boat-shaped disk, with pollen masses attached, may be withdrawn on the bristle just as the bee removes them with her tongue. Each pollinium consists of two leaves of pollen united for about half their length in the middle with elastic threads. As the pollinia are attached parallel to the disk, they stick parallel on the bee's tongue, yet she may fold up her proboscis under her head, if she choose, without inconvenience from the pollen masses, or without danger of loosening them. Now, having finished sucking the newly opened flowers at the top of the spike, away she flies to an older flower at the bottom of another one. Here a marvelous thing has happened. The passage which, when the flower first expanded, scarcely permitted a bristle to pass, has now widened through the automatic downward movement of the column in order to expose the stigmatic surfaces to contact with the pollen masses brought by the bee. Without the bee's help this orchid, with a host of other flowers, must disappear from the face of the earth. So very many species which have lost the power to fertilize themselves now depend absolutely on these little pollen carriers, it is safe to say that, should the bees perish, one half our flora would be exterminated with them. On the slight downward movement of the column in the ladies' tresses, then, as well as on the bee's ministrations, the fertilization of the flower absolutely depends. "If the stigma of the lowest flower has already been fully fertilized," says Darwin, "little or no pollen will be left on its dried surface; but on the next succeeding flower, of which the stigma is adhesive, large sheets of pollen will be left. Then as soon as the bee arrives near the summit of the spike she will withdraw fresh pollinia, will fly to the lower flowers on another plant, and fertilize them; and thus, as she goes her rounds and adds to her store of honey, she continually fertilizes fresh flowers and perpetuates the race of autumnal spiranthes, which will yield honey to future generations of bees."
The SLENDER LADIES' TRESSES (G. gracilis; [S. gracilis]), with a range and season of blossom similar to the preceding species, and with even smaller white, fragrant flowers, growing on one side of a twisted spike, chooses dry fields, hillsides, open woods, and sandy places - queer habitats for a member of its moisture-loving tribe. Its leaves have usually fallen by flowering time. The cluster of tuberous, spindle-shaped roots are an aid to identification.
LESSER RATTLESNAKE PLANTAIN [DWARF RATTLESNAKE-PLANTAIN](Peramium repens; Goodyera repens of Gray) Orchid family
Flowers - Small, greenish white, the lip pocket-shaped, borne on one side of a bracted spike 5 to 10 in. high, from a fleshy, thick fibrous root. Leaves: From the base, tufted, or ascending the stem on one side for a few inches, 1/2 in. to over 1 in. long, ovate, the silvery-white veins forming a network, or leaf blotched with white. Preferred Habitat - Woods, especially under evergreens. Flowering Season - July-August. Distribution - Colorado eastward to the Atlantic, from Nova Scotia to Florida. Europe and Asia.
Tufts of these beautifully marked little leaves carpeting the ground in the shadow of the hemlocks attract the eye, rather than the spires of insignificantly small flowers. Whoever wishes to know how the bumblebee ruptures the sensitive membrane within the tiny blossom with her tongue, and draws out the pollinia that are instantly cemented to it after much the same plan employed by the ladies' tresses, must use a good lens in studying the operation. To the structural botanist the rattlesnake plantains form an interesting connecting link between orchids of d1stinct forms. In them we see a tendency to lengthen the pollen-masses into caudicles as the showy orchis, for example, has done. "Goodyera probably shows us the state of organs in a group of orchids now mostly extinct," says Darwin; "but the parents of many living descendants."
It has been said that the Indians use this plant to cure bites of the rattlesnake; that they will handle the deadly creature without fear if some of these leaves are near at hand - in fact, a good deal is said about Indians by palefaces that makes even the stolid red man smile when confronted with the white man's tales about him. An intelligent Indian student declares that none of his race will handle a rattlesnake unless its fangs have been removed; that this plant takes its name from the resemblance of its netted-veined leaves to the belly of a serpent, and not to their curative powers; and, finally, that the Southern tribes, especially so reverence the rattlesnake that, far from trying to cure its bite, they count themselves blessed to be bitten to death by one. Indeed, the rattle, a sacred symbol, has been employed in religious ceremonies of most tribes. Snakes may be revered in other lands, but only in America is the rattlesnake worshipped. Among the Moquis there still survives much of the religion of the snake-worshipping Aztecs. Bernal Diaz tells how living rattlesnakes, kept in the great temple at Mexico as sacred and petted objects, were fed with the bodies of the sacrificed. Cortes found a town called by the Spaniards Terraguea, or the city of serpents, whose walls and temples were decorated with figures of the reptiles, which the inhabitants worshiped as gods.
The DOWNY RATTLESNAKE PLANTAIN (P. pubescens), usually a taller plant than the preceding, with larger cream-white, globular-lipped flowers on both sides of its spike, and glandular-hairy throughout, has even more strongly marked leaves. These, the most conspicuous parts, are dark grayish green, heavily netted with greenish or silvery-white veins, silky to the touch, and often wavy edged. This plant scarcely strays westward beyond the Mississippi, but it is common East. It also blooms in midsummer, and shows a preference for dry woods where oak and pine abound.
LIZARD'S TAIL [LIZARD'S-TAIL, WATER-DRAGON](Saurus cernuus) Lizard's-tail family
Flowers - Fragrant, very small, white, lacking a perianth, bracted, densely crowded on peduncled, slender spikes 4 to 6 in. long and nodding at the tip. Stamens 6 to 8, the filaments white; carpels 3 or 4, united at base, dangling. Stem: 2 to 5 ft. high, jointed, sparingly branched, leafy. Leaves: Heart-shaped, palmately ribbed, dark green, thin, on stout petioles. Preferred Habitat - Swamps, shallow water. Flowering Season - June-August. Distribution - Southern New England to the Gulf, westward to Minnesota and Texas.
The fragrance arising from these curious, drooping, tail-like spikes of flowers, where they grow in numbers, must lure their insect friends as it does us, since no showy petals or sepals advertise their presence. Nevertheless they are what are known as perfect flowers, each possessing stamens and pistils, the only truly essential parts, however desirable a gaily colored perianth may be to blossoms attempting to woo such large land insects as the bumblebee and butterfly. Since flies, whose color sense is by no means so acute as their sense of smell, are by far the most abundant fertilizers of waterside plants, we can see a tendency in such to suppress their petals, for the flowers to become minute and massed in series that the little visitors may more readily transfer pollen from one to another, and to become fragrant - just what the lizard's tail has done.
SPRING BEAUTY; CLAYTONIA(Claytonia Virginica) Purslane family.
Flowers - White veined with pink, or all pink, the veinings of deeper shade, on curving, slender pedicels, several borne in a terminal loose raceme, the flowers mostly turned one way (secund). Calyx of 2 ovate sepals; corolla of 5 petals slightly united by their bases; 5 stamens, 1 inserted on base of each petal; the style 3-cleft. Stem: Weak, 6 to 12 in. long, from a deep, tuberous root. Leaves: Opposite above, linear to lance-shaped, shorter than basal ones, which are 3 to 7 in. long; breadth variable. Preferred Habitat - Moist woods, open groves, low meadows. Flowering Season - March-May. Distribution - Nova Scotia and far westward, south to Georgia and Texas.
Dainty clusters of these delicate, starry blossoms, mostly turned in one direction, expand in the sunshine only, like their gaudy cousin the portulaca and the insignificant little yellow flowers of another relative, the ubiquitous, invincible "pussley" immortalized in "My Summer in a Garden." At night and during cloudy, stormy weather, when their benefactors are not flying, the claytonias economically close their petals to protect nectar and pollen from rain and pilferers. Pick them, the whole plant droops, and the blossoms close with indignation; nor will any coaxing but a combination of hot water and sunshine induce them to open again. Theirs is a long beauty sleep. They are supersensitive exquisites, however hardy.
Very early in the spring a race is run with the hepatica, arbutus, adder's tongue, blood-root, squirrel corn, and anemone for the honor of being the earliest wild flower; and although John Burroughs and Dr. Abbott have had the exceptional experience of finding the claytonia even before the hepatica - certainly the earliest spring blossom worthy the name in the Middle and New England States - of course the rank skunk-cabbage, whose name is snobbishly excluded from the list of fair competitors, has quietly opened dozens of minute florets in its incurved horn before the others have even started.
Whether the petals of the spring beauty are white or pink, they are always exquisitely marked with pink lines converging near the base and ending in a yellow blotch to serve as pathfinders for the female bumblebees and the little brown bombylius, among other pollen carriers. A newly opened flower, with its stamens surrounding the pistil, must be in peril of self-fertilization one would think who did not notice that when the pollen is in condition for removal by the bees and flies, the stigmatic surfaces of the three-cleft style are tightly pressed together that not a grain may touch them. But when the anthers have shed their pollen, and the filaments have spread outward and away from the pistil, the three stigmatic arms branch out to receive the fertilizing dust carried from younger flowers by their busy friends.
STARRY CAMPION(Silene stellata) Pink family
Flowers - White, about 1/2 in. broad or over, loosely clustered in a showy, pyramidal panicle. Calyx bell-shaped, swollen, 5-toothed, sticky; 5 fringed and clawed petals; 10 long, exserted stamens; 3 styles. Stem: Erect, leafy, 2 to 3 1/2 ft. tall, rough-hairy. Leaves: Oval, tapering to a point, 2 to 4 in. long, seated in whorls of 4 around stem, or loose ones opposite. Preferred Habitat - Woods, shady banks. Flowering Season - June-August. Distribution - Rhode Island westward to Mississippi, south to the Carolinas and Arkansas.
Feathery white panicles of the starry campion, whose protruding stamens and fringed petals give it a certain fleeciness, are dainty enough for spring; by midsummer we expect plants of ranker growth and more gaudy flowers. To save the nectar in each deep tube for the moths and butterflies which cross-fertilize all this tribe of night and day blossoms, most of them - and the campions are notorious examples - spread their calices, and some their pedicels as well, with a sticky substance to entrap little crawling pilferers. Although a popular name for the genus is catchfly, it is usually the ant that is glued to the viscid parts, for the fly that moves through the air alights directly on the flower it is too short-lipped to suck. An ant catching its feet on the miniature lime-twig, at first raises one foot after another and draws it through its mouth, hoping to rid it of the sticky stuff, but only with the result of gluing up its head and other parts of the body. In ten minutes all the pathetic struggles are ended. Let no one guilty of torturing flies to death on sticky paper condemn the Silenes!
The BLADDER CAMPION (S. vulgaris; S. inflata of Gray) to be recognized by its much inflated calyx, especially round in fruit, the two-cleft white petals; and its opposite leaves that are spatulate at the base of the plant, is a European immigrant now naturalized and locally very common from Illinois eastward to New Jersey and north to New Brunswick. Like the night-flowering catchfly this blossom has adapted itself to the night-flying moths; but when either remains open in the morning, bumblebees gladly take the leavings in the deep cup. To insure cross-fertilization, some of the bladder-campion flowers have stamens only, some have a pistil only; some have both organs maturing at different times. In all the night-flowering Silene, each flower, unless unusually disturbed, lasts three days and three nights. Late in the afternoon of the first day, when the petals begin to expand, the five stamens opposite the sepals lengthen in about two hours, and by sunset the anthers, which have matured at the same time, are covered with pollen. So they remain until the forenoon of the second day, and then the emptied anthers hang like shriveled bags, or drop off altogether. Late in the second afternoon, the second set of stamens repeat the actions of their predecessors, bend backward and shed their anthers the following, that is to say the third, morning. But on the third afternoon up rise the S-shaped, twisted stigmas, which until now had been hidden in the center of the flower. Moths, therefore, must transfer pollen from younger to older blossoms.
"With this lengthening and bending of the stamens and stigmas," says Dr. Kerner, "goes hand in hand the opening and shutting of the corolla. With the approach of dusk, the bifid limbs of the petals spread out in a flat surface and fall back against the calyx. In this position they remain through the night, and not till the following morning do they begin (more quickly in sunshine and with a mild temperature, more slowly with a cloudy sky and in cold, wet weather) to curl themselves up in an in-curved spire, while at the same time they form longitudinal creases, and look as though they were gathered in, or wrinkled;…but no sooner does evening return than the wrinkles disappear, the petals become smooth, uncurl themselves, and fall back upon the calyx, and the corolla is again expanded."
Curiously enough, these flowers, which by day we should certainly say were not fragrant, give forth a strong perfume at evening the better to guide moths to their feast. From eight in the evening until three in the morning the fragrance is especially strong. The white blossoms, so conspicuous at night, have little attraction for color-loving butterflies and bees by day; then, as there is no pollen to be carried from the shriveled anther sacs, no visitor is welcome, and the petals close to protect the nectar for the flower's true benefactors. Indeed, few flowers show more thorough adaptation to the night-flying moths than these Silene.
POKEWEED; SCOKE; PIGEON-BERRY; INK-BERRY; GARGET(Phytolacca decandra) Pokeweed family
Flowers - White, with a green centre, pink-tinted outside, about 1/4 in. across, in bracted racemes 2 to 8 in. long. Calyx of 4 or 5 rounded persistent sepals, simulating petals; no corolla; 10 short stamens; 10-celled ovary, green, conspicuous; styles curved. Stem: Stout, pithy, erect, branching, reddening toward the end of summer, 4 to 10 ft. tall, from a large, perennial, poisonous root. Leaves: Alternate, petioled, oblong to lance-shaped, tapering at both ends, 8 to 12 in. long. Fruit: Very juicy, dark purplish berries, hanging in long clusters from reddened footstalks; ripe, August-October. Preferred Habitat - Roadsides, thickets, field borders, and waste soil, especially in burnt-over districts. Flowering Season - June-October. Distribution - Maine and Ontario to Florida and Texas.
When the pokeweed is "all on fire with ripeness," as Thoreau said; when the stout, vigorous stem (which he coveted for a cane), the large leaves, and even the footstalks, take on splendid tints of crimson lake, and the dark berries hang heavy with juice in the thickets, then the birds, with increased, hungry families, gather in flocks as a preliminary step to traveling southward. Has the brilliant, strong-scented plant no ulterior motive in thus attracting their attention at this particular time? Surely! Robins, flickers, and downy woodpeckers, chewinks and rose-breasted grosbeaks, among other feathered agents, may be detected in the act of gormandizing on the fruit, whose undigested seeds they will disperse far and wide. Their droppings form the best of fertilizers for young seedlings; therefore the plants which depend on birds to distribute seeds, as most berry bearers do, send their children abroad to found new colonies, well equipped for a vigorous start in life. What a hideous mockery to continue to call this fruit the pigeon-berry, when the exquisite bird whose favorite food it once was, has been annihilated from this land of liberty by the fowler's net! And yet flocks of wild pigeons, containing not thousands but millions of birds, nested here even thirty years ago. When the market became glutted with them, they were fed to hogs in the West!
Children, and some grown-ups, find the deep magenta juice of the ink-berry useful. Notwithstanding the poisonous properties of the root, in some sections the young shoots are boiled and eaten like asparagus, evidently with no disastrous consequences. For any service this plant may render to man and bird, they are under special obligation to the little Halictus bees, but to other short-tongued bees and flies as well. These small visitors, flying from such of the flowers as mature their anthers first, carry pollen to those in the female, or pistillate, stage. Exposed nectar rewards their involuntary kindness. In stormy weather, when no benefactors can fly, the flowers are adapted to fertilize themselves through the curving of the styles.
COMMON CHICKWEED(Aisine media; Stellaria media of Gray) Pink family
Flowers - Small, white, on slender pedicels from leaf axils, also in terminal clusters. Calyx (usually) of 5 sepals, much longer than the 5 (usually) 2-parted petals; 2-10 stamens; 3 or 4 styles. Stem: Weak, branched, tufted, leafy, 4 to 6 in long, a hairy fringe on one side. Leaves: Opposite, acutely oval, lower ones petioled, upper ones seated on stem. Preferred Habitat - Moist, shady soil; woods; meadows. Flowering Season - Throughout the year. Distribution - Almost universal.
The sole use man has discovered for this often pestiferous weed with which nature carpets moist soil the world around is to feed caged song-birds. What is the secret of the insignificant little plant's triumphal progress? Like most immigrants that have undergone ages of selective struggle in the Old World, it successfully competes with our native blossoms by readily adjusting itself to new conditions, filling places unoccupied, and chiefly by prolonging its season of bloom beyond theirs, to get relief from the pressure of competition for insect trade in the busy season. Except during the most cruel frosts, there is scarcely a day in the year when we may not find the little star-like chickweed flowers. Contrast this season with that of a native chickweed, the LONG-LEAVED STITCHWORT [LONG-LEAVED CHICKWEED] (A. longifolia [S. longifolia]), blooming only from May till July, when competition is fiercest! Also, the common chickweed has its parts so arranged that it can fertilize itself when it is too cold for insect pollen-carriers to fly; then, especially, are many of its stamens abortive, not to waste the precious dust. Yet even in winter it produces abundant seed. In sunny, fine spring weather, however, when so much nectar is secreted the fine little drops may be easily seen by the naked eye, small bees, flies, and even thrips visit the blossoms whose anthers shed pollen one by one before the three stigmatic surfaces are ready to receive any from younger flowers.
SWEET-SCENTED WHITE WATER LILY; POND LILY; WATER NYMPH; WATERCABBAGE [FRAGRANT WATER-LILY](Castalia odorata; Nymphaea odorata of Gray) Water-lily family
Flowers - Pure white or pink tinged, rarely deep pink, solitary, 3 to 8 in. across, deliciously fragrant, floating. Calyx of 4 sepals, green outside; petals of indefinite number, overlapping in many rows, and gradually passing into an indefinite number of stamens; outer row of stamens with petaloid filaments and short anthers, the inner yellow stamens with slender filaments and elongated anthers; carpels of indefinite number, united into a compound pistil, with spreading and projecting stigmas. Leaves: Floating, nearly round, slit at bottom, shining green above, reddish and more or less hairy below, 4 to 12 in. across, attached to petiole at center of lower surface. Petioles and peduncles round and rubber-like, with 4 main air-channels. Rootstock: (Not true stem), thick, simple or with few branches, very long. Preferred Habitat - Still water, ponds, lakes, slow streams. Flowering Season - June-September. Distribution - Nova Scotia to Gulf of Mexico, and westward to the Mississippi.
Sumptuous queen of our native aquatic plants, of the royal family to which the gigantic Victoria regia of Brazil belongs, and all the lovely rose, lavender, blue, and golden exotic water lilies in the fountains of our city parks, to her man, beast, and insect pay grateful homage. In Egypt, India, China, Japan, Persia, and Asiatic Russia, how many millions have bent their heads in adoration of her relative the sacred lotus! From its center Brahma came forth; Buddha, too, whose symbol is the lotus, first appeared floating on the mystic flower (Nelumbo nelumbo, formerly Nelumbium speciosum). Happily the lovely pink or white "sacred bean" or "rose-lily" of the Nile, often cultivated here, has been successfully naturalized in ponds about Bordentown, New Jersey, and maybe elsewhere. If he who planteth a tree is greater than he who taketh a city, that man should be canonized who introduces the magnificent wild flowers of foreign lands to our area of Nature's garden.
Now, cultivation of our native water lilies and all their hardy kin, like charity, begins at home. Their culture in tubs, casks, or fountains on the lawn, is so very simple a matter, and the flowers bloom so freely, every garden should have a corner for aquatic plants. Secure the water-lily roots as early in the spring as possible, and barely cover them with good rich loam or muck spread over the bottom of the sunken tub to a depth of six or eight inches. After it has been filled with water, and replenished from time to time to make good the loss by evaporation, the water garden needs no attention until autumn. Then the tub should be drained, and removed to a cellar, or it may be covered over with a thick mattress of dry leaves to protect from hard freezing. In their natural haunts, water lilies sink to the bottom, where the water is warmest in winter. Possibly the seed is ripened below the surface for the same reason. At no time should the crown of the cultivated plant be lower than two feet below the water. If a number of species are grown, it is best to plant each kind in a separate basket, sunk in the shallow tub, to prevent the roots from growing together, as well as to obtain more effective decoration. Charming results may be obtained with small outlay of either money or time. Nothing brings more birds about the house than one of these water gardens; that serves at once as drinking fountain and bath to our not over-squeamish feathered neighbors. The number of insects these destroy, not to mention the joy of their presence, would alone compensate the householder of economic bent for the cost of a shallow concrete tank.
Opening some time after six o'clock in the morning, the white water lily spreads its many-petalled, deliciously fragrant, golden-centered chalice to welcome the late-flying bees and flower flies, the chief pollinators. Beetles, "skippers," and many other creatures on wings alight too. "I have named two species of bees (Halictus nelumbonis and Prosopis nelumbonis) on account of their close economic relation to these flowers," says Professor Robertson, who has captured over two hundred and fifty species of bees near his home in Carlinville, Illinois, and described nearly a third of them as new. Linnaeus, no doubt the first to conceive the pretty idea of making a floral clock, drew up a list of blossoms whose times of opening and closing marked the hours on its face; but even Linnaeus failed to understand that the flight of insects is the mainspring on which flowers depend to set the mechanism going. In spite of its whiteness and fragrance, the water lily requires no help from night-flying insects in getting its pollen transferred; therefore, when the bees and flies rest from their labors at sundown, it may close the blinds of its shop, business being ended for the day.