DAISY FLEABANE; SWEET SCABIOUS(Erigeron annus) Thistle family
Flower-heads - Numerous, daisy-like, about 1/2 in. across; from 40 to 70 long, fine, white rays (or purple- or pink-tinged), arranged around yellow disk florets in a rough, hemispheric cup whose bracts overlap. Stem: Erect, to 4 ft. high, branching above, with spreading, rough hairs. Leaves: Thin, lower ones ovate, coarsely toothed, petioled; upper ones sessile, becoming smaller, lance-shaped. Preferred Habitat: Fields, wasteland, roadsides. Flowering Season: May-November. Distribution: Nova Scotia to Virginia, westward to Missouri.
At a glance one knows this flower to be akin to Robin's plantain (q.v.) the the asters and daisy. A smaller, more delicate species, with mostly entire leaves and appressed hairs (E. ramosus; E. strigosum of Gray) has a similar range and season of bloom. Both soon grow hoary-headed after they have been fertilized by countless insects crawling over them (Erigeron = early old). That either of these plants, or the pinkish, small-flowered, strong-scented SALT-MARSH FLEABANE (Pluchea camphorata), drive away fleas, is believed only by those who have not used them dried, reduced to powder, and sprinkled in kennels, from which, however, they have been known to drive away dogs.
GROUNDSEL-BUSH or -TREE; PENCIL-TREE(Baccharis halimifolia) Thistle family
Flower-heads: White or yellowish tubular florets, 1 to 5 in peduncled clusters. Staminate and pistillate clusters on different shrubs; the former almost round at first, the latter conspicuous only when seeding; then their pappus is white, and about 1/3 in. long. Stem: A smooth, branching shrub, 3 to 10 ft. high. Leaves: Thick, lower ones ovate to wedge-shaped, coarsely angular-toothed; upper ones smaller, few-toothed or entire. Preferred Habitat: Salt marshes, tidewater streams, often far from the coast. Flowering Season: September-November Distribution: The Atlantic and Gulf coasts from Maine to Texas.
When the little bright white, silky cockades, clustered at the ends of the branches, appear on a female groundsel-bush in autumn, our eyes are attracted to the shrub for the first time. But had not small pollen carriers discovered it weeks before, the scaly, glutinous cups would hold no charming, plumed seeds ready to ride on autumn gales. Self-fertilization has been guarded against by precarious means, but the safest of all devices - separation of the sexes on distinct plants. These are absolutely dependent, of course, on insect messengers - not visitors merely. Bees, which always show less inclination to dally from one species of flower to another than any other guests, and more intelligent directness of purpose when out for business are the groundsel-bush's truest benefactors. This is the only shrub among the multitudinous composite clan that most of us are ever likely to see.
PEARLY or LARGE-FLOWERED EVERLASTING; IMMORTELLE; SILVER LEAF;MOONSHINE; COTTON-WEED; NONE-SO-PRETTY
(Anaphalis margaritacea; Antennaria margaritacea of Gray)Thistle family
Flower-heads - Numerous pearly-white scales of the involucre holding tubular florets only; borne in broad, rather flat, compound corymbs at the summit. Stem: Cottony, to 3 ft. high, leafy to the top. Leaves: Upper ones small, narrow, linear; lower ones broader, lance-shaped, rolled backward, more or less woolly beneath. Preferred Habitat - Dry fields, hillsides, open woods, uplands. Flowering Season - July-September. Distribution - North Carolina, Kansas, and California, far north.
When the small, white, overlapping scales of an everlasting's oblong involucre expand stiff and straight, each pert little flower-head resembles nothing so much as a miniature pond lily, only what would be a lily's yellow stamens are in this case the true flowers, which become brown in drying. It will be noticed that these tiny florets, so well protected in the center, are of two different kinds, separated on distinct heads: the female florets with a tubular, five-cleft corolla, a two-cleft style, and a copious pappus of hairy bristles; the staminate, or male, florets more slender, the anthers tailed at the base. Self-fertilization being, of course, impossible under such an arrangement, the florets are absolutely dependent upon little winged pollen carriers, whose sweet reward is well protected for them from pilfering ants by the cottony substance on the wiry stem, a device successfully employed by thistles also (q.v.).
An imaginary blossom that never fades has been the dream of poets from Milton's day; but seeing one, who loves it? Our amaranth has the aspect of an artificial flower - stiff, dry, soulless, quite in keeping with the decorations on the average farmhouse mantelpiece. Here it forms the most uncheering of winter bouquets, or a wreath about flowers made from the lifeless hair of some dear departed.
In open, rocky places, moist or dry, the CLAMMY EVERLASTING, SWEET BALSAM, OR WINGED CUDWEED (Gnaphalium decurrens) prefers to dwell. A wholesome fragrance, usually mingled with that of sweet fern, pervades its neighborhood. Its yellowish-white little flower-heads clustered at the top of an erect stem, and its pale sage-green leaves, densely woolly beneath, the lower ones seeming to run along the stem, need no further description: every one knows the common everlasting. Its right to the Greek generic name, meaning a lock of wool, no one will dispute. From Pennsylvania and Arizona, north to Nova Scotia and British Columbia, its amaranthine flowers are displayed from July to September, the staminate and the pistillate heads on distinct plants. Many insect visitors approach the flowers; some, like the bees, are working for them in transferring pollen; others, like the ants, which are trying to steal nectar, usually getting killed on the sticky, cottony stem; and, hovering near, ever conspicuous among the larger visitors, is the beautiful hunter's butterfly (Pyrameis huntera), to be distinguished from its sister the painted lady, always seen about thistles, by the two large eye-like spots on the under side of the hind wings. What are these butterflies doing about their chosen plants? Certainly the minute florets of the everlasting offer no great inducements to a creature that lives only on nectar. But that cocoon, compactly woven with silk and petals, which hangs from the stem, tells the story of the hunter's butterfly's presence. A brownish-drab chrysalis, or a slate-colored and black-banded little caterpillar with tufts of hairs on its back, and pretty red and white dots on the dark stripes, shows our butterfly in the earlier stages of its existence, when the everlastings form its staple diet.
When the hepatica, arbutus, saxifrage, and adder's tongue are running for first place among the earliest spring flowers, another modest little competitor joins the race - the DWARF EVERLASTING (Antennaria plantaginifolia), also known as PLANTAIN-LEAVED, MOUSE-EAR, SPRING or EARLY EVERLASTING, WHITE PLANTAIN, PUSSY-TOES and LADIES' TOBACCO. From March to June, in different parts of its wide range, rocky fields, hillsides, and dry, open woods are whitened with broad patches of it, formed by runners; the fertile plants from six to eighteen inches high; the male plants, in distinct patches, smaller throughout. At the base the tufted leaves, which are green on the upper side, but silvery beneath, often woolly when young, are broadly oval or spatulate, the upper leaves oblong to lance-shaped, seated on the woolly stem. Charming little rosettes remain all winter, ready to send up the first flowers displayed by the vast host of composites. Several little heads of fertile florets, resembling tufts of silvery-white silk, are set in pale-greenish cups in a broad cluster at the top of the stem; the staminate florets in whiter cups with more rounded scales. Small bees, chiefly those of the Andrena and Halictus tribe, and many flies, attend to transferring pollen. Our friend, the hunter's butterfly, also hovers near. Range from Labrador to the Gulf of Mexico, westward to Nebraska.
YARROW; MILFOIL; OLD MAN'S PEPPER; NOSEBLEED(Achillea Millefolium) Thistle family
Flower-heads - Grayish-white, rarely pinkish, in a hard, close, flat-topped, compound cluster. Ray florets 4 to 6, pistillate, fertile; disk florets yellow, afterward brown, perfect, fertile. Stem: Erect, from horizontal rootstalk, 1 to 2 ft. high, leafy, sometimes hairy. Leaves: Very finely dissected (Millefolium = thousand leaf), narrowly oblong in outline. Preferred Habitat - Waste land, dry fields, banks, roadsides. Flowering Season - June-November. Distribution - Naturalized from Europe and Asia throughout North America.
Everywhere this commonest of common weeds confronts us; the compact, dusty-looking clusters appearing not by waysides only, around the world, but in the mythology, folklore, medicine, and literature of many peoples. Chiron, the centaur, who taught its virtues to Achilles that he might make an ointment to heal his Myrmidons wounded in the siege of Troy, named the plant for this favorite pupil, giving his own to the beautiful blue corn-flower (Centaurea Cyanus). As a love-charm; as an herb-tea brewed by crones to cure divers ailments, from loss of hair to the ague; as an inducement to nosebleed for the relief of congestive headache; as an ingredient of an especially intoxicating beer made by the Swedes, it is mentioned in old books. Nowadays we are satisfied merely to admire the feathery masses of lace-like foliage formed by young plants, to whiff the wholesome, nutty, autumnal odor of its flowers, or to wonder at the marvelous scheme it employs to overrun the earth.
Like the daisy, each small flower in a cluster, as symmetrically arranged as brain coral, is made up of a large number of minute but perfect florets, suited to attract insects by making a better show than each could do alone, and by offering them accessible feeding places close together, where they may feast with minimum loss of time. Simultaneous cross-fertilization of many florets must be effected by every visitor crawling over a cluster. The florets in each disk open in regular array toward the centers. At the expense of stamens, which are absent in the grayish-white ray florets, they have attained their development, another instance of "progress by loss" from the evolutionary standpoint. By prolonging its season of bloom to get relief from the fierce competition for insect visitors in midsummer; by increase through seeds, and runners too; by contenting itself with neglected corners of the earth, the yarrow gives us many valuable lessons on how to succeed.
DOG'S or FETID CAMOMILE; MAYWEED; PIG-STY DAISY; DILLWEED;DOG-FENNEL
(Anthemis Cotula; Maruta Cotula of Gray) Thistle family
Flower-heads - Like smaller daisies, about 1 in. broad; 10 to 18 white, notched, neutral ray florets around a convex or conical yellow disk, whose florets are fertile, containing both stamens and pistil, their tubular corollas 5-cleft. Stem: Smooth, much branched, 1 to 2 ft. high, leafy, with unpleasant odor and acrid taste. Leaves: Very finely dissected into slender segments. Preferred Habitat - Roadsides, dry wasteland, sandy fields. Flowering Season - June-November. Distribution - Throughout North America, except in circumpolar regions.
"Naturalized from Europe, and widely distributed as a weed in Asia, Africa, and Australasia" (Britton and Brown's "Flora"). Little wonder the camomile encompasses the earth, for it imitates the triumphant daisy, putting into practice those business methods of the modern department store, by which the composite horde have become the most successful strugglers for survival.
The unpleasant odor given forth by this bushy little plant repels bees and other highly organized insects; not so flies, which, far from objecting to a fetid smell, are rather attracted by it. They visit the camomile in such numbers as to be the chief fertilizers. As the development of bloom proceeds toward the center, the disk becomes conical, to present the newly opened florets, where a fly alighting on it must receive pollen, to be transferred as he crawls and flies to another head. After fertilization the white rays droop. Dog, used as a prefix by several of the plant's folk names, implies contempt for its worthlessness. It is quite another species, the GARDEN CAMOMILE (A. nobilis) which furnishes the apothecary with those flowers which, when steeped into a bitter aromatic tea, have been supposed for generations to make a superior tonic and blood purifier.
Not so common a plant here, but almost as widespread as the preceding species, is the similar, but not fetid, CORN or FIELD CAMOMILE (A. arvensis), a pest to European farmers. Both are closely related to the garden FEVERFEW, FEATHERFEW, OR PELLITORY (Chrysanthemum Parthenium), which escapes from cultivation whenever it can into waste fields and roadsides.
(Chrysanthemum Leucanthemum) Thistle family
Flower-heads - Disk florets yellow, tubular, 4 or 5 toothed, containing stamens and pistil; surrounded by white ray florets, which are pistillate, fertile. Stem: Smooth, rarely branched, to 3 ft. high. Leaves: Mostly oblong in outline, coarsely toothed and divided. Preferred Habitat - Meadows, pastures, roadsides, wasteland. Flowering Season - May-November. Distribution - Throughout the United States and Canada; not so common in the South and West.
Myriads and myriads of daisies, whitening our fields as if a belated blizzard had covered them with a snowy mantle in June, fill the farmer with dismay, the flower-lover with rapture. When vacation days have come; when chains and white-capped old women are to be made of daisies by happy children turned out of schoolrooms into meadows; when pretty maids, like Goethe's Marguerite, tell their fortunes by the daisy "petals;" when music bubbles up in a cascade of ecstasy from the throats of bobolinks nesting among the daisies, timothy, and clover; when the blue sky arches over the fairest scenes the year can show, and all the world is full of sunshine and happy promises of fruition, must we Americans always go to English literature for a song to fit our joyous mood?
"When daisies pied, and violets blue,And lady-smocks all silver white,And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue,Do paint the meadows with delight-"
sang Shakespeare. His lovely suggestion of an English spring recalls no familiar picture to American minds. No more does Burns's
"Wee, modest crimson-tippit flower."
Shakespeare, Burns, Chaucer, Wordsworth, and all the British poets who have written familiar lines about the daisy, extolled a quite different flower from ours - Bellis perennis, the little pink and white blossom that hugs English turf as if it loved it - the true day's-eye, for it closes at nightfall and opens with the dawn.
Now, what is the secret of the large, white daisy's triumphal conquest of our territory? A naturalized immigrant from Europe and Asia, how could it so quickly take possession? In the over-cultivated Old World no weed can have half the chance for unrestricted colonizing that it has in our vast unoccupied area. Most of our weeds are naturalized foreigners, not natives. Once released from the harder conditions of struggle at home (the seeds being safely smuggled in among the ballast of freight ships, or hay used in packing), they find life here easy, pleasant; as if to make up for lost time, they increase a thousandfold. If we look closely at a daisy - and a lens is necessary for any but the most superficial acquaintance - we shall see that, far from being a single flower, it is literally a host in itself. Each of the so-called white "petals" is a female floret, whose open corolla has grown large, white, and showy, to aid its sisters in advertising for insect visitors - a prominence gained only by the loss of its stamens. The yellow center is composed of hundreds of minute tubular florets huddled together in a green cup as closely as they can be packed. Inside each of these tiny yellow tubes stand the stamens, literally putting their heads together. As the pistil within the ring of stamens develops and rises through their midst, two little hair brushes on its tip sweep the pollen from their anthers as a rounded brush would remove the soot from a lamp chimney. Now the pollen is elevated to a point where any insect crawling over the floret must remove it. The pollen gone, the pistil now spreads its two arms, that were kept tightly closed together while any danger of self-fertilization lasted. Their surfaces become sticky, that pollen brought from another flower may adhere to them. Notice that the pistils in the white ray florets have no hairbrushes on their tips, because, no stamens being there, there is no pollen to be swept out. Because daisies are among the most conspicuous of flowers, and have facilitated dining for their visitors by offering them countless cups of refreshment that may be drained with a minimum loss of time, almost every insect on wings alights on them sooner or later. In short, they run their business on the principle of a cooperative department store. Immense quantities of the most vigorous, because cross-fertilized, seed being set in every patch, small wonder that our fields are white with daisies - a long and a merry life to them!
Since all flowers must once have passed through a white stage before attaining gay colors, so evolution teaches, it is not surprising that occasional reversions to the white type should be found even among the brightest-hued species. Again, some white flowers which are in a transition state show aspirations after color, often so marked in individuals as to mislead one into believing them products of a far advanced colored type. Also, pale colors blanch under a summer sun. These facts must be borne in mind, and the blue, pink, and yellow blossoms should be investigated before the reader despairs of identifying a flower not found in the white group.
"All variations which render the blossoms more attractive, either by scent, color, size of corolla, or quantity of nectar, make the insect visit more sure, and therefore the production of seed more likely. Thus, the conspicuous blossoms secure descendants which inherit the special variations of their parents, and so, generation after generation, we have selections in favor of conspicuous flowers, where insects are at work. Their appreciation of color, because it has brought the blossom possessing it more immediately into their view, and more surely under their attention, has enabled them, through the ages, to be preparing the specimens upon which man now operates, he taking up the work where they have left it, selecting, inoculating, and hybridizing, according to his own rules of taste, and developing a beauty which insects alone could never have evolved. His are the finishing touches, his the apparent effects, yet no less is it true, that the results of his floriculture would never have been attainable without insect helpers. It is equally certain, that the beautiful perfume, and the nectar also, are, in their present development, the outcome of repeated insect selection, and here, it seems to me, we get an inkling of a deep mystery: Why is life, in all its forms, so dependent upon the fusion of two individual elements? Is it not, that thus the door of progress has been opened? If each alone had reproduced, itself all-in-all, advance would have been impossible, the insect and human florists and pomologists, like the improvers of animal races, would have had no platform for their operation, and not only the forms of life, but life itself would have been stereotyped unalterably, ever mechanically giving repetition to identical phenomena." - Frank R. Cheshire in "Bees and Bee-keeping."
GOLDEN CLUB(Orontium aquaticum) Arum family
Flowers - Bright yellow, minute, perfect, crowded on a spadix (club) 1 to 2 in. long; the scape, 6 in. to 2 ft. tall, flattened just below it; the club much thickened in fruit. Leaves: All from root, petioled, oblong-elliptic, dull green above, pale underneath, 5 to 12 in. long, floating or erect. Preferred Habitat - Shallow ponds, standing water, swamps. Flowering Season - April-May. Distribution - New England to the Gulf States, mostly near the coast.
A first cousin of cruel Jack-in-the-pulpit, the skunk cabbage, and the water-arum (q.v.), a poor relation also of the calla lily, the golden club seems to be denied part of its tribal inheritance - the spathe, corresponding to the pulpit in which Jack preaches, or to the lily's showy white skirt. In the tropics, where the lily grows, where insect life teems in myriads and myriads, and competition among the flowers for their visits is infinitely more keen than here, she has greater need to flaunt showy clothes to attract benefactors than her northern relatives. But the golden club, which looks something like a calla stripped of her lovely white robe, has not lacked protection for its little buds from the cold spring winds while any was needed. By the time we notice the plant in bloom, however, its bract-like spathe has usually fallen away, as if conscious that the pretty mosaic club of golden florets, so attractive in itself, was quite able to draw all the visitors needed without further help. Merely by crawling over the clubs, flies and midges cross-fertilize them.
PERFOLIATE BELLWORT; STRAW BELL(Uvularia perfoliala) Bunch-flower family
Flowers - Fragrant, pale yellow, about 1 in. long, drooping singly (rarely 2) from tips of branches; perianth narrow, bell-shaped, of 6 petal-like segments, rough within, spreading at the tip; 6 stamens; 3 styles united to the middle. Stem: 6 to 20 in. high, smooth, shining, forking about half way. Leaves: Apparently strung on the slender stem, oval, tapering at tip. Preferred Habitat - Moist, rich woods; thickets. Flowering Season - May-June. Distribution - Quebec to the Gulf of Mexico, west to Mississippi.
Hanging like a palate (uvula) from the roof of a mouth, according to imaginative Linnaeus, the little bellwort droops, and so modestly hides behind the leaf its footstalk pierces that the eye often fails to find it when so many more showy blossoms arrest attention in the May woods. Slight fragrance helps to guide the keen bumblebee to the pale yellow bell. The tips spreading apart very little and the flower being pendent, how is she to reach the nectar secreted at the base of each of its six divisions? Is it not more than probable that the inner surface is rough, as if dusted with yellow meal, to provide a foothold for her as she clings? Now securely hanging from within the inhospitable flower, her long tongue can easily drain the sweets, and in doing so she will receive pollen, to be deposited, in all probability, on the stigmatic style branches of the next bellwort entered.
With a more westerly range than the perfoliate species, the similar LARGE-FLOWERED BELLWORT (U. grandiflora) grows in like situations. Its greenish lemon-yellow flowers, an inch to an inch and a half long, appear from April to May, or when the female bumblebees, that fly before their lords, are the only insects large and strong enough to force an entrance. Mr. Trelease, who noted them on the flowers near Madison, Wisconsin, saw that one laden with pollen from another blossom came in contact with the three sticky branches of the style, protruding between the anthers, when she crawled between the anthers and sepals, as she must, to reach the nectar secreted at the base. But the linear anthers shedding their pollen longitudinally, there is a chance that the flower may fertilize itself should no bee arrive before a certain point is reached.
The SESSILE-LEAVED BELLWORT, or WILD OAT (U. sessifolia), as its name implies, has its thin, pale green leaves tapering at either end, seated on the stem, not surrounding it, or apparently strung on it. The smaller flower is cream colored. A sharply three-angled capsule about an inch long follows. Range from Minnesota and Arkansas to the Atlantic.
WILD YELLOW, MEADOW or FIELD LILY; CANADA LILY(Lilium Canadense) Lily family
Flowers - Yellow to orange-red, of a deeper shade within, and speckled with dark reddish-brown dots. One or several (rarely many) nodding on long peduncles from the summit. Perianth bell-shaped, of 6 spreading segments 2 to 3 in. long, their tips curved backward to the middle; 6 stamens, with reddish-brown linear anthers; 1 pistil, club-shaped; the stigma 3-lobed. Stem: 2 to 5 ft. tall, leafy, from a bulbous rootstock composed of numerous fleshy white scales. Leaves: Lance-shaped, to oblong; usually in whorls of fours to tens, or some alternate. Fruit: An erect, oblong, 3-celled capsule, the flat, horizontal seeds packed in 2 rows in each cavity. Preferred Habitat - Swamps, low meadows; moist fields. Flowering Season - June-July. Distribution - Nova Scotia to Georgia, westward beyond the Mississippi.
Not our gorgeous lilies that brighten the low-lying meadows in early summer with pendent, swaying bells; possibly not a true lily at all was chosen to illustrate the truth which those who listened to the Sermon on the Mount, and we, equally anxious, foolishly overburdened folk of to-day, so little comprehend.
"Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow;they toil not, neither do they spinAnd yet I say unto you,That even Solomon in all his glorywas not arrayed like one of these."
Opinions differ as to the lily of Scripture. Eastern peoples use the same word interchangeably for the tulip, anemone, ranunculus, iris, the water-lilies, and those of the field. The superb Scarlet Martagon Lily (L. chalcedonicum), grown in gardens here, is not uncommon wild in Palestine; but whoever has seen the large anemones there "carpeting every plain and luxuriantly pervading the land" is inclined to believe that Jesus, who always chose the most familiar objects in the daily life of His simple listeners to illustrate His teachings, rested His eyes on the slopes about Him glowing with anemones in all their matchless loveliness. What flower served Him then matters not at all. It is enough that scientists - now more plainly than ever before - see the universal application of the illustration the more deeply they study nature, and can include their "little brothers of the air" and the humblest flower at their feet when they say with Paul, "In God we live and move and have our being."
Tallest and most prolific of bloom among our native lilies, as it is the most variable in color, size, and form, the TURK'S CAP, or TURBAN LILY (L. superburn), sometimes nearly merges its identity into its Canadian sister's. Travelers by rail between New York and Boston know how gorgeous are the low meadows and marshes in July or August, when its clusters of deep yellow, orange, or flame-colored lilies tower above the surrounding vegetation. Like the color of most flowers, theirs intensifies in salt air. Commonly from three to seven lilies appear in a terminal group; but under skilful cultivation even forty will crown the stalk that reaches a height of nine feet where its home suits it perfectly; or maybe only a poor array of dingy yellowish caps top a shriveled stem when unfavorable conditions prevail. There certainly are times when its specific name seems extravagant.
Its range is from Maine to the Carolinas, westward to Minnesota and Tennessee. A well-conducted Turk's cap is not bell-shaped at maturity, like the Canada lily: it should open much farther, until the six points of its perianth curve so far backward beyond the middle as to expose the stamens for nearly their entire length. One of the purple-dotted divisions of the flower when spread out flat may measure anywhere from two and a half to four inches in length. Smooth, lance-shaped leaves, tapering at both ends, occur in whorls of threes to eights up the stem, or the upper ones may be alternate. Abundant food, hidden in a round, white-shingled storehouse under ground, nourishes the plant, and similarly its bulb-bearing kin, when emergency may require - a thrifty arrangement that serves them in good stead during prolonged drought and severe winters.
Why, one may ask, are some lilies radiantly colored and speckled; others, like the Easter lily, deep chaliced, white, spotless? Now, in all our lily kin nectar is secreted in a groove at the base of each of the six divisions of the flower, and upon its removal by that insect best adapted to come in contact with anthers and stigma as it flies from lily to lily depends all hope of perpetuating the lovely race. For countless ages it has been the flower's business to find what best pleased the visitors on whom so much depended. Some lilies decided to woo one class of insects; some, another. Those which literally set their caps for color-loving bees and butterflies whose long tongues could easily drain nectar deeply hidden from the mob for their special benefit, assumed gay hues, speckling the inner side of their spreading divisions, even providing lines as pathfinders to their nectaries in some cases, lest a visitor try to thrust in his tongue between the petal-like parts while standing on the outside, and so defeat their well-laid plan. It is almost pathetic to see how bright and spotted they are inside, that the visitor may not go astray. Thus we find the chief pollenizers of the Canada and the Turk's cap lilies to be specialized bees, the interesting upholsterers, or 1eaf-cutters, conspicuous among the throng. Nectar they want, of course; but the dark, rich pollen is needed also to mix with it for the food supply of a generation still unborn. Anyone who has smelled a lily knows how his nose looks afterward. The bees have no difficulty whatever in removing lily pollen and transferring it. So much for the colored lilies.
The long, white, trumpet-shape type of lily chooses for her lover the sphinx moth. For him she wears a spotless white robe - speckles would be superfluous - that he may see it shine in the dusk, when colored flowers melt into the prevailing blackness; for him she breathes forth a fragrance almost overwhelming at evening, to guide him to her neighborhood from afar; in consideration of his very long, slender tongue she hides her sweets so deep that none may rob him of it, taking the additional precaution to weld her six once separate parts together into a solid tube lest any pilferer thrust in his tongue from the side.
The common orange-tan DAY LILY (Hemerocallis fulva) and the commoner speckled, orange-red TIGER LILY (L. tigrinum) are not slow in seizing opportunities to escape from gardens into roadsides and fence corners.
YELLOW ADDER'S TONGUE; TROUT LILY; DOG-TOOTH "VIOLET"(Erythronium Americanum) Lily family
Flower - Solitary, pale russet yellow, rarely tinged with purple, slightly fragrant, 1 to 2 in. long, nodding from the summit of a footstalk 6 to 12 in. high, or about as tall as the leaves. Perianth bell-shaped, of 6 petal-like, distinct segments, spreading at tips, dark spotted within; 6 stamens; the club-shaped style with 3 short, stigmatic ridges. Leaves: 2, unequal, grayish green, mottled and streaked with brown or all green, oblong, 3 to 8 in. long, narrowing into clasping petioles. Preferred Habitat - Moist open woods and thickets, brooksides. Flowering Season - March-May Distribution - Nova Scotia to Florida, westward to the Mississippi.
Colonies of these dainty little lilies, that so often grow beside leaping brooks where and when the trout hide, justify at least one of their names; but they have nothing in common with the violet or a dog's tooth. Their faint fragrance rather suggests a tulip; and as for the bulb, which in some of the lily-kin has tooth-like scales, it is in this case a smooth, egg-shaped corm, producing little round offsets from its base. Much fault is also found with another name on the plea that the curiously mottled and delicately pencilled leaves bring to mind, not a snake's tongue, but its skin, as they surely do. Whoever sees the sharp purplish point of a young plant darting above ground in earliest spring, however, at once sees the fitting application of adder's tongue. But how few recognize their plant friends at all seasons of the year!
Every one must have noticed the abundance of low-growing spring flowers in deciduous woodlands, where, later in the year, after the leaves overhead cast a heavy shade, so few blossoms are to be found, because their light is seriously diminished. The thrifty adder's tongue, by laying up nourishment in its storeroom underground through the winter, is ready to send its leaves and flower upward to take advantage of the sunlight the still naked trees do not intercept, just as soon as the ground thaws. But the spring beauty, the rue-anemone, bloodroot, toothwort, and the first blue violet (palmata) among other early spring flowers, have not been slow to take advantage of the light either. Fierce competition, therefore, rages among them to secure visits from the comparatively few insects then flying - a competition so severe that the adder's tongue often has to wait until afternoon for the spring beauty to close before receiving a single caller. Hive-bees, and others only about half their size, of the Andrena and Halictus clans, the first to fly, the Bombylius frauds, and common yellow butterflies, come in numbers then. Guided by the speckles to the nectaries at the base of the flower, they must either cling to the stamens and style while they suck, or fall out. Thus cross-fertilization is commonly effected; but in the absence of insects the lily can fertilize itself. Crawling pilferers rarely think it worthwhile to slip and slide up the smooth footstalk and risk a tumble where it curves to allow the flower to nod - the reason why this habit of growth is so popular. The adder's tongue, which is extremely sensitive to the sunlight, will turn on its stalk to follow it, and expand in its warmth. At night it nearly closes.
A similar adder's tongue, bearing a white flower, purplish tinged on the outside, yellow at the base within to guide insects to the nectaries, is the WHITE ADDER'S TONGUE (E. albidum), rare in the Eastern States, but quite common westward as far as Texas and Minnesota.
YELLOW CLINTONIA(Clintonia borealis) Lily-of-the-valley family
Flowers - Straw color or greenish yellow, less than 1 in. long, 3 to 6 nodding on slender pedicels from the summit of a leafless scape 6 to 15 in. tall. Perianth of 6 spreading divisions, the 6 stamens attached; style, 3-lobed. Leaves: Dark, glossy, large, oval to oblong, 2 to 5 (usually 3), sheathing at the base. Fruit. Oval blue berries on upright pedicels. Preferred Habitat - Moist, rich, cool woods and thickets. Flowering Season - May-June. Distribution - From the Carolinas and Wisconsin far northward.
To name canals, bridges, city thoroughfares, booming factory towns after DeWitt Clinton seems to many appropriate enough; but why a shy little woodland flower? As fitly might a wee white violet carry down the name of Theodore Roosevelt to posterity! "Gray should not have named the flower from the Governor of New York," complains Thoreau. "What is he to the lovers of flowers in Massachusetts? If named after a man, it must be a man of flowers." So completely has Clinton, the practical man of affairs, obliterated Clinton, the naturalist, from the popular mind, that, were it not for this plant keeping his memory green, we should be in danger of forgetting the weary, overworked governor, fleeing from care to the woods and fields; pursuing in the open air the study which above all others delighted and refreshed him; revealing in every leisure moment a too-often forgotten side of his many-sided greatness.
INDIAN CUCUMBER-ROOT(Medeola Virginiana) Lily-of-the-valley family
Flowers - Greenish yellow, on fine, curving footstalks, in a loose cluster above a circle of leaves. Perianth of 6 wide-spread divisions about 1/4 in. long; 6 reddish-brown stamens; 3 long reddish-brown styles, stigmatic on inner side. Stem: 1 to 2 1/2 ft. high, unbranched, cottony when young. Leaves: Of flowering plants, in 2 whorls; lower whorl of 5 to 9 large, thin, oblong, taper-pointed leaves above the middle of stem; upper whorl of 3 to 5 small, oval, pointed leaves 1 to 2 in. long, immediately under flowers. Flowerless plants with a whorl at summit. Fruit: Round, dark-purple berries. Preferred Habitat - Moist woods and thickets. Flowering Season - May-June. Distribution - Nova Scotia and Minnesota, southward nearly to the Gulf of Mexico.
Again we see the leaves of a plant coming to the aid of otherwise inconspicuous flowers to render them more attractive. By placing themselves in a circle just below these little spidery blossoms of weak and uncertain coloring, some of the Indian cucumber's leaves certainly make them at least noticeable, if not showy. It would be short-sighted philanthropy on the leaves' part to help the flowers win insect wooers at the expense of the plant's general health; therefore those in the upper whorl are fewer and much smaller than the leaves in the lower circle, and a sufficient length of stem separates them to allow the sunlight and rain to conjure with the chlorophyll in the group below. While there is a chance of nectar being pilfered from the flowers by ants, the stem is cottony and ensnares their feet. In September, when small clusters of dark-purple berries replace the flowers, and rich tints dye the leaves, the plant is truly beautiful - of course to invite migrating birds to disperse its seeds. It is said the Indians used to eat the horizontal, white, fleshy rootstock, which has a flavor like a cucumber's.
CARRION-FLOWER(Smilax herbacea) Smilax family
Flowers - Carrion-scented, yellowish-green, 15 to 80 small, 6-parted ones clustered in an umbel on a long peduncle. Stem: Smooth, unarmed, climbing with the help of tendril-like appendages from the base of leafstalks. Leaves: Egg-shaped, heart-shaped, or rounded, pointed tipped, parallel-nerved, petioled. Fruit: Bluish-black berries. Preferred Habitat - Moist soil, thickets, woods, roadside fences. Flowering Season - April-June. Distribution - Northern Canada to the Gulf States, westward to Nebraska.
"It would be safe to say," says John Burroughs, "that there is a species of smilax with an unsavory name, that the bee does not visit, herbacea. The production of this plant is a curious freak of nature…. It would be a cruel joke to offer it to any person not acquainted with it, to smell. It is like the vent of a charnel-house." (Thoreau compared its odor to that of a dead rat in a wall!) "It is first cousin to the trilliums, among the prettiest of our native wild flowers," continues Burroughs, "and the same bad blood crops out in the purple trillium or birthroot."
Strange that so close an observer as Burroughs or Thoreau should not have credited the carrion-flower with being something more intelligent than a mere repellent freak! Like the purple trillium (q.v.), it has deliberately adapted itself to please its benefactors, the little green flesh flies so commonly seen about untidy butcher shops in summer. These, sharing with many beetles the unthankful task of removing putrid flesh and fowl from the earth, acting the part of scavengers for nature, are naturally attracted to carrion-scented flowers. Of these they have an ungrudged monopoly. But the purple trillium has an additional advantage in both smelling and looking like the same thing - a piece of raw meat past its prime. Bees and butterflies, with their highly developed aesthetic sense, ever delighting in beautiful colors, perfume, and nectar, naturally let such flowers as these alone - another object aimed at by them, for then the flies get all the pollen they can eat. Some they transfer, of course, from the larger staminate flowers to the smaller pistillate ones as they crawl over one umbel of the carrion-flower, then alight on another.
Presently fruit begins to set, and we can approach the luxuriant vine without offence to our noses. The beautiful glossy green foliage takes on resplendent tints in early autumn - again with interested motives, for are there not seeds within the little bluish-black berries, waiting for the birds to distribute them during their migration?
The vicious CATBRIER, GREENBRIER, or HORSEBRIER (S. rotundifolia), similar to the preceding, except that its four-angled stem is well armed with green prickles, its beautiful glossy, decorative leaves are more rounded, and its greenish flower umbels lack foul odor, scarcely needs description. Who has not encountered it in the roadside and woodland thickets, where it defiantly bars the way?
In the most inaccessible part of such a briery tangle, that rollicking polyglot, the yellow-breasted chat, loves to hide its nest. Indeed, many birds can say with Br'er Rabbit that they were "bred en bawn in a brier-patch." Throughout the eastern half of the United $tates and Upper Canada the catbrier displays its insignificant little blossoms from April to June for a miscellaneous lot of flies - insects which are content with the slightest floral attractions offered. The florist's staple vine popularly known as "SMILAX" (Myrslphyllum asparagoides), a native of the Cape of Good Hope, is not even remotely connected with true Smilaceae.
YELLOW STAR-GRASS(Hypoxis hirsuta; H. erecta of Gray) Amaryllis family
Flowers - Bright yellow within, greenish and hairy outside, about 1/2 in. across, 6-parted; the perianth divisions spreading, narrowly oblong; a few flowers at the summit of a rough, hairy scape 2 to 6 in. high. Leaves: All from an egg-shaped corm; mostly longer than scapes, slender, grass-like, more or less hairy. Preferred Habitat - Dry, open woods, prairies, grassy waste places, fields. Flowering Season - May-October. Distribution - From Maine far westward, and south to the Gulf of Mexico.
Usually only one of these little blossoms in a cluster on each plant opens at a time; but that one peers upward so brightly from among the grass it cannot well be overlooked. Sitting in a meadow sprinkled over with these yellow stars, we see coming to them many small bees - chiefly Halictus - to gather pollen for their unhatched babies' bread. Of course they do not carry all the pollen to their tunneled nurseries; some must often be rubbed off on the sticky pistil tip in the center of other stars. The stamens radiate, that self-fertilization need not take place except as a last extremity. Visitors failing, the little flower closes, bringing its pollen-laden anthers in contact with its own stigma.
BLACKBERRY LILY (Gemmingia Ciminensis; Pardanthus Chinensis of Gray) Iris family
Flowers - Deep orange color, speckled irregularly with crimson and purple within (Pardos = leopard; anthos = flower); borne in terminal, forked clusters. Perianth of 6 oblong, petal-like, spreading divisions; 6 stamens with linear anthers; style thickest above, with 3 branches. Stem: 1 1/2 to 4 ft. tall, leafy. Leaves: Like the iris; erect, folded blades, 8 to 10 in. long. Fruit: Resembling a blackberry; an erect mass of round, black, fleshy seeds, at first concealed in a fig-shaped capsule, whose 3 valves curve backward, and finally drop off. Preferred habitat - Roadsides and hills. Flowering Season - June-July. Distribution - Connecticut to Georgia, westward to Indiana and Missouri.
How many beautiful foreign flowers, commonly grown in our gardens here, might soon become naturalized Americans were we only generous enough to lift a few plants, scatter a few seeds over our fences into the fields and roadsides - to raise the bars of their prison, as it were, and let them free! Many have run away, to be sure. Once across the wide Atlantic, or wider Pacific, their passage paid (not sneaking in among the ballast like the more fortunate weeds), some are doomed to stay in prim, rigidly cultivated flower beds forever; others, only until a chance to bolt for freedom presents itself, and away they go. Lucky are they if every flower they produce is not picked before a single seed can be set.
This blackberry lily of gorgeous hue originally came from China. Escaping from gardens here and there, it was first reported as a wild flower at East Rock, Connecticut; other groups of vagabonds were met marching along the roadsides on Long Island; near Suffern, New York; then farther southward and westward, until it has already attained a very respectable range. Every plant has some good device for sending its offspring away from home to found new colonies, if man would but let it alone. Better still, give the eager travelers a lift!
LARGE YELLOW LADY'S SLIPPER; WHIPPOORWILL'S SHOE; YELLOW MOCCASINFLOWER(Cypripedium hirsutum; C. pubescens of Gray) Orchid family
Flower - Solitary, large, showy, borne at the top of a leafy stem to 2 ft. high. Sepals 3, 2 of them united, greenish or yellowish, striped with purple or dull red, very long, narrow; 2 petals, brown, narrower, twisting; the third an inflated sac, open at the top, 1 to 2 in. long, pale yellow, purple lined white hairs within; sterile stamen triangular; stigma thick. Leaves: Oval or elliptic, pointed, 3 to 5 in, long, parallel-nerved, sheathing. Preferred Habitat - Moist or boggy woods and thickets; hilly ground. Flowering Season - May-July. Distribution - Nova Scotia to Alabama, westward to Minnesota and Nebraska.
Swinging outward from a leaf-clasped stem, this orchid attracts us by its flaunted beauty and decorative form from tip to root, not less than the aesthetic little bees for which its adornment and mechanism are so marvelously adapted. Doubtless the heavy, oily odor is an additional attraction to them. Parallel purplish lines, converging toward the circular opening of the pale yellow, inflated pouch, guide the visitor into a spacious banquet-hall (labellum) such as the pink lady's slipper (q.v.) also entertains her guests in. Fine hairs within secrete tiny drops of fluid at their tips - a secretion which hardens into a brittle crust, like a syrup's, when it dries. Darwin became especially interested in this flower through a delightful correspondence with Professor Asa Gray, who was the first to understand it, and he finally secured a specimen to experiment on.
"I first introduced some flies into the labellum through the large upper opening," Darwin wrote, "but they were either too large or too stupid, and did not crawl out properly. I then caught and placed within the labellum a very small bee which seemed of about the right size, namely Andrena parvula…. The bee vainly endeavored to crawl out again the same way it entered, but always fell backwards, owing to the margins being inflected. The labellum thus acts like one of those conical traps with the edges turned inwards, which are sold to catch beetles and cockroaches in London kitchens. It could not creep out through the slit between the folded edges of the basal part of the labellum, as the elongated, triangular, rudimentary stamen here closes the passage. Ultimately it forced its way out through one of the small orifices close to one of the anthers, and was found when caught to be smeared with the glutinous pollen. I then put the same bee into another labellum; and again it crawled out through one of the small orifices, always covered with pollen. I repeated the operation five times, always with the same result. I afterwards cut away the labellum, so as to examine the stigma, and found its whole surface covered with pollen. It should be noticed that an insect in making its escape, must first brush past the stigma and afterwards one of the anthers, so that it cannot leave pollen on the stigma, until being already smeared with pollen from one flower it enters another; and thus there will be a good chance of cross-fertilization between two distinct plants…. Thus the use of all parts of the flower, - namely, the inflected edges, or the polished inner sides of the labellum; the two orifices and their position close to the anthers and stigma, - the large size of the medial rudimentary stamen, - are rendered intelligible. An insect which enters the labellum is thus compelled to crawl out by one of the two narrow passages, on the sides of which the pollen-masses and stigma are placed."
These common orchids, which are not at all difficult to naturalize in a well-drained, shady spot in the garden, should be lifted with a good ball of earth and plenty of leaf-mould immediately after flowering. Here we can note little American Andrena bees unwittingly becoming the flower's slaves. Several species of exotic cypripediums are so common in the city florist's shops every one has an opportunity to study their marvelous structure.
The similar SMALL YELLOW LADY'S SLIPPER (C. parviflorum), a delicately fragrant orchid about half the size of its big sister, has a brighter yellow pouch, and occasionally its sepals and petals are purplish. As they usually grow in the same localities, and have the same blooming season, opportunities for comparison are not lacking. This fairer, sweeter, little orchid roams westward as far as the State of Washington.
YELLOW FRINGED ORCHIS(Habenaria ciliaris) Orchid family
Flowers - Bright yellow or orange, borne in a showy, closely set, oblong spike, 3 to 6 in. long. The lip of each flower copiously fringed; the slender spur 1 to 1 1/2 in. long; similar to white fringed orchis (q.v.); and between the two, intermediate pale yellow hybrids may be found. Stem: Slender, leafy, 1 to 2 1/2 feet high. Leaves: Lance-shaped, clasping. Preferred Habitat - Moist meadows and sandy bogs. Flowering Season - July-August. Distribution - Vermont to Florida; Ontario to Texas.
Where this brilliant, beautiful orchid and its lovely white sister grow together in the bog - which cannot be through a very wide range, since one is common northward, where the other is rare, and vice versa - the yellow fringed orchis will be found blooming a few days later. In general structure the plants closely resemble each other. Their similar method of enforcing payment for a sip of nectar concealed in a tube so narrow and deep none but a sphinx moth or butterfly may drain it all (though large bumblebees occasionally get some too, from brimming nectaries) has been described (q.v.), to which the interested reader is referred. Both these orchids have their sticky discs projecting unusually far, as if raised on a pedicel - an arrangement which indicates that they "are to be stuck to the face or head of some nectar-sucking insect of appropriate size that visits the flowers," wrote Dr. Asa Gray over forty years ago. Various species of hawk moths, common in different parts of our area, of course have tongues of various lengths, and naturally every visitor does not receive his load of pollen on the same identical spot. At dusk, when sphinx moths begin their rounds, it will be noticed that the white and yellow flowers remain conspicuous long after blossoms of other colors have melted into the general darkness. Such flowers as cater to these moths, if they have fragrance, emit it then most strongly, as an additional attraction. Again, it will be noticed that few such flowers provide a strong projecting petal-platform for visitors to alight on; that would be superfluous, since sphinx moths suck while hovering over a tube, with their wings in exceedingly rapid motion, just like a hummingbird, for which the larger species are so often mistaken at twilight. This deep-hued orchid apparently attracts as many butterflies as sphinx moths, which show a predilection for the white species.
>From Ontario and the Mississippi eastward, and southward to the Gulf, the TUBERCLED or SMALL PALE GREEN ORCHIS (H. flava) lifts a spire of inconspicuous greenish-yellow flowers, more attractive to the eye of the structural botanist than to the aesthete. It blooms in moist places, as most orchids do, since water with which to manufacture nectar enough to fill their deep spurs is a prime necessity. Orchids have arrived at that pinnacle of achievement that it is impossible for them to fertilize themselves. More than that, some are absolutely sterile to their own pollen when it is applied to their stigmas artificially with insect aid, however, a single plant has produced over 1,000,700 seeds. No wonder, then, that, as a family, they have adopted the most marvelous blandishments and mechanism in the whole floral kingdom to secure the visits of that special insect to which each is adapted, and, having secured him, to compel him unwittingly to do their bidding. In the steaming tropical jungles, where vegetation is luxuriant to the point of suffocation, and where insect life swarms in mvriads undreamed of here, we can see the best of reasons for orchids mounting into trees and living on air to escape strangulation on the ground, and for donning larger and more gorgeous apparel to attract attention in the fierce competition for insect trade waged about them. Here, where the struggle for survival is incomparably easier, we have terrestrial orchids, small, and quietly clad, for the most part.
Having the gorgeous, exotic air plants of the hothouse in mind, this little tubercled orchis seems a very poor relation indeed. In June and July, about a week before the ragged orchis comes out, we may look for this small, fringeless sister. Its clasping leaves, which decrease in size as they ascend the stem (not to shut off the light and rain from the lower ones), are parallel-veined, elliptic, or, the higher ones, lance-shaped. A prominent tubercle, or palate, growing upward from the lip, almost conceals the entrance to the nectary. and makes a side approach necessary. Why? Usually an insect has free, straight access down the center of a flower's throat, but here he cannot have it. A slender tongue must be directed obliquely from above into the spur, and it will enter the discal groove as a thread enters the eye of a needle. By this arrangement the tongue must certainly come in contact with one of the sticky discs to which an elongated pollen gland is attached. The cement on the disc hardening even while the visitor sucks, the pollen gland is therefore drawn out, because firmly attached to his tongue. At first the pollen mass stands erect on the proboscis; but in the fraction of a moment which it takes a butterfly to flit to another blossom, it has bent forward automatically into the exact position required for it to come in contact with the sticky stigma of the next tubercled orchis entered, where it will be broken off. Now we understand the use of the palate. Butterfly collectors often take specimens with remnants of these pollen stumps stuck to their tongues. In his classical work "On the Fertilization of Orchids by Insects," Darwin tells of finding a mottled rustic butterfly whose proboscis was decorated with eleven pairs of pollen masses, taken from as many blossoms of the pyramidal orchis. Have these flowers no mercy on their long-suffering friends? A bee with some orchid pollen-stumps attached to its head was once sent to Mr. Frank Cheshire, the English expert who had just discovered some strange bee diseases. He was requested to name the malady that had caused so abnormal an outgrowth on the bee's forehead!
Often found growing in the same bog with the tubercled species is the RAGGED or FRINGED GREEN ORCHIS (H. lacera), so inconspicuous we often overlook it unawares. Examine one of the dingy, greenish-yellow flowers that are set along the stern in a spike to make all the show in the world possible, each with its three-parted, spreading lip finely and irregularly cut into thread-like fringe to hail the passing butterfly, and we shall see that it, too, has made ingenious provision against the draining of its spur by a visitor without proper pay for his entertainment. Even without the gay color that butterflies ever delight in, these flowers contain so much nectar in their spurs, neither butterflies nor large bumblebees are long in hunting them out. In swamps and wet woodland from Nova Scotia to Georgia, and westward to the Mississippi, the ragged orchis blooms in June or July.
LARGE YELLOW POND or WATER LILY; COW LILY; SPATTER-DOCK(Nymphaea advena; Nupisar advena of Gray) Water-lily family
Flowers - Yellow or greenish outside, rarely purple tinged, round, depressed, 1 1/2 to 3 1/2 in. across. Sepals 6, unequal, concave, thick, fleshy; petals stamen-like, oblong, fleshy, short; stamens very numerous, in 5 to 7 rows; pistil compounded of many carpels, its stigmatic disc pale red or yellow, with 12 to 24 rays. Leaves: Floating, or some immersed, large, thick, sometimes a foot long, egg-shaped or oval, with a deep cleft at base, the lobes rounded. Preferred Habitat - Standing water, ponds, slow streams. Flowering Season - April-September. Distribution - Rocky Mountains eastward, south to the Gulf of Mexico, north to Nova Scotia.
Comparisons were ever odious. Because the yellow water lily has the misfortune to claim relationship with the sweet-scented white species (q.v.), must it never receive its just meed of praise? Hiawatha's canoe, let it be remembered,
"Floated on the riverLike a yellow leaf in autumn,Like a yellow water-lily."
But even those who admire Longfellow's lines see no beauty in the golden flower-bowls floating among the large, lustrous, leathery leaves.
By assuming the functions of petals, the colored sepals advertise for insects. Beetles, which answer the first summons to a free lunch, crowd in as the sepals begin to spread. In the center the star-like disc, already sticky, is revealed, and on it any pollen they have carried with them from older flowers necessarily rubs off. At first, or while the stigma is freshly receptive to pollen, an insect cannot make his entrance except by crawling over this large, sticky plate. At this time, the anthers being closed, self-fertilization is impossible. A day or two later, after the pollen begins to ripen on countless anthers, the flower is so widely open that visitors have no cause to alight in the center; anyway, no harm could result if they did, cross-fertilization having been presumably accomplished. While beetles (especially Donacia) are ever abundant visitors, it is likely they do much more harm than good. So eagerly do they gnaw both petals and stamens, which look like loops of narrow yellow ribbon within the bowl of an older flower, that, although they must carry some pollen to younger flowers as they travel on, it is probable they destroy ten times more than their share. Flies transport pollen too. The smaller bees (Halictus and Andrena chiefly) find some nectar secreted on the outer faces of the stamen-like petals, which they mix with pollen to make their babies' bread.
The very beautiful native AMERICAN LOTUS (Nelumbo lutea), also known as WATER CHINKAPIN or WANKAPIN, found locally in Ontario, the Connecticut River, some lakes, slow streams, and ponds in New Jersey, southward to Florida, and westward to Michigan and Illinois, Indian Territory and Louisiana, displays its pale yellow flowers in July and August. They measure from four to ten inches across, and suggest a yellow form of the sweet-scented white water lily; but there are fewer petals, gradually passing into an indefinite number of stamens. The great round, ribbed leaves, smooth above, hairy beneath, may be raised high above the water, immersed or floating. Both leaf and flower stalks contain several large air canals. The flowers which are female when they expand far enough for a pollen-laden guest to crawl into the center, are afterward male, securing cross-fertilization by this means, just as the yellow pond lily does; only the small bees must content themselves here with pollen only - a diet that pleases the destructive beetles and the flies (Syrphidae) perfectly.
Japanese artists especially have taught us how much of the beauty of a Nelumbo we should lose if it ripened its decorative seed-vessel below the surface as the sweet-scented white water lily does. This flat-topped receptacle, held erect, has its little round nuts imbedded in pits in its surface, ready to be picked out by aquatic birds, and distributed by them in their wanderings. Both seeds and tubers are farinaceous and edible. In some places it is known the Indians introduced the plant for food. Professor Charles Goodyear has written an elaborate, plausible argument, illustrated, with many reproductions of sculpture, pottery, and mural painting in the civilized world of the ancients to prove that all decorative ornamental design has been evolved from the sacred Egyptian lotus (Nelumbo Nelumubo), still revered throughout the East (q.v.).
MARSH MARIGOLD; MEADOW-GOWAN; AMERICAN COWSLIP(Caltha palustris) Crowfoot family'
Flowers - Bright, shining yellow, 1 to 1 1/2 in. across, a few in terminal and axillary groups. No petals; usually 5 (often more) oval, petal-like sepals; stamens numerous; many pistils (carpels) without styles. Stem: Stout, smooth, hollow, branching, 1 to 2 ft. high. Leaves: Mostly from root, rounded, broad, and heart-shaped at base, or kidney-shaped, upper ones almost sessile, lower ones on fleshy petioles. Preferred Habitat - Springy ground, low meadows, swamps, river banks, ditches. Flowering Season - April-June. Distribution - Carolina to Iowa, the Rocky Mountains, and very far north.
Not a true marigold, and even less a cowslip, it is by these names that this flower, which looks most like a buttercup, will continue to be called, in spite of the protests of scientific classifiers. Doubtless the first of these folk-names refers to its use in church festivals during the Middle Ages as one of the blossoms devoted to the Virgin Mary.
"And winking Mary-buds beginTo ope their golden eyes,"
sing the musicians in "Cymbeline." Whoever has seen the watery Avon meadows in April, yellow and twinkling with marsh marigolds when "the lark at heaven's gate sings," appreciates why the commentators incline to identify Shakespeare's Mary-buds with the Caltha of these and our own marshes.
Not for poet's rhapsodies, but for the more welcome hum of small bees and flies intent on breakfasting do these flowers open in the morning sunshine. Nectar secreted on the sides of each of the many carpels invites a conscientious bee all around the center, on which she should alight to truly benefit her entertainer. Honey bees may be seen sucking only enough nectar to aid them in storing pollen; bumblebees feasting for their own benefit, not their descendants'; little mining bees and quantities of flies also, although not many species are represented among the visitors, owing to the flower's early blooming season. Always conspicuous among the throng are the brilliant Syrphidae flies - gorgeous little creatures which show a fondness for blossoms as gaily colored as their own lustrous bodies. Indeed, these are the principal pollinators.
Some country people who boil the young plants declare these "greens" are as good as spinach. What sacrilege to reduce crisp, glossy, beautiful leaves like these to a slimy mess in a pot! The tender buds, often used in white sauce as a substitute for capers, probably do not give it the same piquancy where piquancy is surely most needed - on boiled mutton, said to be Queen Victoria's favorite dish. Hawked about the streets in tight bunches, the marsh-marigold blossoms - with half their yellow sepals already dropped - and the fragrant, pearly-pink arbutus are the most familiar spring wild flowers seen in Eastern cities.
(Ranunculus acris) Crowfoot family
Flowers - Bright, shining yellow, about 1 in. across, numerous, terminating long slender footstalks. Calyx of 5 spreading sepals; corolla of 5 petals; yellow stamens and carpels. Stem: Erect, branched above, hairy (sometimes nearly smooth), 2 to 3 feet tall, from fibrous roots. Leaves: In a tuft from the base, long petioled, of 3 to 7 divisions cleft into numerous lobes; stem leaves nearly sessile, distant, 3-parted. Preferred Habitat - Meadows, fields, roadsides, grassy places. Flowering Season - May-September. Distribution - Naturalized from Europe in Canada and the United States; most common North.
What youngster has not held these shining golden flowers under his chin to test his fondness for butter? Dandelions and marsh-marigolds may reflect their color in his clear skin too, but the buttercup is every child's favorite. When
"Cuckoo-buds of yellow hueDo paint the meadows with delight,"
daisies, pink clover, and waving timothy bear them company here; not the "daisies pied," violets, and lady-smocks of Shakespeare's England. How incomparably beautiful are our own meadows in June! But the glitter of the buttercup, which is as nothing to the glitter of a gold dollar in the eyes of a practical farmer, fills him with wrath when this immigrant takes possession of his pastures. Cattle will not eat the acrid, caustic plant - a sufficient reason for most members of the Ranunculaceae to stoop to the low trick of secreting poisonous or bitter juices. Self-preservation leads a cousin, the garden monk's hood, even to murderous practices. Since children will put everything within reach into their mouths, they should be warned against biting the buttercup's stem and leaves, that are capable of raising blisters. "Beggars use the juice to produce sores upon their skin," says Mrs. Creevy. A designer might employ these exquisitely formed leaves far more profitably.
This and the bulbous buttercup, having so much else in common, have also the same visitors. "It is a remarkable fact," says Sir John Lubbock, "as Aristotle long ago mentioned, that in most cases bees confine themselves in each journey to a single species of plant; though in the case of some very nearly allied forms this is not so; for instance, it is stated on good authority (Muller) that Ranunculus acris, R. repens, and R. bulbosus are not distinguished by the bees, or at least are visited indifferently by them, as is also the case with two of the species of clover." From what we already know of the brilliant Syrphidae flies' fondness for equally brilliant colors, it is not surprising to find great numbers of them about the buttercups, with bees, wasps, and beetles - upwards of sixty species. Modern scientists believe that the habit of feeding on flowers has called out the color-sense of insects and the taste for bright colors, and that sexual selection has been guided by this taste. The most unscientific among us soon finds evidence on every hand that flowers and insects have developed together through mutual dependence.
By having its nourishment thriftily stored up underground all winter, the BULBOUS BUTTERCUP (R. bulbosus) is able to steal a march on its fibrous-rooted sister that must accumulate hers all spring; consequently it is first to flower, coming in early May, and lasting through June. It is a low and generally more hairy plant, but closely resembling the tall buttercup in most respects, and, like it, a naturalized European immigrant now thoroughly at home in fields and roadsides in most sections of the United States and Canada.
Much less common is the CREEPING BUTTERCUP (R. repens), which spreads by runners until it forms large patches in fields and roadsides, chiefly in the Eastern States. Its leaves, which are sometimes blotched, are divided into three parts, the terminal one, often all three, stalked. May-July.
First to bloom in the vicinity of New York (from March to May) is the HISPID BUTTERCUP (R. hispidus), densely hairy when young. The leaves, which are pinnately divided into from three to five leaflets, cleft or lobed, chiefly arise on long petioles from a cluster of thickened fibrous roots. The flower may be only half an inch or an inch and a half across. It is found in dry woods and thickets throughout the eastern half of the United States; whereas the much smaller flowered BRISTLY BUTTERCUP (R. Pennsylvanicus) shows a preference for low-lying meadows and wet, open ground through a wider, more westerly range. Its stout, hollow, leafy stem, beset with stiff hairs, discourages the tongues of grazing animals. June-August.
Commonest of the early buttercups is the TUFTED BUTTERCUP (R. fascicularis), a little plant seldom a foot high, found in the woods and on rocky hillsides from Texas and Manitoba, east to the Atlantic, flowering in April or May. The long-stalked leaves are divided into from three to five parts; the bright yellow flowers, with rather narrow, distant petals, measure about an inch across. They open sparingly, usually only one or two at a time on each plant, to favor pollination from another one.
Scattered patches of the SWAMP or MARSH BUTTERCUP (P. septentrionalis) brighten low, rich meadows also with their-large satiny yellow flowers, whose place in the botany even the untrained eye knows at sight. The smooth, spreading plant sometimes takes root at the joints of its branches and sends forth runners, but the stems mostly ascend. The large lower mottled leaves are raised well out of the wet, or above the grass, on long petioles. They have three divisions, each lobed and cleft. From Georgia and Kentucky far northward this buttercup blooms from April to July, opening only a few flowers at a time-a method which may make it less showy, but more certain to secure cross-pollination between distinct plants.
The YELLOW WATER BUTTERCUP or CROWFOOT (R. deiphinifolius; R. multifidus of Gray) found blooming in ponds through the summer months, certainly justifies the family name derived from rana = a frog. Many other members grow in marshes, it is true, but this ranunculus lives after the manner of its namesake, sometimes immersed, sometimes stranded on the muddy shore. Two types of leaves occur on the same stem. Their waving filaments, which make the immersed leaves look fringy, take every advantage of what little carbonic acid gas is dissolved under the surface. Moreover, they are better adapted to withstand the water's pressure and possible currents than solid blades would be. The floating leaves which loll upon the surface to take advantage of the air and sunlight, expand three, four, or five divisions, variously lobed. On this plant we see one set of leaves perfectly adapted to immersion, and another set to aerial existence. The stem, which may measure several feet in length, roots at the joints when it can. Range from the Mississippi and Ontario eastward to the Atlantic Ocean.
The WHITE WATER-CROWFOOT (Batrachium trichophyllum; Ranunculus aquatilis of Gray) has its fine thread-like leaves entirely submerged; but the flowers, like a whale, as the old conundrum put it, come to the surface to blow. The latter are small, white, or only yellow at the base, where each petal bears a spot or little pit that serves as a pathfinder to the flies. When the water rises unusually high, the blossoms never open, but remain submerged, and fertilize themselves. Seen underwater, the delicate leaves, which are little more than forked hairs, spread abroad in dainty patterns; lifted cut of the water these flaccid filaments utterly collapse. In ponds and shallow, slow streams, this common plant flowers from June to September almost throughout the Union, the British Possessions north of us, and in Europe and Asia.
The WATER PLANTAIN SPEARWORT (K. obtusiusculus; R. a/isrnaefoiius of Gray) flecks the marshes from June to August with its small golden flowers, which the merest novice knows must be kin to the buttercup. The smooth, hollow stem, especially thick at the base, likes to root from the lower joints. A peculiarity of the lance-shaped or oblong lance-shaped leaves is that the lower ones have petioles so broad where they clasp the stem that they appear to be long blades suddenly contracted just above their base.
BARBERRY; PEPPERIDGE-BUSH(Berberis vulgaris) Barberry family
Flowers - Yellow, small, odor disagreeable, 6-parted, borne in drooping, many-flowered racemes from the leaf axils along arching twigs. Stem: A much branched, smooth, gray shrub, to 8 ft. tall, armed with sharp spines. Leaves: From the 3-pronged spines (thorns); oval or obovate, bristly edged. Fruit: Oblong, scarlet, acid berries. Preferred Habitat - Thickets; roadsides; dry or gravelly soil. Flowering Season - May-June. Distribution - Naturalized in New England and Middle States; less common in Canada and the West. Europe and Asia.
When the twigs of barberry bushes arch with the weight of clusters of beautiful bright berries in September, everyone must take notice of a shrub so decorative, which receives scant attention from us, however, when its insignificant little flowers are out. Yet these blossoms, small as they are, are up to a marvelous trick, quite as remarkable as the laurel's (q.v.) or the calopogon's (q.v.), to compel insects to do their bidding. Three of the six sepals, by their size and color, attend to the advertising, playing the part of a corolla; and partly by curving inward at the tip, partly by the drooping posture of the flower, help protect the stamens, pistil, and nectar glands within from rain. Did the flowers hang vertically, not obliquely, such curvature of the tips of sepals and petals would be unnecessary. Six stamens surround a pistil, but each of their six anthers, which are in reality little pollen boxes opening by trap-doors on either side, is tucked under the curving tip of a petal at whose base lie two orange-colored nectar glands. A small bee or fly enters the flower: what happens? To reach the nectar, he must probe between the bases of two exceedingly irritable stamens. The merest touch of a visitor's tongue against them releases two anthers, just as the nibbling mouse all unsuspectingly releases the wire from the hook of the wooden trap he is caught in. As the two stamens spring upward on being released, pollen instantly flies out of the trap-doors of the anther boxes on the bee, which suffers no greater penalty than being obliged to carry it to the stigma of another flower. So short are the stamens, it is improbable that a flower's pollen ever reaches its own stigma except through the occasional confused fumbling of a visitor. Usually he is so startled by the sudden shower of pollen that he flies away instantly.