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Wild Flowers

by Neltje Blanchan · English · Gutenberg #3003 · 1,011,851 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Wild Flowers

Author: Neltje Blanchan


        
Release date: January 1, 2002 [eBook #3003]
                Most recently updated: January 8, 2021

Language: English

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Credits: Etext prepared by Gerry Rising


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WILD FLOWERS ***
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Etext prepared by Gerry Rising.





WILD FLOWERS.
An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and Their Insect Visitors

By Neltje Blanchan




PREFACE

Surely a foreword of explanation is called for from one who has
the temerity to offer a surfeited public still another book on
wild flowers. Inasmuch as science has proved that almost every
blossom in the world is everything it is because of its necessity
to attract insect friends or to repel its foes - its form,
mechanism, color, markings, odor, time of opening and closing,
and its season of blooming being the result of natural selection
by that special insect upon which each depends more or less
absolutely for help in perpetuating its species - it seems fully
time that the vitally important and interesting relationship
existing between our common wild flowers and their winged
benefactors should be presented in a popular book.

Is it enough to know merely the name of the flower you meet in
the meadow? The blossom has an inner meaning, hopes and fears
that inspire its brief existence, a scheme of salvation for its
species in the struggle for survival that it has been slowly
perfecting with some insect's help through the ages. It is not a
passive thing to be admired by human eyes, nor does it waste its
sweetness on the desert air. It is a sentient being, impelled to
act intelligently through the same strong desires that animate
us, and endowed with certain powers differing only in degree, but
not in kind, from those of the animal creation. Desire ever
creates form.

Do you doubt it? Then study the mechanism of one of our common
orchids or milkweeds that are adjusted with such marvelous
delicacy to the length of a bee's tongue or of a butterfly's leg;
learn why so many flowers have sticky calices or protective
hairs; why the skunk cabbage, purple trillium, and carrion flower
emit a fetid odor while other flowers, especially the white or
pale yellow night bloomers, charm with their delicious breath;
see if you cannot discover why the immigrant daisy already
whitens our fields with descendants as numerous as the sands of
the seashore, whereas you may tramp a whole day without finding a
single native ladies' slipper. What of the sundew that not only
catches insects, but secretes gastric juice to digest them? What
of the bladderwort, in whose inflated traps tiny crustaceans are
imprisoned, or the pitcher plant, that makes soup of its guests?
Why are gnats and flies seen about certain flowers, bees,
butterflies, moths or humming birds about others, each visitor
choosing the restaurant most to his liking? With what infinite
pains the wants of each guest are catered to! How relentlessly
are pilferers punished! The endless devices of the more ambitious
flowers to save their species from degeneracy by close inbreeding
through fertilization with their own pollen, alone prove the
operation of Mind through them. How plants travel, how they send
seeds abroad in the world to found new colonies, might be studied
with profit by Anglo-Saxon expansionists. Do vice and virtue
exist side by side in the vegetable world also? Yes, and every
sinner is branded as surely as was Cain. The dodder, Indian pipe,
broomrape and beech-drops wear the floral equivalent of the
striped suit and the shaved head. Although claiming most
respectable and exalted kinsfolk, they are degenerates not far
above the fungi. In short, this is a universe that we live in;
and all that share the One Life are one in essence, for natural
law is spiritual law. "Through Nature to God," flowers show a way
to the scientist lacking faith.

Although it has been stated by evolutionists for many years that
in order to know the flowers, their insect relationships must
first be understood, it is believed that "Nature's Garden" is the
first American work to explain them in any considerable number of
species. Dr. Asa Gray, William Hamilton Gibson, Clarence Moores
Weed, and Miss Maud Going in their delightful books or lectures
have shown the interdependence of a score or more of different
blossoms and their insect visitors. Hidden away in the
proceedings of scientific societies' technical papers are the
invaluable observations of such men as Dr. William Trelease of
Wisconsin and Professor Charles Robertson of Illinois. To the
latter especially, I am glad to acknowledge my indebtedness.
Sprengel, Darwin, Muller, Delpino, and Lubbock, among others,
have given the world classical volumes on European flora only,
but showing a vast array of facts which the theory of adaptation
to insects alone correlates and explains. That the results of
illumining researches should be so slow in enlightening the
popular mind can be due only to the technical, scientific
language used in setting them forth, language as foreign to the
average reader as Chinese, and not to be deciphered by the
average student either, without the help of a glossary. These
writings, as well as the vast array of popular books - too many
for individual mention - have been freely consulted after studies
made afield.

To Sprengel belongs the glory of first exalting flowers above the
level of botanical specimens. After studying the wild geranium he
became convinced, as he wrote in 1787, that "the wise Author of
Nature has not made even a single hair without a definite design.
A hundred years before, one, Nehemias Grew, had said that it was
necessary for pollen to reach the stigma of a flower in order
that it might set fertile seed, and Linnaeus bad to come to his
rescue with conclusive evidence to convince a doubting world that
he was right. Sprengel made the next step forward, but his
writings lay neglected over seventy years because he advanced the
then incredible and only partially true statement that a flower
is fertilized by insects which carry its pollen from its anthers
to its stigma. In spite of his discoveries that the hairs within
the wild geranium protect its nectar from rain for the insect
benefactor's benefit; that most flowers which secrete nectar have
what he termed "honey guides" - spots of bright color, heavy
veining, or some such pathfinder for the visitor on the petals;
that sometimes the male flowers, the staminate ones, are
separated from the seed-bearing or pistillate ones on distinct
plants, he left it to Darwin to show that cross-fertilization by
insects, the transfer of pollen from one blossom to another - not
from anthers to stigma of the same flower - is the great end to
which so much marvelous floral mechanism is adapted. The wind is
a wasteful, uncertain pollen distributor. Insects transfer it
more economically, especially the more highly organized and
industrious ones. In a few instances hummingbirds, as well,
unwittingly do the flower's bidding while they feast now here,
now there. In spite of Sprengel's most patient and scientific
research, that shed great light on the theory of natural
selection a half century before Darwin advanced it, he never knew
that flowers are nearly always sterile to pollen of another
species when carried to them on the bodies of insect visitors, or
that cross-pollenized blossoms defeat the self-pollinated ones in
the struggle for survival. These facts Darwin proved in endless
experiments.

Because bees depend absolutely upon flowers, not only for their
own food but for that of future generations for whom they labor;
because they are the most diligent of all visitors, and are
rarely diverted from one species of flower to another while on
their rounds collecting, as they must, both nectar and pollen, it
follows they are the most important fertilizing agents. It is
estimated that, should they perish, more than half the flowers in
the world would be exterminated with them! Australian farmers
imported clover from Europe, and although they had luxuriant
fields of it, no seed was set for next year's planting, because
they had failed to import the bumblebee. After his arrival, their
loss was speedily made good.

Ages before men cultivated gardens, they had tiny helpers they
knew not of. Gardeners win all the glory of producing a Lawson
pink or a new chrysanthemum; but only for a few seasons do they
select, hybridize, according to their own rules of taste. They
take up the work where insects left it off after countless
centuries of toil. Thus it is to the night-flying moth, long of
tongue, keen of scent, that we are indebted for the deep, white,
fragrant Easter lily, for example, and not to the florist; albeit
the moth is in his turn indebted to the lily for the length of
his tongue and his keen nerves: neither could have advanced
without the other. What long vistas through the ages of creation
does not this interdependence of flowers and insects open!

Over five hundred flowers in this book have been classified
according to color, because it is believed that the novice, with
no knowledge of botany whatever, can most readily identify the
specimen found afield by this method, which has the added
advantage of being the simple one adopted by the higher insects
ages before books were written. Technicalities have been avoided
in the text wherever possible, not to discourage the beginner
from entering upon one of the most enjoyable and elevating
branches of Nature study. The scientific names and classification
follow that method adopted by the International Botanical
Congress which has now superseded all others; nevertheless the
titles employed by Gray, with which older botanists in this
country are familiar, are also indicated where they differ from
the new nomenclature.

NELTJE BLANCHAN, New York, March, 1900


TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface
List of Illustrations
Blue to Purple Flowers
Magenta to Pink Flowers
White and Greenish Flowers
Yellow and Orange Flowers
Red and Indefinites
Appendices:
   Fragrant Flowers or Leaves
   Unpleasantly Scented
   Plants and Shrubs Conspicuous in Fruit
   Plant Families Represented


"Let us content ourselves no longer with being mere 'botanists' -
historians of structural facts. The flowers are not mere comely
or curious vegetable creations, with colors, odors, petals,
stamens and innumerable technical attributes. The wonted insight
alike of scientist, philosopher, theologian, and dreamer is now
repudiated in the new revelation. Beauty is not 'its own excuse
for being,' nor was fragrance ever 'wasted on the desert air.'
The seer has at last heard and interpreted the voice in the
wilderness. The flower is no longer a simple passive victim in
the busy bee's sweet pillage, but rather a conscious being, with
hopes, aspirations and companionships. The insect is its
counterpart. Its fragrance is but a perfumed whisper of welcome,
its color is as the wooing blush and rosy lip, its portals are
decked for his coming, and its sweet hospitalities humored to his
tarrying; and as it speeds its parting affinity, rests content
that its life's consummation has been fulfilled." - William
Hamilton Gibson.


"I often think, when working over my plants, of what Linnaeus
once said of the unfolding of a blossom: 'I saw God in His glory
passing near me, and bowed my head in worship.' The scientific
aspect of the same thought has been put into words by Tennyson:

    'Flower in the crannied wall
     I pluck you out of the crannies,
     I hold you here, root and all in my hand
     Little flower, - but if I could understand
     What you are, root and all, and all in all,
     I should know what God and man is.'

No deeper thought was ever uttered by poet. For in this world of
plants, which, with its magician, chlorophyll, conjuring with
sunbeams, is ceaselessly at work bringing life out of death, - in
this quiet vegetable world we may find the elementary principles
of all life in almost visible operation." - JOHN FISKE in
"Through Nature to God."



FROM BLUE TO PURPLE FLOWERS

"If blue is the favorite color of bees, and if bees have so much
to do with the origin of flowers, how is it that there are so few
blue ones? I believe the explanation to be that all blue flowers
have descended from ancestors in which the flowers were green;
or, to speak more precisely, in which the leaves surrounding the
stamens and pistil were green; and that they have passed through
stages of white or yellow, and generally red, before becoming
blue." - Sir John Lubbock in "Ants, Bees, and Wasps."


VIRGINIA or COMMON DAY-FLOWER
  (Commelina Virginica)  Spiderwort family

Flowers - Blue, 1 in. broad or less, irregular, grouped at end of
stem, and upheld by long leaf-like bracts. Calyx of 3 unequal
sepals; 3 petals, 1 inconspicuous, 2 showy, rounded. Perfect
stamens 3; the anther of 1 incurved stamen largest; 3
insignificant and sterile stamens; 1 pistil. Stem: Fleshy,
smooth, branched, mucilaginous. Leaves: Lance-shaped, 3 to 5 in.
long, sheathing the stem at base; upper leaves in a spathe-like
bract folding like a hood about flowers. Fruit: A 3-celled
capsule, seed in each cell.
Preferred Habitat - Moist, shady ground.
Flowering Season - June - September.
Distribution - Southern New York to Illinois and Michigan,
Nebraska, Texas, and through tropical America to Paraguay. -
Britton and Browne.

Delightful Linnaeus, who dearly loved his little joke, himself
confesses to have named the day-flowers after three brothers
Commelyn, Dutch botanists, because two of them - commemorated in
the two showy blue petals of the blossom - published their works;
the third, lacking application and ambition, amounted to nothing,
like the inconspicuous whitish third petal! Happily Kaspar
Commelyn died in 1731, before the joke was perpetrated in
"Species Plantarum."

In the morning we find the day-flower open and alert-looking,
owing to the sharp, erect bracts that give it support; after
noon, or as soon as it has been fertilized by the female bees,
that are its chief benefactors while collecting its abundant
pollen, the lovely petals roll up, never to open again, and
quickly wilt into a wet, shapeless mass, which, if we touch it,
leaves a sticky blue fluid on our finger-tips.

The SLENDER DAY-FLOWER (C. erecta), the next of kin, a more
fragile-looking, smaller-flowered, and narrower-leafed species,
blooms from August to October, from Pennsylvania southward to
tropical America and westward to Texas.


SPIDERWORT; WIDOW'S or JOB'S TEARS
  (Tradescantia Virginiana)  Spiderwort family

Flowers - Purplish blue, rarely white, showy, ephemeral, 1 to 2
in. broad; usually several flowers, but more drooping buds,
clustered and seated between long blade-like bracts at end of
stern. Calyx of 3 sepals, much longer than capsule. Corolla of 3
regular petals; 6 fertile stamens, bearded; anthers orange; 1
pistil. Stem: 8 in. to 3 ft. tall, fleshy, erect, mucilaginous,
leafy. Leaves: Opposite, long, blade-like, keeled, clasping, or
sheathing stem at base. Fruit: 3-celled capsule.
Preferred Habitat - Rich, moist woods, thickets, gardens.
Flowering Season - May-August.
Distribution - New York and Virginia westward to South Dakota and
Arkansas.

As so very many of our blue flowers are merely naturalized
immigrants from Europe, it is well to know we have sent to
England at least one native that was considered fit to adorn the
grounds of Hampton Court. John Tradescant, gardener to Charles I,
for whom the plant and its kin were named, had seeds sent him by
a relative in the Virginia colony; and before long the deep azure
blossoms with their golden anthers were seen in gardens on both
sides of the Atlantic - another one of the many instances where
the possibilities of our wild flowers under cultivation had to be
first pointed out to us by Europeans.

Like its relative the dayflower, the spiderwort opens for part of
a day only. In the morning it is wide awake and pert; early in
the afternoon its petals have begun to retreat within the calyx,
until presently they become "dissolved in tears," like Job or the
traditional widow. What was flower only a few hours ago is now a
fluid jelly that trickles at the touch. Tomorrow fresh buds will
open, and a continuous succession of bloom may be relied upon for
a long season. Since its stigma is widely separated from the
anthers and surpasses them, it is probable the flower cannot
fertilize itself, but is wholly dependent on the female bees and
other insects that come to it for pollen. Note the hairs on the
stamens provided as footholds for the bees.

The plant is a cousin of the "Wandering Jew" (T. repens), so
commonly grown either in water or earth in American
sitting-rooms. In a shady lane within New York city limits, where
a few stems were thrown out one spring about five years ago, the
entire bank is now covered with the vine, that has rooted by its
hairy joints, and, in spite of frosts and blizzards, continues to
bear its true-blue flowers throughout the summer.


PICKEREL WEED
  (Pontederia cordata)  Pickerel-weed family

Flowers - Bright purplish blue, including filaments, anthers, and
style; crowded in a dense spike; quickly fading; unpleasantly
odorous. Perianth tubular, 2-lipped, parted into 6 irregular
lobes, free from ovary; middle lobe of upper lip with 2 yellow
spots at base within. Stamens 6, placed at unequal distances on
tube, 3 opposite each lip. Pistil 1, the stigma minutely toothed.
Stem: Erect, stout, fleshy, to 4 ft. tall, not often over 2 ft.
above water line. Leaves: Several bract-like, sheathing stem at
base; leaf only, midway on flower-stalk, thick, polished,
triangular, or arrow-shaped, 4 to 8 in. long, 2 to 6 in. across
base.
Preferred Habitat - Shallow water of ponds and streams.
Flowering Season - June-October.
Distribution - Eastern half of United States and Canada.

Grace of habit and the bright beauty of its long blue spikes of
ragged flowers above rich, glossy leaves give a charm to this
vigorous wader. Backwoodsmen will tell you that pickerels lay
their eggs among the leaves; but so they do among the sedges,
arums, wild rice, and various aquatic plants, like many another
fish. Bees and flies, that congregate about the blossoms to feed,
may sometimes fly too low, and so give a plausible reason for the
pickerel's choice of haunt. Each blossom lasts but a single day;
the upper portion, withering, leaves the base of the perianth to
harden about the ovary and protect the solitary seed. But as the
gradually lengthened spike keeps up an uninterrupted succession
of bloom for months, more than ample provision is made for the
perpetuation of the race - a necessity to any plant that refuses
to thrive unless it stands in water. Ponds and streams have an
unpleasant habit of drying up in summer, and often the pickerel
weed looks as brown as a bulrush where it is stranded in the
baked mud in August. When seed falls on such ground, if indeed it
germinates at all, the young plant naturally withers away.

In the Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club, Mr. W. H. Leggett,
who made a careful study of the flower, tells that three forms
occur, not on the same, but on different plants, being even more
distinctly trimorphic than the purple Loosestrife. As these
flowers set no seed without insects' aid, the provisions made to
secure the greatest benefit from their visits are marvelous. Of
the three kinds of blossoms, one raises its stigma on a long
style reaching to the top of the flower; a second form lifts its
stigma only halfway up, and the third keeps its stigma in the
bottom of the tube. Now, there are two sets of stamens, three in
each set bearing pollen grains of different size and value.
Whenever the stigma is high, the two sets of stamens keep out of
its way by occupying the lowest and middle positions, or just
where the stigmas occur in the two other forms; or, let us say,
whenever the stigma is in one of the three positions, the
different sets of stamens occupy the other two. In a long series
of experiments on flowers occurring in two and three forms -
dimorphic and trimorphic - Darwin proved that perfect fertility
can be obtained only when the stigma in each form is pollenized
with grains carried from the stamens of a corresponding height.
For example, a bee on entering the flower must get his abdomen
dusted with pollen from the long stamens, his chest covered from
the middle-length stamens, and his tongue and chin from the set
in the bottom of the tube nearest the nectary. When he flies off
to visit another flower, these parts of his body coming in
contact with the stigmas that occupy precisely the position where
the stamens were in other individuals, he necessarily brushes off
each lot of pollen just where it will do the most good. Pollen
brought from high stamens, for example, to a low stigma, even
should it reach it, which is scarcely likely, takes little or no
effect. Thus cross-fertilization is absolutely essential, and in
three-formed flowers there are two chances to one of securing it.


WILD HYACINTH, SCILLA or SQUILL. QUAMASH
  (Quamasia kyacinthina; Scilla Fraseri of Gray) Lily family

Flowers - Several or many, pale violet blue, or rarely white, in
a long, loose raceme; perianth of 6 equal, narrowly oblong,
widely spreading divisions, the thread-like filaments inserted at
their bases; style thread-like, with 3-lobed stigma. Scape: 1 to
2 ft. high, from egg-shaped, nearly black bulb, 1 to 1 1/2 in.
long. Leaves: Grass-like, shorter than flowering scape, from the
base. Fruit: A 3-angled, oval capsule containing shining black
seeds.
Preferred Habitat - Meadows, prairies, and along banks of
streams.
Flowering Season - April-May.
Distribution - Pennsylvania and Ohio westward to Minnesota, south
to Alabama and Texas.

Coming with the crocuses, before the snow is off the ground, and
remaining long after their regal gold and purple chalices have
withered, the Siberian scillas sold by seedsmen here deserve a
place in every garden, for their porcelain-blue color is rare as
it is charming; the early date when they bloom makes them
especially welcome; and, once planted and left undisturbed, the
bulbs increase rapidly, without injury from overcrowding.
Evidently they need little encouragement to run wild.
Nevertheless they are not wild scillas, however commonly they may
be miscalled so. Certainly ladies' tresses, known as wild
hyacinth in parts of New England, has even less right to the
name.

Our true native wild hyacinth, or scilla, is quite a different
flower, not so pure a blue as the Siberian scilla, and paler; yet
in the middle West, where it abounds, there are few lovelier
sights in spring than a colony of these blossoms directed
obliquely upward from slender, swaying scapes among the lush
grass. Their upward slant brings the stigma in immediate contact
with an incoming visitor's pollen-laden body. As the stamens
diverge with the spreading of the divisions of the perianth, to
which they are attached, the stigma receives pollen brought from
another flower, before the visitor dusts himself anew in
searching for refreshment, thus effecting cross-pollination.
Ants, bees, wasps, flies, butterflies, and beetles may be seen
about the wild hyacinth, which is obviously best adapted to the
bees. The smallest insects that visit it may possibly defeat
Nature's plan and obtain nectar without fertilizing the flower,
owing to the wide passage between stamens and stigma. In about an
hour, one May morning, Professor Charles Robertson captured over
six hundred insects, representing thirty-eight distinct species,
on a patch of wild hyacinths in Illinois.

The bulb of a MEDITERRANEAN SCILLA (S. maritima) furnishes the
sourish-sweet syrup of squills used in medicine for bronchial
troubles.


The GRAPE HYACINTH (Muscari botrycides), also known as Baby's
Breath, because of its delicate faint fragrance, escapes from
gardens at slight encouragement to grow wild in the roadsides and
meadows from Massachusetts to Virginia and westward to Ohio. Its
tiny, deep-blue, globular flowers, stiffly set around a fleshy
scape that rises between erect, blade-like, channeled leaves,
appear spring after spring wherever the small bulbs have been
planted. On the east end of Long Island there are certain meadows
literally blued with the little runaways.


PURPLE TRILLIUM, ILL-SCENTED WAKE-ROBIN or BIRTH-ROOT
  (Trillium erectum)  Lily-of-the-Valley family

Flowers - Solitary, dark, dull purple, or purplish red; rarely
greenish, white, or pinkish; on erect or slightly inclined
footstalk. Calyx of 3 spreading sepals, 1 to 1 1/2 in. long, or
about length of 3 pointed, oval petals; stamens 6; anthers longer
than filaments; pistil spreading into 3 short, recurved stigmas.
Stem: Stout, 8 to i6 in. high, from tuber-like rootstock. Leaves:
In a whorl of 3; broadly ovate, abruptly pointed, netted-veined.
Fruit: A 6-angled, ovate, reddish berry.
Preferred Habitat - Rich, moist woods.
Flowering Season - April-June.
Distribution - Nova Scotia westward to Manitoba, southward to
North Carolina and Missouri.

Some weeks after the jubilant, alert robins have returned from
the South, the purple trillium unfurls its unattractive,
carrion-scented flower. In the variable colors found in different
regions, one can almost trace its evolution from green, white,
and red to purple, which, we are told, is the course all flowers
must follow to attain to blue. The white and pink forms, however
attractive to the eye, are never more agreeable to the nose than
the reddish-purple ones. Bees and butterflies, with delicate
appreciation of color and fragrance, let the blossom alone, since
it secretes no nectar; and one would naturally infer either that
it can fertilize itself without insect aid - a theory which
closer study of its organs goes far to disprove - or that the
carrion-scent, so repellent to us, is in itself an attraction to
certain insects needful for cross-pollination. Which are they?
Beetles have been observed crawling over the flower, but without
effecting any methodical result. One inclines to accept Mr.
Clarence M. Weed's theory of special adaptation to the common
green flesh-flies (Lucilia carnicina), which would naturally be
attracted to a flower resembling in color and odor a raw
beefsteak of uncertain age. These little creatures, seen in every
butcher shop throughout the summer, the flower furnishes with a
free lunch of pollen in consideration of the transportation of a
few grains to another blossom. Absence of the usual floral
attractions gives, the carrion flies a practical monopoly of the
pollen food, which no doubt tastes as it smells.

The SESSILE-FLOWERED WAKE-ROBIN (T. sessile), whose dark purple,
purplish-red, or greenish blossom, narrower of sepal and petals
than the preceding, is seated in a whorl of three egg-shaped,
sometimes blotched, leaves, possesses a rather pleasant odor;
nevertheless it seems. to have no great attraction for insects.
The stigmas, which are very large, almost touch the anthers
surrounding them; therefore the beetles which one frequently sees
crawling over them to feed on the pollen so jar them, no doubt,
as to self-fertilize the flower; but it is scarcely probable
these slow crawlers often transfer the grains from one blossom to
another. A degraded flower like this has little need of color and
perfume, one would suppose; yet it may be even now slowly
perfecting its way toward an ideal of which we see a part only
complete. In deep, rich, moist woods and thickets the. sessile
trillium blooms in April or May, from Pennsylvania, Ohio, and
Minnesota southward nearly to the Gulf.


LARGER BLUE FLAG; BLUE IRIS; FLEUR-DE-LIS; FLOWER-DE-LUCE
  (Iris versicolor)  Iris family

Flowers - Several, 2 to 3 in. long, violet-blue variegated with
yellow, green, or white, and purple veined. Six divisions of the
perianth: 3 outer ones spreading, recurved; 1 of them bearded,
much longer and wider than the 3 erect inner divisions; all
united into a short tube. Three stamens under 3 overhanging
petal-like divisions of the style, notched at end; under each
notch is a thin plate, smooth on one side, rough and moist
(stigma) on side turned away from anther. Stem: 2 to 3 ft. high,
stout, straight, almost circular, sometimes branching above.
Leaves: Erect, sword-shaped, shorter than stem, somewhat hoary,
from 1/2 to 1 in. wide, folded, and in a compact flat cluster at
base; bracts usually longer than stem of flower. Fruit: Oblong
capsule, not prominently 3-lobed, and with 2 rows of round, flat
seeds closely packed in each cell. Rootstock: Creeping,
horizontal, fleshy.
Preferred Habitat - Marshes, wet meadows.
Flowering Season - May-July.
Distribution - Newfoundland and Manitoba to Arkansas and Florida.

"The fleur-de-lys, which is the flower of chivalry," says Ruskin,
"has a sword for its leaf and a lily for its heart." When that
young and pious Crusader, Louis VII, adopted it for the emblem of
his house, spelling was scarcely an exact science, and the
fleur-de-Louis soon became corrupted into its present form.
Doubtless the royal flower was the white iris, and as li is the
Celtic for white, there is room for another theory as to the
origin of the name. It is our far more regal looking, but truly
democratic blossom, jostling its fellows in the marshes, that is
indeed "born in the purple."

When Napoleon wished to pose as the true successor of those
ancient French kings whose territory included the half of Europe
- ignoring every Louis who ever sat on the throne, for their very
name and emblem had become odious to the people - he discarded
the fleur-de-lis, to replace it with golden bees, the symbol in
armory for industry and perseverance. It is said some relics of
gold and fine stones, somewhat resembling an insect in shape, had
been found in the tomb of Clovis's father, and on the supposition
that these had been bees, Napoleon appropriated them for the
imperial badge. Henceforth "Napoleonic bees" appeared on his
coronation robe and wherever a heraldic emblem could be employed.

But even in the meadows of France Napoleon need not have looked
far from the fleurs-de-lis growing there to find bees. Indeed,
this gorgeous flower is thought by scientists to be all that it
is for the bees' benefit, which, of course, is its own also.
Abundant moisture, from which to manufacture nectar - a prime
necessity with most irises - certainly is for our blue flag. The
large showy blossom cannot but attract the passing bee, whose
favorite color (according to Sir John Lubbock) it waves. The bee
alights on the convenient, spreading platform, and, guided by the
dark veining and golden lines leading to the nectar, sips the
delectable fluid shortly to be changed to honey. Now, as he
raises his head and withdraws it from the nectary, he must rub it
against the pollen-laden anther above, and some of the pollen
necessarily falls on the visitor. As the sticky side of the plate
(stigma), just under the petal-like division of the style, faces
away from the anther, which is below it in any case, the flower
is marvelously guarded against fertilization from its own pollen.
The bee, flying off to another iris, must first brush past the
projecting lip of the over-arching style, and leave on the
stigmatic outer surface of the plate some of the pollen brought
from the first flower, before reaching the nectary. Thus
cross-fertilization is effected; and Darwin has shown how
necessary this is to insure the most vigorous and beautiful
offspring. Without this wonderful adaptation of the flower to the
requirements of its insect friends, and of the insect to the
needs of the flower, both must perish; the former from hunger,
the latter because unable to perpetuate its race. And yet man has
greedily appropriated all the beauties of the floral kingdom as
designed for his sole delight

The name iris, meaning a deified rainbow, which was given this
group of plants by the ancients, shows a fine appreciation of
their superb coloring, their ethereal texture, and the evanescent
beauty of the blossom.

In spite of the name given to another species, the SOUTHERN BLUE
FLAG (I. hexagona) is really the larger one; its leaves, which
are bright green, and never hoary, often equaling the stem in its
height of from two to three feet. The handsome solitary flower,
similar to that of the larger blue flag, nevertheless has its
broad outer divisions fully an inch larger, and is seated in the
axils at the top of the circular stem. The oblong, cylindric,
six-angled capsule also contains two rows of seeds in each
cavity. From South Carolina and Florida to Kentucky, Missouri,
and Texas one finds this iris blooming in the swamps during April
and May.

The SLENDER BLUE FLAG (I. prismatica; I. Virginica of Gray),
found growing from New Brunswick to North Carolina, but mainly
near the coast, and often in the same oozy ground with the larger
blue flag, may be known by its grass-like leaves, two or three of
which usually branch out from the slender flexuous stem; by its
solitary or two blue flowers, variegated with white and veined
with yellow, that rear themselves on slender foot-stems; and by
the sharply three-angled, narrow, oblong capsule, in which but
one row of seeds is borne in each cavity. This is the most
graceful member of a rather stiffly stately family.


POINTED BLUE-EYED GRASS; EYE-BRIGHT; BLUE STAR
  (Sisyrinchium angustifolium)  Iris family

Flowers - From blue to purple, with a yellow center; a Western
variety, white; usually several buds at the end of stem, between
2 erect unequal bracts; about 1/2 in. across; perianth of 6
spreading divisions, each pointed with a bristle from a notch;
stamens 3, the filaments united to above the middle; pistil 1,
its tip 3-cleft. Stem: 3 to 14 in. tall, pale hoary green, flat,
rigid, 2-edged. Leaves: Grass-like, pale, rigid, mostly from
base. Fruit: 3-celled capsule, nearly globose.
Preferred Habitat - Moist fields and meadows.
Flowering Season - May-August.
Distribution - Newfoundland to British Columbia, from eastern
slope of Rocky Mountains to Atlantic, south to Virginia and
Kansas.

Only for a day, and that must be a bright one, will this "little
sister of the stately blue flag" open its eyes, to close them in
indignation on being picked; nor will any coaxing but the
sunshine's induce it to open them again in water, immediately
after. The dainty flower, growing in dense tufts, makes up in
numbers what it lacks in size and lasting power, flecking our
meadows with purplish ultramarine blue in a sunny June morning.
Later in the day, apparently there are no blossoms there, for all
are tightly closed, never to bloom again. New buds will unfold to
tinge the field on the morrow.

Usually three buds nod from between a pair of bracts, the lower
one of which may be twice the length of the upper one but only
one flower opens at a time. Slight variations in this plant have
been considered sufficient to differentiate several species
formerly included by Gray and other American botanists under the
name of S. Bermudiana.


LARGE or EARLY, PURPLE-FRINGED ORCHIS
  (Habenaria grandiflora; H. fimbriata of Gray)  Orchid family

Flowers - Pink-purple and pale lilac, sometimes nearly white;
fragrant, alternate, clustered in thick, dense spikes from 3 to
15 in. long. Upper sepal and toothed petals erect; the lip of
deepest shade, 1/2 in. long, fan-shaped, 3-parted, fringed half
its length, and prolonged at base into slender, long spur; stamen
united with style into short column; 2 anther sacs slightly
divergent, the hollow between them glutinous, stigmatic. Stem. 1
to 5 ft. high, angled, twisted. Leaves: Oval, large, sheathing
the stem below; smaller, lance-shaped ones higher up; bracts
above. Root: Thick, fibrous.
Preferred Habitat - Rich, moist meadows, muddy places, woods.
Flowering Season - June-August.
Distribution - New Brunswick to Ontario; southward to North
Carolina, westward to Michigan.

Because of the singular and exquisitely unerring adaptations of
orchids as a family to their insect visitors, no group of plants
has greater interest for the botanist since Darwin interpreted
their marvelous mechanism, and Gray, his instant disciple,
revealed the hidden purposes of our native American species, no
less wonderfully constructed than the most costly exotic in a
millionaire's hothouse.

A glance at the spur of this orchid, one of the handsomest and
most striking of its clan, and the heavy perfume of the flower,
would seem to indicate that only a moth with a long proboscis
could reach the nectar secreted at the base of the thread-like
passage. Butterflies, attracted by the conspicuous color,
sometimes hover about the showy spikes of bloom, but it is
probable that, to secure a sip, all but possibly the very largest
of them must go to the smaller purple-fringed orchis, whose
shorter spur holds out a certain prospect of reward; for, in
these two cases, as in so many others, the flower's welcome for
an insect is in exact proportion to the length of its visitor's
tongue. Doubtless it is one of the smaller sphinx moths, such as
we see at dusk working about the evening primrose and other
flowers deep of chalice, and heavily perfumed to guide visitors
to their feast, that is the great purple-fringed orchid's
benefactor, since the length of its tongue is perfectly adapted
to its needs. Attracted by the showy, broad lower petal, his
wings ever in rapid motion, the moth proceeds to unroll his
proboscis and drain the cup, that is frequently an inch and a
half deep. Thrusting in his head, either one or both of his
large, projecting eyes are pressed against the sticky
button-shaped disks to which the pollen masses are attached by a
stalk, and as he raises his head to depart, feeling that he is
caught, he gives a little jerk that detaches them, and away he
flies with these still fastened to his eyes.

Even while he is flying to another flower, that is to say, in
half a minute, the stalks of the pollen masses bend downward from
the perpendicular and slightly toward the center, or just far
enough to require the moth, in thrusting his proboscis into the
nectary, to strike the glutinous, sticky stigma. Now, withdrawing
his head, either or both of the golden clubs he brought in with
him will be left on the precise spot where they will fertilize
the flower. Sometimes, but rarely, we catch a butterfly or moth
from the smaller or larger purple orchids with a pollen mass
attached to his tongue, instead of to his eyes; this is when he
does not make his entrance from the exact center - as in these
flowers he is not obliged to do - and in order to reach the
nectary his tongue necessarily brushes against one of the sticky
anther sacs. The performance may be successfully imitated by
thrusting some blunt point about the size of a moth's head, a
dull pencil or a knitting-needle, into the flower as an insect
would enter. Withdraw the pencil, and one or both of the pollen
masses will be found sticking to it, and already automatically
changing their attitude. In the case of the large, round-leaved
orchis, whose greenish-white flowers are fertilized in a similar
manner by the sphinx moth, the anther sacs converge, like little
horns; and their change of attitude while they are being carried
to fertilize another flower is quite as exquisitely exact.

Usually in wetter ground than we find its more beautiful big
sister growing in, most frequently in swamps and bogs, the
SMALLER PURPLE-FRINGED ORCHIS (H. psycodes) lifts its perfumed
lilac spires. Thither go the butterflies and long-lipped bees to
feast in July and August. Inasmuch as without their aid the
orchid must perish from its inability to set fertile seed, no
wonder it woos its benefactors with a showy mass of color,
charming fringes, sweet perfume, and copious draughts of nectar,
and makes their visits of the utmost value to itself by the
ingenious mechanism described above. Here is no waste of pollen;
that is snugly packed in little bundles, ready to be carried off,
but placed where they cannot come in contact with the adjoining
stigma, since every orchid, almost without exception, refuses to
be deteriorated through self-fertilization.

>From New Jersey and Illinois southward, particularly in
mountainous regions, if not among the mountains themselves, the
FRINGELESS PURPLE ORCHIS (H. perarnoena) may be found blooming in
moist meadows through July and August. Moisture, from which to
manufacture the nectar that orchids rely upon so largely to
entice insects to work for them, is naturally a prime necessity;
yet Sprengel attempted to prove that many orchids are gaudy shams
and produce no nectar, but exist by an organized system of
deception. "Scheinsaftblumen" he called them. From the number of
butterflies seen hovering about this fringeless orchis and its
more attractive kin, it is small wonder their nectaries are soon
exhausted and they are accused of being gay deceivers. Sprengel's
much-quoted theory would credit moths, butterflies, and even the
highly intelligent bees with scant sense; but Darwin, who
thoroughly tested it, forever exonerated these insects from
imputed stupidity and the flowers from gross dishonesty. He found
that many European orchids secrete their nectar between the outer
and inner walls of the tube, which a bumblebee can easily pierce,
but where Sprengel never thought to look for it. The large lip of
this orchis is not fringed, but has a fine picotee edge. The
showy violet-purple, long-spurred flowers are alternately set on
a stem that is doing its best if it reach a height of two and a
half feet.


WATER-SHIELD or WATER TARGET
  (Brasenia purpurea; B. peltata of Gray)  Water-lily family

Flowers - Small, dull purplish, about 1/2 in. across, on stout
footstalks from axils of upper leaves; 3 narrow sepals and
petals; stamens 12 to 18; pistils 4 to 18, forming 1 to 3-seeded
pods. Stem: From submerged rootstock; slender, branching, several
feet long, covered with clear jelly, as are footstalks and lower
leaf surfaces. Leaves: On long petioles attached to center of
underside of leaf, floating or rising, oval to roundish, 2 to 4
in. long, 1 1/2 to 2 in. wide.
Preferred Habitat - Still, rather deep water of ponds and slow
streams.
Flowering Season - All summer.
Distribution - Parts of Asia, Africa, and Australia, Nova Scotia
to Cuba, and westward from California to Puget Sound.

Of this pretty water plant Dr. Abbott says, in "Wasteland
Wanderings": "I gathered a number of floating, delicate leaves,
and endeavored to secure the entire stem also; but this was too
difficult a task for an August afternoon. The under side of the
stem and leaf are purplish brown and were covered with
translucent jelly, embedded in which were millions of what I took
to be insects' eggs. They certainly had that appearance. I was
far more interested to find that, usually, beneath each leaf
there was hiding a little pike. The largest was not two inches in
length. When disturbed, they swam a few inches, and seemed wholly
'at sea' if there was not another leaf near by to afford them
shelter."


EUROPEAN or COMMON GARDEN COLUMBINE
  (Aquilegia vulgaris)  Crowfoot family

Flowers - Showy, blue, purple, or white, 1 1/2 to 2 in. broad, or
about as broad as long; spurs stout and strongly incurved.
General characteristics of plant resembling wild columbine.
Preferred Habitat - Escaped from gardens to woods and fields in
Eastern and Middle States. Native of Europe.
Flowering Season - May-July.

A heavier, less graceful flower than either the wild red and
yellow columbine or the exquisite, long-spurred, blue and white
species (A. coerulea) of the Rocky Mountain region; nevertheless
this European immigrant, now making itself at home here, is a
charming addition to our flora. How are insects to reach the well
of nectar secreted in the tip of its incurved, hooked spur?
Certain of the long-lipped bees, large bumblebees, whose tongues
have developed as rapidly as the flower, are able to drain it.
Hummingbirds, partial to red flowers, fertilize the wild
columbine, but let this one alone. Muller watched a female
bumblebee making several vain attempts to sip this blue one. Soon
the brilliant idea of biting a hole through each spur flashed
through her little brain, and the first experiment proving
delightfully successful, she proceeded to bite holes through
other flowers without first trying to suck them. Apparently she
satisfied her feminine conscience with the reflection that the
flower which made dining so difficult for its benefactors
deserved no better treatment.


FIELD or BRANCHED LARKSPUR; KNIGHT'S-SPUR; LARK-HEEL
  (Delphinium Consoilda)  Crowfoot family

Flowers - Blue to pinkish and whitish, 1 to 1 1/2 in. long, hung
on slender stems and scattered along spreading branches; 5
petal-like sepals, the rear one prolonged into long, slender,
curving spur; 2 petals, united. Stem: 1 to 2 1/2 ft. high.
Leaves: Divided into very finely cut linear segments. Fruit:
Erect, smooth pod tipped with a short beak; open on one side.
Preferred Habitat - Roadsides and fields.
Flowering Season - June-August.
Distribution - Naturalized from Europe; from New Jersey
southward, occasionally escaped from gardens farther north.

Keats should certainly have extolled the larkspurs in his sonnet
on blue. No more beautiful group of plants contributes to the
charm of gardens, woods, and roadsides, where some have escaped
cultivation and become naturalized, than the delphinium, that
take their name from a fancied resemblance to a dolphin
(delphin), given them by Linnaeus in one of his wild flights of
imagination. Having lost the power to fertilize themselves,
according to Muller, they are pollenized by both bees and
butterflies, insects whose tongues have kept pace with the
development of certain flowers, such as the larkspur, columbine,
and violet, that they may reach into the deep recesses of the
spurs where the nectar is hidden from all but benefactors.

The TALL WILD LARKSPUR (D. urceolatum; D. exaltatum of Gray)
waves long, crowded, downy wands of intense purplish blue in the
rich woods of Western Pennsylvania, southward to the Carolinas
and Alabama, and westward to Nebraska. Its spur is nearly
straight, not to increase the difficulty a bee must have in
pressing his lips through the upper and lower petals to reach the
nectar at the end of it. First, the stamens successively raise
themselves in the passage back of the petals to dust his head;
then, when each has shed its pollen and bent down again, the
pistil takes its turn in occupying the place, so that a
pollen-laden bee, coming to visit the blossom from an earlier
flower; can scarcely help fertilizing it. It is said there are
but two insects in Europe with lips long enough to reach the
bottom of the long horn of plenty hung by the BEE LARKSPUR (D.
elatum), that we know only in gardens here. Its yellowish bearded
lower petals readily deceive one into thinking a bee has just
alighted there.

>From April to June the DWARF LARKSPUR or STAGGER-WEED (D.
tricorne), which, however, may sometimes grow three feet high,
lifts a loose raceme of blue, rarely white, flowers an inch or
more long, at the end of a stout stem rising from a tuberous
root. Its slightly ascending spur, its three widely spreading
seed vessels, and the deeply cut leaf of from five to seven
divisions are distinguishing characteristics. From Western
Pennsylvania and Georgia to Arkansas and Minnesota it is found in
rather stiff soil. Butterflies, which prefer erect flowers, have
some difficulty to cling while they drain the almost upright
spurs, especially the Papilios, which usually suck with their
wings in motion. But the bees, to which the delphinium are best
adapted, although butterflies visit them quite as frequently,
find a convenient landing place prepared for them, and fertilize
the flower while they sip with ease.

More slender, downy, and dwarf of stem than the preceding is the
CAROLINA LARKSPUR (D. Carolinianum), whose blue flowers, varying
to white, and its very finely cleft leaves, may be found in the
South, on prairies in the North and West, and in the Rocky
Mountain region.


LIVER-LEAF; HEPATICA; LIVERWORT; ROUND-LOBED or KIDNEY
LIVER-LEAF; NOBLE LIVER-WORT; SQUIRREL CUP
  (Hepalica Hepatica; H. triloba of Gray)  Crowfoot family

Flowers - Blue, lavender, purple, pinkish, or white;
occasionally, not always, fragrant; 6 to 12 petal-like, colored
sepals (not petals, as they appear to be), oval or oblong;
numerous stamens, all bearing anthers; pistils numerous 3 small,
sessile leaves, forming an involucre directly under flower,
simulate a calyx, for which they might be mistaken. Stems:
Spreading from the root, 4 to 6 in. high, a solitary flower or
leaf borne at end of each furry stem. Leaves: 3-lobed and
rounded, leathery, evergreen; sometimes mottled with, or
entirely, reddish purple; spreading on ground, rusty at blooming
time, the new leaves appearing after the flowers. Fruit: Usually
as many as pistils, dry, 1-seeded, oblong, sharply pointed, never
opening.
Preferred Habitat - Woods; light soil on hillsides.
Flowering Season - December-May.
Distribution - Canada to Northern Florida, Manitoba to Iowa and
Missouri. Most common East.

Even under the snow itself bravely blooms the delicate hepatica,
wrapped in fuzzy furs as if to protect its stems and nodding buds
from cold. After the plebeian skunk cabbage, that ought scarcely
to be reckoned among true flowers - and William Hamilton Gibson
claimed even before it - it is the first blossom to appear.
Winter sunshine, warming the hillsides and edges of woods, opens
its eyes,

       "Blue as the heaven it gates at,
    Startling the loiterer in the naked groves
    With unexpected beauty; for the time
    Of blossoms and green leaves is yet afar."

"There are many things left for May," says John Burroughs, "but
nothing fairer, if as fair, as the first flower, the hepatica. I
find I have never admired this little firstling half enough. When
at the maturity of its charms, it is certainly the gem of the
woods. What an individuality it has! No two clusters alike; all
shades and sizes.... A solitary blue-purple one, fully expanded
and rising over the brown leaves or the green moss, its cluster
of minute anthers showing like a group of pale stars on its
little firmament, is enough to arrest and hold the dullest eye.
Then,...there are individual hepaticas, or individual families
among them, that are sweet scented. The gift seems as capricious
as the gift of genius in families. You cannot tell which the
fragrant ones are till you try them. Sometimes it is the large
white ones, sometimes the large purple ones, sometimes the small
pink ones. The odor is faint and recalls that of the sweet
violets. A correspondent, who seems to have carefully observed
these fragrant hepaticas, writes me that this gift of odor is
constant in the same plant; that the plant which bears
sweet-scented flowers this year will bear them next."

It is not evident that insect aid is necessary to transfer the
tiny, hairy spiral ejected from each cell of the antherid, after
it has burst from ripeness, to the canal of the flask-shaped
organ at whose base the germ-cell is located. Perfect flowers can
fertilize themselves. But pollen-feeding flies, and female hive
bees which collect it, and the earliest butterflies trifle about
the blossoms when the first warm days come. Whether they are
rewarded by finding nectar or not is still a mooted question.
Possibly the papillae which cover the receptacle secrete nectar,
for almost without exception the insect visitors thrust their
proboscides down between the spreading filaments as if certain of
a sip. None merely feed on the pollen except the flies and the
hive bee.

The SHARP-LOBED LIVER-LEAF (Hepatica acuta) differs chiefly from
the preceding in having the ends of the lobes of its leaves and
the tips of the three leaflets that form its involucre quite
sharply pointed. Its range, while perhaps not actually more
westerly, appears so, since it is rare in the East, where its
cousin is so abundant; and common in the West, where the
round-lobed liver-leaf is scarce. It blooms in March and April.
Professor Halsted has noted that this species bears staminate
flowers on one plant and pistillate flowers on another; whereas
the Hepatica Hepatica usually bears flowers of both sexes above
the same root. The blossoms, which close at night to keep warm,
and open in the morning, remain on the beautiful plant for a long
time to accommodate the bees and flies that, in this case, are
essential to the perpetuation of the species.


PURPLE VIRGIN'S BOWER
  (Atragene Americana)  Crowfoot family

Flowers - Showy, purplish blue, about 3 in. across; 4 sepals,
broadly expanded, thin, translucent, strongly veined, very large,
simulating petals; petals small, spoon-shaped; stamens very
numerous ; styles long, persistent, plumed throughout. Stem:
Trailing or partly climbing with the help of leafstalks and
leaflets. Leaves: Opposite, compounded of 3 egg-shaped, pointed
leaflets on slender petioles.
Preferred Habitat -  - Rocky woodlands.
Flowering Season - May-June.
Distribution - Hudson Bay westward, south to Minnesota and
Virginia.

The day on which one finds this rare and beautiful flower in some
rocky ravine high among the hills or mountains becomes memorable
to the budding botanist. At an elevation of three thousand feet
in the Catskills it trails its way over the rocks, fallen trees,
and undergrowth of the forest, suggesting some of the handsome
Japanese species introduced by Sieboldt and Fortune to Occidental
gardens. No one who sees this broadly expanded blossom could
confuse it either with the thick and bell-shaped purple
LEATHER-FLOWER (C. Viorna), so exquisitely feathery in fruit,
that grows in rich, moist soil from Pennsylvania southward and
westward; or with the far more graceful and deliciously fragrant
purple MARSH CLEMATIS (C. crispa) of our Southern States. The
latter, though bell-shaped also, has thin, recurved sepals, and
its persistent styles are silky, not feathery at seed-time.


ORPINE; LIVE-FOREVER; MIDSUMMER-MEN; LIVE-LONG; PUDDING-BAG
PLANT; GARDEN STONECROP; WITCHES' MONEY
  (Sedum Telephium)  Orpine family

Flowers - Dull purplish, very pale or bright reddish purple in
close, round, terminal clusters, each flower 1/3 in. or less
across, 5-parted, the petals twice as long as the sepals; 10
stamens, alternate ones attached to petals; pistils 4 or 5. Stem:
2 ft. high or less, erect, simple, in tufts, very smooth, pale
green, juicy, leafy. Leaves: Alternate, oval, slightly scalloped,
thick, fleshy, smooth, juicy, pale gray green, with stout midrib,
seated on stalk.
Preferred Habitat - Fields, waysides, rocky soil, originally
escaped from gardens.
Flowering Season - June- September.
Distribution - Quebec westward, south to Michigan and Maryland.

Children know the live-forever, not so well by the variable
flower - for it is a niggardly bloomer - as by the thick leaf
that they delight to hold in the mouth until, having loosened the
membrane, they are able to inflate it like a paper bag. Sometimes
dull, sometimes bright, the flower clusters never fail to attract
many insects to their feast, which is accessible even to those of
short tongues. Each blossom is perfect in itself, i.e., it
contains both stamens and pistils; but to guard against
self-fertilization it ripens its anthers and sheds its pollen on
the insects that carry it away to older flowers before its own
stigmas mature and become susceptible to imported pollen. After
the seed-cases take on color, they might be mistaken for
blossoms.

As if the plant did not already possess enough popular names, it
needs must share with the European goldenrod and our common
mullein the title of Aaron's rod. Sedere, to sit, the root of the
generic name, applies with rare appropriateness to this entire
group that we usually find seated on garden walls, rocks, or, in
Europe, even on the roofs of old buildings. Rooting freely from
the joints, our plant forms thrifty tufts where there is little
apparent nourishment; yet its endurance through prolonged drought
is remarkable. Long after the farmer's scythe, sweeping over the
roadside, has laid it low, it thrives on the juices stored up in
fleshy leaves and stem until it proves its title to the most
lusty of all folk names.


PURPLE or WATER AVENS
  (Geum rivale)  Rose family

Flowers - Purple, with some orange chrome, 1 in. broad or less,
terminal, solitary, nodding; calyx 5-lobed, purplish, spreading;
5 petals, abruptly narrowed into claws, forming a cup-shaped
corolla; stamens and pistils of indefinite number; the styles,
jointed and bent in middle, persistent, feathery below. Stem: 1
to 2 ft. high, erect, simple or nearly so, hairy, from thickish
rootstock. Leaves: Chiefly from root, on footstems; lower leaves
irregularly parted; the side segments usually few and small; the
1 to 3 terminal segments sharply, irregularly lobed; the few
distant stem leaves 3-foliate or simple, mostly seated on stem.
Fruit: A dry, hairy head stalked in calyx.
Preferred Habitat - Swamps and low, wet ground.
Flowering Season - May-July.
Distribution - Newfoundland far westward, south to Colorado,
eastward to Missouri and Pennsylvania, also northern parts of Old
World.

Mischievous bumblebees, thrusting their long tongues between the
sepals and petals of these unopened flowers, steal nectar without
conferring any favor in return. Later, when they behave properly
and put their heads inside to feast at the disk on which the
stamens are inserted, they dutifully carry pollen from old
flowers to the early maturing stigmas of younger ones.
Self-fertilization must occur, however, if the bees have not
removed all the pollen when a blossom closes. When the purple
avens opens in Europe, the bees desert even the primrose to feast
upon its abundant nectar. Since water is the prime necessity in
the manufacture of this sweet, and since insects that feed upon
it have so much to do with the multiplication of flowers, it is
not surprising that the swamp, which has been called "nature's
sanctuary," should have its altars so exquisitely decked. This
blossom hangs its head, partly to protect its precious nectar
from rain, and partly to make pilfering well nigh impossible to
the unwelcome crawling insect that may have braved the forbidding
hairy stems.


WILD LUPINE; OLD MAID'S BONNETS; WILD PEA; SUN DIAL
  (Lupinus perennis)  Pea family

Flowers - Vivid blue, very rarely pink or white, butterfly-shaped
corolla consisting of standard, wings, and keel; about 1/2 in.
long, borne in a long raceme at end of stern; calyx 2-lipped,
deeply toothed. Stem: Erect, branching, leafy, to 2 ft. high.
Leaves: Palmnate, compounded of from 7 to 11 (usually 8)
leaflets. Fruit: A broad, flat, very hairy pod, 1 1/2 in. long,
and containing 4 or 5 seeds.
Preferred Habitat - Dry, sandy places, banks, and hillsides.
Flowering Season - May-June.
Distribution - United States east of Mississippi, and eastern
Canada.

Farmers once thought that this plant preyed upon the fertility of
their soil, as we see in the derivation of its name, from lupus,
a wolf; whereas the lupine contents itself with sterile waste
land no one should grudge it - steep gravelly banks, railroad
tracks, exposed sunny hills, where even it must often burn out
under fierce sunshine did not its root penetrate to surprising
depths. It spreads far and wide in thrifty colonies, reflecting
the vivid color of June skies, until, as Thoreau says, "the earth
is blued with it."

What is the advantage gained in the pea-shaped blossom? As usual,
the insect that fertilizes the flower best knows the answer. The
corolla has five petals, the upper one called the standard,
chiefly a flaunted advertisement; two side wings, or platforms,
to alight on; and a keel like a miniature boat, formed by the two
lower petals, whose edges meet. In this the pistil, stamens, and
nectar are concealed and protected. The pressure of a bee's
weight as he alights on the wings, light as it must be, is
nevertheless sufficient to depress and open the keel, which is
elastically affected by their motion, and so to expose the pollen
just where the long-lipped bee must rub off some against his
underside as he sucks the nectar. He actually seems to pump the
pollen that has fallen into the forward part of the keel upon
himself, as he moves about. As soon as he leaves the flower, the
elastic wings resume their former position, thus closing the keel
to prevent waste of pollen. Take a sweet pea from the garden,
press down its wings with the thumb and forefinger to imitate the
action of the bee on them; note how the keel opens to display its
treasures, and resumes its customary shape when the pressure is
removed.

The lupine is another of those interesting plants which go to
sleep at night. Some members of the genus erect one half of the
leaf and droop the other half until it becomes a vertical instead
of the horizontal star it is by day. Frequently the leaflets
rotate as much as 90 degrees on their own axes. Some lupines fold
their leaflets, not at night only, but during the day also there
is more or less movement in the leaves. Sun dial, a popular name
for the wild lupine, has reference to this peculiarity. The leaf
of our species shuts downward around its stem, umbrella fashion,
or the leaflets are erected to prevent the chilling which comes
to horizontal surfaces by radiation, some scientists think. "That
the sleep movements of leaves are in some manner of high
importance to the plants which exhibit them," says Darwin, "few
will dispute who have observed how complex they sometimes are."


CANADIAN or SHOWY TICK-TREFOIL
  (Meibomia Canadensis; Desmodium Canadense of Gray)  Pea family

Flowers - Pinkish or bluish purple, butterfly-shaped, about 1/2
in. long, borne in dense, terminal, elongated racemes. Stem;
Erect, hairy, leafy, 2 to 8 ft. high. Leaves: Compounded of 3
oblong leaflets, the central one largest; upper leaves nearly
seated on stem; bracts, conspicuous before flowering, early
falling off. Fruit: A flat pod, about 1 in. long, jointed, and
covered with minute hooked bristles, the lower edge of pod
scalloped; almost seated in calyx.
Preferred Habitat - Thickets, woods, riverbanks, bogs. Flowering
Season - July-September.
Distribution - New Brunswick to Northwest Territory, south to
North Carolina, westward to Indian Territory and Dakota.

As one travels hundreds or even thousands of miles in a
comfortable railway carriage and sees the same flowers growing
throughout the length and breadth of the area, one cannot but
wonder however the plants manage to make the journey. We know
some creep along the ground, or under it, a tortoise pace, but a
winning one; that some send their offspring flying away from
home, like dandelions and thistles; and many others with wings
and darts are blown by the wind. Berries have their seeds dropped
afar by birds. Aquatic plants and those that grow beside running
water travel by river and flood. European species reach our
shores among the ballast. Darwin raised over sixty wild plants
from seed carried in a pellet of mud taken from the leg of a
partridge. So on and so on. The imagination delights to picture
these floral vagabonds, each with its own clever method of
getting a fresh start in the world. But by none of these methods
just mentioned do the tick-trefoils spread abroad. Theirs is
indeed a by hook or by crook system. The scalloped, jointed pod,
where the seeds lie concealed, has minute crooked bristles, which
catch in the clothing of man or beast, so that every herd of
sheep, every dog, every man, woman, or child who passes through a
patch of trefoils gives them a lift. After a walk through the
woods and lanes of late summer and autumn, one's clothes reveal
scores of tramps that have stolen a ride in the hope of being
picked off and dropped amid better conditions in which to rear a
family.

Only the largest bees can easily "explode" the showy
tick-trefoil. A bumblebee alights upon a flower, thrusts his head
under the base of the standard petal, and forces apart the wing
petals with his legs, in order to dislodge them from the
standard. This motion causes the keel, also connected with the
standard, to snap down violently, thus releasing the column
within and sending upward an explosion of pollen on the under
surface of the bee. Here we see the wing petals acting as
triggers to discharge the flower. Depress them and up flies the
fertilizing dust - once. The little gun will not "go off" twice.
No nectar rewards the visitor, which usually is a
pollen-collecting bee. The highly intelligent and important
bumblebee has the advantage over his smaller kin in being able to
discharge the pollen from both large and smaller flowers.

The NAKED-FLOWERED TICK-TREFOIL (M. nudiflora; D. nudiflorum of
Gray) lifts narrow, few-flowered panicles of rose-purple blooms
during July and August. The flowers are much smaller than those
of the showy trefoil; however, when seen in masses, they form
conspicuous patches of color in dry woods. Note that there is a
flower stalk which is usually leafless and also a leaf-bearing
stem rising from the base of the plant, the latter with its
leaves all crowded at the top, if you would distinguish this very
common species from its multitudinous kin. The trefoliate leaves
are pale beneath. The two or three jointed pod rises far above
the calyx on its own stalk, as in the next species.

The POINTED-LEAVED TICK-TREFOIL (M. grandifiora; D. acuminatum of
Gray) has for its distinguishing feature a cluster of leaves high
up on the same stem from which rises a stalk bearing a quantity
of purple flowers that are large by comparison only. The leaves
have leaflets from two to six inches long, rounded on the sides,
but acutely pointed, and with scattered hairs above and below.
This trefoil is found blooming in dry or rocky woods, throughout
a wide range, from June to September.

Lying outstretched for two to six feet on the dry ground of open
woods and copses east of the Mississippi, the PROSTRATE
TICK-TREFOIL (M. Michauxii; D. rotundifoliurn of Gray) can
certainly be named by its soft hairiness, the almost perfect
roundness of its trefoliate leaves, its rather loose racemes of
deep purple flowers that spring both from the leaf axils and from
the ends of the sometimes branching stem; and by its three to
five jointed pod, which is deeply scalloped on its lower edge and
somewhat indented above, as well.


BLUE, TUFTED, or COW VETCH or TARE; CAT PEAS; TINEGRASS
  (Vicia Cracca)  Pea family

Flowers - Blue, later purple; 1/2 in. long, growing downward in
1-sided spike, 15 to 40 flowered; calyx oblique, small, with
unequal teeth; corolla butterfly-shaped, consisting of standard,
wings, and keel, all oblong; the first clawed, the second
oblique, and adhering to the shorter keel; 10 stamens, 1 detached
from other 9. Stem: Slender, weak, climbing or trailing, downy, 2
to 4 ft. long. Leaves: Tendril bearing, divided into 18 to 24
thin, narrow, oblong leaflets. Fruit: A smooth pod 1 in. long or
less, 5 to 8 seeded.
Preferred Habitat - Dry soil, fields, wastelands.
Flowering Season - June-August.
Distribution - United States from New Jersey, Kentucky, and Iowa
northward and northwestward. Europe and Asia.

Dry fields blued with the bright blossoms of the tufted vetch,
and roadsides and thickets where the angular vine sends forth
vivid patches of color, resound with the music of happy bees.
Although the parts of the flower fit closely together, they are
elastic, and opening with the energetic visitor's weight and
movement give ready access to the nectary. On his departure they
resume their original position, to protect both nectar and pollen
from rain and pilferers whose bodies are not perfectly adapted to
further the flower's cross-fertilization. The common bumblebee
(Bombus terrestris) plays a mean trick, all too frequently, when
he bites a hole at the base of the blossom, not only gaining easy
access to the sweets for himself, but opening the way for others
less intelligent than he, but quite ready to profit by his
mischief, and so defeat nature's plan. Dr. Ogle observed that the
same bee always acts in the same manner, one sucking the nectar
legitimately, another always biting a hole to obtain it
surreptitiously, the natural inference, of course, being that
some bees, like small boys, are naturally depraved.

In cultivated fields and waste places farther south and westward
to the Pacific Coast roams the COMMON or PEBBLE VETCH OR TARE (V.
saliva), another domesticated weed that has come to us from
Europe, where it is extensively grown for fodder. Let no reproach
fall on these innocent plants that bear an opprobrious name: the
tare of Scripture is altogether different, the bearded darnel of
Mediterranean regions, whose leaves deceive one by simulating
those of wheat, and whose smaller seeds, instead of nourishing
man, poison him. Only one or two light blue-purple flowers grow
in the axils of the leaves of our common vetch. The leaf,
compounded of from eight to fourteen leaflets, indented at the
top, has a long terminal tendril, whose little sharp tip assists
the awkward vine, like a grappling hook.

The AMERICAN VETCH or TARE or PEA VINE (V. Americana) boasts
slightly larger bluish-purple flowers than the blue vetch, but
fewer of them; from three to nine only forming its loose raceme.
In moist soil throughout a very broad northerly and westerly
range it climbs and trails its graceful way, with the help of the
tendrils on the tips of leaves compounded of from eight to
fourteen oblong, blunt, and veiny leaflets.


BEACH, SEA, SEASIDE, or EVERLASTING PEA
  (Lathyrus maritimus)  Pea family

Flowers - Purple, butterfly-shaped, consisting of standard petal,
wings, and keel; 1 in. long or less, clustered in short raceme at
end of slender footstalk from leaf axils; calyx 5-toothed;
stamens 10 (9 and 1); style curved, flattened, bearded on inner
side. Stem: to 2 ft. long, stout, reclining, spreading, leafy.
Leaves: Compounded of 3 to 6 pairs of oblong leaflets somewhat
larger than halberd-shaped stipules at base of leaf; branched
tendrils at end of it. Fruit: A flat, 2-valved, veiny pod,
continuous between the seeds.
Preferred Habitat - Beaches of Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, also
of Great Lakes.
Flowering Season - May-August. Sometimes blooming again in
autumn.
Distribution - New Jersey to Arctic Circle; also Northern Europe
and Asia.

Sturdy clumps of the beach pea, growing beyond reach of the tide
in the dunes and sandy wastelands back of the beach, afford the
bee the last restaurant where he may regale himself without fear
of drowning. From some members of the pea family, as from the
wild lupine, for example, his weight, as he moves about, actually
pumps the pollen that has fallen into the forward part of the
blossom's keel onto his body, that he may transfer it to another
flower. In some other members his weight so depresses the keel
that the stamens are forced out to dust him over, the flower
resuming its original position to protect its nectar and the
remaining pollen just as soon as the pressure is removed. Other
peas, again, burst at his pressure, and discharge their pollen on
him. Now, in the beach pea, and similarly in the vetches, the
style is hairy on its inner side, to brush out the pollen on the
visitor who sets the automatic sweeper in motion as he alights
and moves about. So perfectly have many members of this
interesting family adapted their structure to the requirements of
insects, and so implicitly do they rely on their automatic
mechanism, that they have actually lost the power to fertilize
themselves.

In moist or wet ground throughout a northern range from ocean to
ocean, the MARSH VETCHLING (Lathyrus palustris) bears its purple,
butterfly-shaped flowers, that are the merest trifle over half
the size of those of the beach pea. From two to six of these
little blossoms are alternately set along the end of the stalk.
The leaflets, which are narrowly oblong, and acute at the apex,
stand up opposite each other in pairs (from two to four) along
the main leafstalk, that splits at the end to form hooked
tendrils.


BUTTERFLY or BLUE PEA
  (Clitoria Mariana)  Pea family

Flowers - Bright lavender blue, showy, about 2 in. long; from 1
to 3 borne on a short peduncle. Calyx tubular, 5-toothed; corolla
butterfly-shaped, consisting of very large, erect standard petal,
notched at rounded apex; 2 oblong, curved wings, and shorter,
acute keel; 10 stamens; style incurved, and hairy along inner
side. Stem: Smooth, ascending or partly twining, 1 to 3 ft. high.
Leaves: Compounded of 3 oblong leaflets, paler beneath, each on
short stalk. Fruit: A few-seeded, acutely pointed pod about 1 in.
long.
Preferred Habitat - Dry soil.
Flowering Season - June-July.
Distribution - New Jersey to Florida, westward to Missouri,
Texas, and Mexico.

A beautiful blossom, flaunting a large banner out of all
proportion to the size of its other parts, that it may arrest the
attention of its benefactors the bees. According to Henderson,
the plant, which is found in our Southern States and over the
Mexican border, grows also in the Khasia Mountains of India, but
in no intervening place. Several members of the tropic-loving
genus, that produce large, highly colored flowers, have been
introduced to American hothouses; but the blue butterfly pea is
our only native representative. The genus is thought to take its
name from kleio, to shut up, in reference to the habit these peas
have of seeding long before the flower drops off.


WILD or HOG PEANUT
  (Falcata comosa; Amphicarpaea monoica of Gray)  Pea family

Flowers - Numerous small, showy ones, borne in drooping clusters
from axils of upper leaves; lilac, pale purplish, or rarely
white, butterfly-shaped, consisting of standard petal partly
enfolding wings and keel. Calyx tubular, 4 or 5 toothed; 10
stamens (9 and 1); 1 pistil. (Also solitary fertile flowers,
lacking petals, on thread-like, creeping branches from lower
axils or underground). Stem: Twining wiry brownish-hairy, to 8
ft. long. Leaves: Compounded of 3 thin leaflets, egg-shaped at
base, acutely pointed at tip. Fruit: Hairy pod 1 in. long. Also
1-seeded, pale, rounded, underground peanut.
Preferred Habitat - Moist thickets, shady roadsides.
Flowering Season - August-September.
Distribution - New Brunswick westward to Nebraska, south to Gulf
of Mexico.

Amphicarpaea ("seed at both ends"), the Greek name by which this
graceful vine was formerly known, emphasizes its most interesting
feature, that, nevertheless, seems to many a foolish duplication
of energy on Nature's part. Why should the same plant bear two
kinds of blossoms and seeds? Among the foliage of low shrubbery
and plants in shady lanes and woodside thickets, we see the
delicate, drooping clusters of lilac blossoms hanging where bees
can readily discover them and, in pilfering their sweets,
transfer their pollen from flower to flower. But in case of
failure to intercross these blossoms that are dependent upon
insect help to set fertile seed, what then? Must the plant run
the risk of extinction? Self-fertilization may be an evil, but
failure to produce seed at all is surely the greatest one. To
guard against such a calamity, insignificant looking flowers that
have no petals to open for the enticing of insects, but which
fertilize themselves with their own pollen, produce abundant seed
close to the ground or under it.Then what need of the showy
blossoms hanging in the thicket above? Close inbreeding in the
vegetable world, as in the animal, ultimately produces degenerate
offspring; and although the showy lilac blossoms of the wild
peanut yield comparatively few cross-fertilized seeds, these are
quite sufficient to enable the vine to maintain those desired
features which are the inheritance from ancestors that struggled
in their day and generation after perfection. No plant dares
depend upon its cleistogamous or blind flowers alone for
offspring; and in the sixty or more genera containing these
curious growths, that usually look like buds arrested in
development, every plant that bears them bears also showy flowers
dependent upon cross-pollination by insect aid.

The boy who

    "Drives home the cows from the pasture
     Up through the long shady lane"

knows how reluctantly they leave the feast afforded by the wild
peanut. Hogs, rooting about in the moist soil where it grows,
unearth the hairy pods that should produce next year's vines;
hence the poor excuse for branding a charming plant with a
repellent folk-name,


VIOLETS
  (Viola)  Violet family

Lacking perfume only to be a perfectly satisfying flower, the
COMMON, PURPLE, MEADOW, or HOODED BLUE VIOLET (V. obliqua; V.
cucullata of Gray) has nevertheless established itself in the
hearts of the people from the Arctic to the Gulf as no
sweet-scented, showy, hothouse exotic has ever done. Royal in
color as in lavish profusion, it blossoms everywhere - in woods,
waysides, meadows, and marshes, but always in finer form in cool,
shady dells; with longer flowering scapes in meadow bogs; and
with longer leaves than wide in swampy woodlands. The
heart-shaped, saw-edged leaves, folded toward the center when
newly put forth, and the five-petalled, bluish-purple,
golden-hearted blossom are too familiar for more detailed
description. From the three-cornered stars of the elastic
capsules, the seeds are scattered abroad.

Beards on the spurred lower petal and the two side petals give
the bees a foothold when they turn head downward, as some must,
to suck nectar. This attitude enables them to receive the pollen
dusted on their abdomens, when they jar the flower, at a point
nearest their pollen-collecting hairs. It is also an economical
advantage to the flower which can sift the pollen downward on the
bee instead of exposing it to the pollen-eating interlopers.
Among the latter may be classed the bumblebees and butterflies
whose long lips and tongues pilfer ad libitum. "For the proper
visitors of the bearded violets," says Professor Robertson, "we
must look to the small bees, among which the Osmias are the most
important."

When science was younger and hair splitting an uncommon
indulgence of botanists, the EARLY BLUE VIOLET (Viola palmata)
was thought to be simply a variety of the common purple violet,
whose heart-shaped leaves frequently show a tendency to divide
into lobes. But the early blue violet, however roundish or
heart-shaped its early leaves may be, has the later ones
variously divided into from three to thirteen lobes, often almost
as much cut on the sides as the leaves of the bird's-foot violet.
In dry soil, chiefly in the woods, this violet may be found from
Southern Canada westward to Minnesota, and south to northern
boundaries of the Gulf States. Only its side petals are bearded
to form footrests for the insects that search for the deeply
secreted nectar. Many butterflies visit this flower. On entering
it a bee must first touch the stigma before any fresh golden
pollen is released from the anther cone, and cross-fertilization
naturally results.

In shale and sandy soil, even in the gravel of hillsides, one
finds the narrowly divided, finely cut leaves and the bicolored
beardless blossom of the BIRD'S-FOOT VIOLET (V. pedata), pale
bluish purple on the lower petals, dark purple on one or two
upper ones, and with a heart of gold. The large, velvety,
pansy-like blossom and the unusual foliage which rises in rather
dense tufts are sufficient to distinguish the plant from its
numerous kin. This species produces no cleistogamous or blind
flowers. Frequently the bird's-foot violet blooms a second time,
in autumn, a delightful eccentricity of this family. The spur of
its lower petal is long and very slender, and, as might be
expected, the longest-tongued bees and butterflies are its most
frequent visitors. These receive the pollen on the base of the
proboscis.

The WOOLLY BLUE VIOLET (V. sororia), whose stems and younger
leaves, at least, are covered with hairs, and whose purplish-blue
flowers are more or less bearded within, prefers a shady but dry
situation; whereas its next of kin, the ARROW-LEAVED VIOLET (V.
sagittata), delights in moist but open meadows and marshes. The
latter's long, arrow, or halberd-shaped leaves, usually entire
above the middle, but slightly lobed below it, may rear
themselves nine inches high in favorable soil, or in dry uplands
perhaps only two inches. The flowering scapes grow as tall as the
leaves. All but the lower petal of the large, deep, dark,
purplish-blue flower are bearded. This species produces an
abundance of late cleistogamous flowers on erect stems. These
peculiar greenish flowers without petals, that are so often
mistaken for buds or seed vessels; that never open, but without
insect aid ripen quantities of fertile seed, are usually borne,
if not actually under ground, then not far above it, on nearly
all violet plants. It will be observed that all species which
bear blind flowers rely somewhat on showy, cross-fertilized
blossoms also to counteract degeneracy from close inbreeding.

The OVATE-LEAVED VIOLET (V. ovata), formerly reckoned as a mere
variety of the former species, is now accorded a distinct rank.
Not all the blossoms, but an occasional clump, has a faint
perfume like sweet clover. The leaf is elongated, but rather too
round to be halberd-shaped; the stems are hairy; and the flowers,
which closely resemble those of the arrow-leaved violet, are
earlier; making these two species, which are popularly mistaken
for one, among the earliest and commonest of their clan. The dry
soil of upland woods and thickets is the ovate-leaved violet's
preferred habitat.

In course of time the lovely ENGLISH, MARCH, or SWEET VIOLET, (V.
odorata), which has escaped from gardens, and which is now
rapidly increasing with the help of seed and runners on the
Atlantic and the Pacific coasts, may be established among our
wild flowers. No blossom figures so prominently in European
literature. In France, it has even entered the political field
since Napoleon's day. Yale University has adopted the violet for
its own especial flower, although it is the corn-flower, or
bachelor's button (Centaurea cyanus) that is the true Yale blue.
Sprengel, who made a most elaborate study of the violet,
condensed the result of his research into the following questions
and answers, which are given here because much that he says
applies to our own native species, which have been too little
studied in the modern scientific spirit:

"1. Why is the flower situated on a long stalk which is upright,
but curved downwards at the free end? In order that it may hang
down; which, firstly, prevents rain from obtaining access to the
nectar; and, secondly, places the stamens in such a position that
the pollen falls into the open space between the pistil and the
free ends of the stamens. If the flower were upright, the pollen
would fall into the space between the base of the stamen and the
base of the pistil, and would not come in contact with the bee.

"2. Why does the pollen differ from that of most other
insect-fertilized flowers? In most of such flowers the insects
themselves remove the pollen from the anthers, and it is
therefore important that the pollen should not easily be detached
and carried away by the wind. In the present case, on the
contrary, it is desirable that it should be looser and dryer, so
that it may easily fall into the space between the stamens and
the pistil. If it remained attached to the anther, it would not
be touched by the bee, and the flower would remain unfertilized.

"3. Why is the base of the style so thin? In order that the bee
may be more easily able to bend the style.

"4. Why is the base of the style bent? For the same reason. The
result of the curvature is that the pistil is much more easily
bent than would be the case if the style were straight.

"5. Finally, why does the membranous termination of the upper
filament overlap the corresponding portions of the two middle
stamens? Because this enables the bee to move the pistil, and
thereby to set free the pollen more easily than would be the case
under the reverse arrangement."

In high altitudes of New England, Colorado. and northward, where
the soil is wet and cold, the pale lilac, slightly bearded
petals, streaked with darker veins, of the MARSH VIOLET (V.
palustris), with its almost round leaves, may be found from May
to June. All through the White Mountains one finds it abundant.

A peculiarity of the DOG or RUNNING VIOLET (V. Labradorica) is
that its small, heart-shaped leaves are set along the branching
stem, and its pale purple blossoms rise from their angles, pansy
fashion. From March to May it blooms throughout its wide range in
wet, shady places. Its English prototype, called by the same
invidious name, was given the prefix "dog," because the word,
which is always intended to express contempt in the British mind,
is applied in this case for the flower's lack of fragrance. When
a bee visits this violet, his head coming in contact with the
stigma jars it, thus opening the little pollen box, whose
contents must fall out on his head and be carried away and rubbed
off where it will fertilize the next violet visited.


SEA LAVENDER; MARSH ROSEMARY; CANKER-ROOT; INK-ROOT
  (Limonium Carolinianum; Statice Limonium of Gray)  Plumbago
family

Flowers - Very tiny, pale, dull lavender, erect, set along upper
side of branches. Calyx 5-toothed, tubular, plaited; corolla of 5
petals opposite as many stamens; 1 pistil with 5 thread-like
styles. Scape: 1 to 2 ft. high, slender, leafless, much branched
above. Leaves: All from thick, fleshy rootstock, narrowly oblong,
tapering into margined petioles, thick, the edges slightly waved,
not toothed; midrib prominent.
Preferred Habitat - Salt meadows and marshes.
Flowering Season - July-October.
Distribution  -  Atlantic coast from Labrador to Florida,
westward along the Gulf to Texas; also in Europe.

Seen in masses, from a little distance, this tiny flower looks
like blue-gray mist blown in over the meadows from the sea, and
on closer view each plant suggests sea-spray itself. Thrifty
housewives along the coast dry it for winter bouquets, partly for
ornament and partly because there is an old wives' tradition that
it keeps away moths. Statice, from the Greek verb to stop, hence
an astringent, was the generic name formerly applied to the
plants, with whose roots these same old women believed they cured
canker sores.


FRINGED GENTIAN
  (Gentiana crinita)  Gentian family

Flowers - Deep, bright blue, rarely white, several or many, about
2 in. high, stiffly erect, and solitary at ends of very long
foot-stalk. Calyx of 4 unequal, acutely pointed lobes. Corolla
funnel form, its four lobes spreading, rounded, fringed around
ends, but scarcely on sides. Four stamens inserted on corolla
tube; 1 pistil with 2 stigmas. Stem: 1 to 3 ft. high, usually
branched, leafy. Leaves: Opposite, upper ones acute at tip,
broadening to heart-shaped base, seated on stem. Fruit: A
spindle-shaped, 2-valved capsule, containing numerous scaly,
hairy seeds.
Preferred Habitat - Low, moist meadows and woods.
Flowering Season - September-November.
Distribution - Quebec, southward to Georgia, and westward beyond
the Mississippi.

    "Thou waitest late, and com'st alone
     When woods are bare and birds have flown,
     And frosts and shortening days portend
     The aged year is near his end.

    "Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye
     Look through its fringes to the sky,
     Blue - blue - as if that sky let fail
     A flower from its cerulean wall."

When we come upon a bed of gentians on some sparkling October
day, we can but repeat Bryant's thoughts and express them
prosaically who attempt description. In dark weather this
sunshine lover remains shut, to protect its nectar and pollen
from possible showers. An elusive plant is this gentian, which by
no means always reappears in the same places year after year, for
it is an annual whose seeds alone perpetuate it. Seating
themselves on the winds when autumn gales shake them from out of
the home wall, these little hairy scales ride afar, and those
that are so fortunate as to strike into soft, moist soil at the
end of the journey, germinate. Because this flower is so rarely
beautiful that few can resist the temptation of picking it, it is
becoming sadly rare near large settlements.

The special importance of producing a quantity of fertile seed
has led the gentians to adopt proterandry - one of the commonest,
because most successful, methods of insuring it. The anthers,
coming to maturity early, shed their pollen on the bumblebees
that have been first attracted by their favorite color and the
enticing fringes before they crawl half way down the tube where
they can reach the nectar secreted in the walls. After the pollen
has been carried from the early flowers, and the stamens begin to
wither, up rises the pistil to be fertilized with pollen brought
from a newly opened blossom by the bee or butterfly. The late
development of the pistil accounts for the error often stated,
that some gentians have none. No doubt the fringe, which most
scientists regard simply as an additional attraction for winged
insects, serves a double purpose in entangling the feet of ants
and other crawlers that would climb over the edge to pilfer
sweets clearly intended for the bumblebee alone.

Fifteen species of gentian have been gathered during a half-hour
walk in Switzerland, where the pastures are spread with sheets of
blue. Indeed, one can little realize the beauty of these heavenly
flowers who has not seen them among the Alps.

The FIVE-FLOWERED or STIFF GENTIAN, or AGUE-WEED (Gentiana
quinquefolia; G. quinqueflora of Gray) has its five-parted,
small, picotee-edged blue flowers arranged in clusters, not
exceeding seven, at the ends of the branches or seated in the
leaf-axils. The slender, branching, ridged stem may rise only two
inches in dry soil; or perhaps two feet in rich, moist, rocky
ground, where it grows to perfection, especially in mountainous
regions. From Canada to Florida and westward to Missouri is its
range, and beginning to bloom in August southward, it may not be
found until September in the Catskills, and in October it is
still in its glory in Ontario. The colorless, bitter juice of
many of the gentian tribe has long been valued as a tonic in
medicine. Evidently the butterflies that pilfer this "ague-weed,"
and the bees that are its legitimate feasters, find something
more delectable in its blue walls.

A deep, intense blue is the CLOSED, BLIND, or BOTTLE GENTIAN (G.
Andrewsii), more truly the color of the "male bluebird's back,"
to which Thoreau likened the paler fringed gentian. Rarely some
degenerate plant bears white flowers. As it is a perennial, we
are likely to find it in its old haunts year after year;
nevertheless its winged seeds sail far abroad to seek pastures
new. This gentian also shows a preference for moist soil. Gray
thought that it expanded slightly, and for a short time only in
sunshine, but added that, although it is proterandrous, i.e. it
matures and sheds its pollen before its stigma is susceptible to
any, he believed it finally fertilized itself by the lobes of the
stigma curling backward until they touched the anthers. But Gray
was doubtless mistaken. Several authorities have recently proved
that the flower is adapted to bumblebees. It offers them the last
feast of the season, for although it comes into bloom in August
southward, farther northward - and it extends from Quebec to the
Northwest Territory - it lasts through October.

Now, how can a bumblebee enter this inhospitable-looking flower?
If he did but know it, it keeps closed for his special benefit,
having no fringes or hairs to entangle the feet of crawling
pilferers, and no better way of protecting its nectar from rain
and marauding butterflies that are not adapted to its needs. But
he is a powerful fellow. Watch him alight on a cluster of
blossoms, select the younger, nectar-bearing ones, that are
distinctly marked white against a light-blue background at the
mouth of the corolla for his special guidance. Old flowers from
which the nectar has been removed turn deep reddish purple, and
the white pathfinders become indistinct. With some difficulty, it
is true, the bumblebee (B. Americanorum) thrusts his tongue
through the valve of the chosen flower where the five plaited
lobes overlap one another; then he pushes with all his might
until his head having passed the entrance most of his body
follows, leaving only his hind legs and the tip of his abdomen
sticking out as he makes the circuit. He has much sense as well
as muscle, and does not risk imprisonment in what must prove a
tomb by a total and unnecessary disappearance within the bottle.
Presently he backs out, brushes the pollen from his head and
thorax into his baskets, and is off to fertilize an older,
stigmatic flower with the few grains of quickening dust that must
remain on his velvety head.


WILD BLUE PHLOX
  (Phlox divaricata)  Phlox family

Flowers - Pale lilac blue, slightly fragrant, borne on sticky
pedicels, in loose, spreading clusters. Calyx with 5 long, sharp
teeth. Corolla of 5 flat lobes, indented like the top of a heart,
and united into a slender tube; 5 unequal, straight, short
stamens in corolla tube; 1 pistil with 3 stigmas. Stem: to 2 ft.
high, finely coated with sticky hairs above, erect or spreading,
and producing leafy shoots from base. Leaves: Of flowering stem -
opposite, oblong, tapering to a point; of sterile shoots - oblong
or egg-shaped, not pointed, 1 to 2 in. long.
Preferred habitat - Moist, rocky woods.
Flowering Season - April-June.
Distribution - Eastern Canada to Florida, Minnesota to Arkansas.

The merest novice can have no difficulty in naming the flower
whose wild and cultivated relations abound throughout North
America, the almost exclusive home of the genus, although it is
to European horticulturists, as usual the first to see the
possibilities in our native flowers, that we owe the gay hybrids
in our gardens. Mr. Drummond, a collector from the Botanical
Society of Glasgow, early in the thirties sent home the seeds of
a species from Texas, which became the ancestor of the gorgeous
annuals, the Drummond phloxes of commerce today; and although he
died of fever in Cuba before the plants became generally known,
not even his kinsman, the author of "Natural Law in the Spiritual
World," has done more to immortalize the family name.

While the wild blue phlox is sometimes cultivated, it is the
GARDEN PHLOX (P. paniculata), common in woods and thickets from
Pennsylvania to Illinois and southward, that under a gardener's
care bears the large terminal clusters of purple, magenta,
crimson, pink, and white flowers abundant in old-fashioned, hardy
borders. From these it has escaped so freely in many sections of
the North and East as to be counted among the local wildflowers.
Unless the young offshoots are separated from the parent and
given a nook of their own, the flower quickly reverts to the
original type. European cultivators claim that the most brilliant
colors are obtained by crossing annual with perennial phloxes.

WILD SWEET WILLIAM (P. maculata), another perennial much sought
by cultivators, loves the moisture of low woods and the
neighborhood of streams in the Middle and Western States when it
is free to choose its habitat; but it, too, has so freely escaped
from gardens farther north into dry and dusty roadsides, that
anyone who has passed the ruins of Hawthorne's little red cottage
at Lenox, for example, and seen the way his wife's clump of white
phlox under his study window has spread to cover an acre of
hillside, would suppose it to be luxuriating in its favorite
locality. This variety of the species (var. Candida) lacks the
purplish flecks on stem and lower leaves responsible for the
specific name of the type. Pinkish purple or pink blossoms are
borne in a rather narrow, elongated panicle on the typical Sweet
William.

Most members of the phlox family resort to the trick of coating
the upper stem and the peduncles immediately below the flowers
with a sticky secretion in which crawling insects, intent on
pilfering sweets, meet their death, just as birds are caught on
limed twigs. Butterflies, for whom phloxes have narrowed their
tubes to the exclusion of most other insects, are their
benefactors; but long-tongued bees and flies often seek their
nectar. Indeed, the number of strictly butterfly-flowers is
surprisingly small.


VIRGINIA COWSLIP; TREE or SMOOTH LUNGWORT; BLUE-BELLS
  (Mertensia Virginica)  Borage family

Flowers - Pinkish in bud, afterward purplish blue, fading to
light blue; about 1 in. long, tubular, funnel form, the tube of
corolla not crested; spreading or hanging on slender pedicels in
showy, loose clusters at end of smooth stem from 1 to 2 ft. high;
stamens 5, inserted on corolla; 1 pistil; ovary of 4 divisions.
Leaves: Large, entire, alternate, veiny, oblong or obovate, the
upper ones seated on stem; lower very large ones diminishing
toward base into long petioles; at first rich, dark purple,
afterward pale bluish gray. Fruit: 4 seed-like little nuts,
leathery, wrinkled when mature.
Preferred Habitat - Alluvial ground, low meadows, and along
streams.
Flowering Season - March-May.
Distribution - Southern Canada to South Carolina and Kansas, west
to Nebraska; most abundant in middle West.

Not to be outdone by its cousins the heliotrope and the
forget-me-not, this lovely and far more showy spring flower has
found its way into the rockwork and sheltered, moist nooks of
many gardens, especially in England, where Mr. W. Robinson, who
has appealed for its wider cultivation in that perennially
charming book, "The English Flower Garden," says of the
Mertensias: "There is something about them more beautiful in form
of foliage and stem, and in the graceful way in which they rise
to panicles of blue, than in almost any other family....
Handsomest of all is the Virginia cowslip." And yet Robinson
never saw the alluvial meadows in the Ohio Valley blued with
lovely masses of the plant in April.

A great variety of insects visit this blossom, which, being
tubular, conducts them straight to the ample feast; but not until
they have deposited some pollen brought from another flower on
the stigma in their way. The anthers are too widely separated
from the stigma to make self-fertilization likely. Occasionally
one finds the cowslips perforated by clever bumblebees. As only
the females, which are able to sip far deeper cups, are flying
when they bloom, they must be either too mischievous or too lazy
to drain them in the legitimate manner. Butterflies have only to
stand on a flower, not to enter it, in order to sip nectar from
the four glands that secrete it abundantly.


FORGET-ME-NOT; MOUSE-EAR; SCORPION GRASS; SNAKE GRASS; LOVE ME
  (Myosotis Palustris)  Borage family

Flowers - Pure blue, pinkish, or white, with yellow eye; flat,
5-lobed, borne in many-flowered, long, often 1-sided racemes.
Calyx 5-cleft; the lobes narrow, spreading, erect, and open in
fruit; 5 stamens inserted on corolla tube; style threadlike;
ovary 4-celled. Stem: Low, branching, leafy, slender, hairy,
partially reclining. Leaves: (Myosotis = mouse-ear) oblong,
alternate, seated on stem, hairy. Fruit: Nutlets, angled and
keeled on inner side.
Preferred Habitat - Escaped from gardens to brooksides, marshes,
and low meadows.
Flowering Season - May-July.
Distribution - Native of Europe and Asia, now rapidly spreading
from Nova Scotia southward to New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and
beyond.

How rare a color blue must have been originally among our flora
is evident from the majority of blue and purple flowers that,
although now abundant here and so perfectly at home, are really
quite recent immigrants from Europe and Asia. But our dryer,
hotter climate never brings to the perfection attained in England

    "The sweet forget-me-nots
     That grow for happy lovers."

Tennyson thus ignores the melancholy association of the flower in
the popular legend which tells how a lover, when trying to gather
some of these blossoms for his sweetheart, fell into a deep pool,
and threw a bunch on the bank, calling out, as he sank forever
from her sight, "Forget me not." Another dismal myth sends its
hero forth seeking hidden treasure caves in a mountain, under the
guidance of a fairy. He fills his pockets with gold, but not
heeding the fairy's warning to "forget not the best" - i.e., the
myosotis - he is crushed by the closing together of the mountain.
Happiest of all is the folk-tale of the Persians; as told by
their poet Shiraz: "It was in the golden morning of the early
world, when an angel sat weeping outside the closed gates of
Paradise. He had fallen from his high estate through loving a
daughter of earth, nor was he permitted to enter again until she
whom he loved had planted the flowers of the forget-me-not in
every corner of the world. He returned to earth and assisted her,
and together they went hand in hand. When their task was ended,
they entered Paradise together, for the fair woman, without
tasting the bitterness of death, became immortal like the angel
whose love her beauty had won when she sat by the river twining
forget-me-nots in her hair."

It was the golden ring around the forget-me-not's center that
first led Sprengel to believe the conspicuous markings at the
entrance of many flowers served as pathfinders to insects. This
golden circle also shelters the nectar from rain, and indicates
to the fly or bee just where it must probe between stigma and
anthers to touch them with opposite sides of its tongue. Since it
may probe from any point of the circle, it is quite likely that
the side of the tongue that touched a pollen-laden anther in one
flower will touch the stigma in the next one visited, and so
cross-fertilize it. But forget-me-nots are not wholly dependent
on insects. When these fail, a fully mature flower is still able
to set fertile seed by shedding its own pollen directly on the
stigma.

The SMALLER FORGET-ME-NOT (M. laxa), formerly accounted a mere
variety of palustris, but now defined as a distinct species, is a
native, and therefore may serve to show how its European relative
here will deteriorate in the dryer atmosphere of the New World.
Its tiny turquoise flowers, borne on long stems from a very loose
raceme, gleam above wet, muddy places from Newfoundland and
Eastern Canada to Virginia and Tennessee.

Even smaller still are the blue or white flowers of the FIELD
FORGET-ME-NOT, SCORPION GRASS, or MOUSE-EAR (M. arvenis), whose
stems and leaves are covered with bristly hairs. It blooms from
August to July in dry places, even on hillsides, an unusual
locality in which to find a member of this moisture-loving clan.
All the flowers remain long in bloom, continually forming new
buds on a lengthening stem, and leaving behind little empty green
calices.


VIPER'S BUGLOSS; BLUE-WEED; VIPER'S HERB or GRASS; SNAKE-FLOWER;
BLUE-THISTLE
  (Echium vulgare)  Borage family

Flowers - Bright blue, afterward reddish purple, pink in the bud,
numerous, clustered on short, 1-sided, curved spikes rolled up at
first, and straightening out as flowers expand. Calyx deeply
5-cleft; corolla 1 in. long or less, funnel form, the 5 lobes
unequal, acute; 5 stamens inserted on corolla tube, the filaments
spreading below, and united above into slender appendage, the
anthers forming a cone. 1 pistil with 2 stigmas. Stem: 1 to 2 1/2
ft. high; bristly-hairy, erect, spotted. Leaves: Hairy, rough,
oblong to lance-shaped, alternate, seated on stem, except at base
of plant.
Preferred Habitat - Dry fields, waste places; roadsides.
Flowering Season - June-July.
Distribution - New Brunswick to Virginia, westward to Nebraska;
Europe and Asia.

In England, from whose gardens this plant escaped long ago, a war
of extermination that has been waged against the vigorous,
beautiful weed by the farmers has at last driven it to the
extremity of the island, where a few stragglers about Penzance
testify to the vanquishing of what must once have been a mighty
army. From England a few refugees reached here in i683, no one
knows how; but they proved to be the vanguard of an aggressive
and victorious host that quickly overran our open, hospitable
country, as if to give vent to revenge for long years of
persecution at the hands of Europeans. "It is a fact that all our
more pernicious weeds, like our vermin, are of Old-World origin,"
says.John Burroughs. "...Perhaps the most notable thing about
them, when compared with our native species, is their
persistence, not to say pugnacity. They fight for the soil; they
plant colonies here and there, and will not be rooted out. Our
native weeds are for the most part shy and harmless, and retreat
before civilization.... We have hardly a weed we can call our
own."

Years ago, when simple folk believed God had marked plants with
some sign to indicate the special use for which each was
intended, they regarded the spotted stem of the bugloss, and its
seeds shaped like a serpent's head, as certain indications that
the herb would cure snake bites. Indeed, the genus takes its name
from Echis, the Greek for viper.

Because it is showy and offers accessible nectar, a great variety
of insects visit the blue-weed; Muller alone observed sixty-seven
species about it. We need no longer wonder at its fertility. Of
the five stamens one remains in the tube, while the other four
project and form a convenient alighting place for visitors, which
necessarily dust their under sides with pollen as they enter; for
the red anthers were already ripe when the flower opened. Then,
however, the short, immature pistil was kept below. After the
stamens have shed their pollen and there can be no longer danger
of self-fertilization, it gradually elongates itself beyond the
point occupied by them, and divides into two little horns whose
stigmatic surfaces an incoming pollen-laden insect cannot well
fail to strike against. Cross-pollination is so thoroughly
secured in this case that the plant has completely lost the power
of fertilizing itself. Unwelcome visitors like ants, which would
pilfer nectar without rendering any useful service in return, are
warded off by the bristly, hairy foliage. Several kinds of female
bees seek the bugloss exclusively for food for their larvae as
well as for themselves, sweeping up the abundant pollen with
their abdominal brushes as they feast without effort.


BLUE VERVAIN; WILD HYSSOP; SIMPLER'S JOY
  (Verbena hastala)  Vervain family

Flowers - Very small, purplish blue, in numerous slender, erect,
compact spikes. Calyx 5-toothed; corolla tubular, unequally
5-lobed; 2 pairs of stamens; 1 pistil. Stem: 3 to 7 ft. high,
rough, branched above, leafy, 4-sided. Leaves: Opposite, stemmed,
lance-shaped, saw-edged, rough; lower ones lobed at base.
Preferred Habitat - Moist meadows, roadsides, waste places.
Flowering Season - June-September.
Distribution - United States and Canada in almost every part.

Seeds below, a circle of insignificant purple-blue flowers in the
center, and buds at the top of the vervain's slender spires do
not produce a striking effect, yet this common plant certainly
does not lack beauty. John Burroughs, ever ready to say a kindly,
appreciative word for any weed, speaks of its drooping, knotted
threads, that "make a pretty etching upon the winter snow." Bees,
the vervain's benefactors, are usually seen clinging to the
blooming spikes, and apparently sleep on them. Borrowing the name
of simpler's joy from its European sister, the flower has also
appropriated much of the tradition and folk-lore centered about
that plant which herb-gatherers, or simplers, truly delighted to
see, since none was once more salable.

EUROPEAN VERVAIN (V. officinalis) HERB-OF-THE-CROSS, BERBINE,
HOLY-HERB, ENCHANTER'S PLANT, JUNO'S TEARS, PIGEON-GRASS,
LIGHTNING PLANT, SIMPLER'S JOY, and so on through a long list of
popular names for the most part testifying to the plant's virtue
as a love-philter, bridal token, and general cure-all, has now
become naturalized from the Old World on the Atlantic and Pacific
Slopes; and is rapidly appropriating waste arid cultivated ground
until, in many places, it is truly troublesome. In general habit
like the blue vervain, its flowers are more purplish than blue,
and are scattered, not crowded, along the spikes. The leaves are
deeply, but less acutely, cut.

Ages before Christians ascribed healing virtues to the vervain -
found growing on Mount Calvary, and therefore possessing every
sort of miraculous power, according to the logic of simple
peasant folk - the Druids had counted it among their sacred
plants. "When the dog-star arose from unsunned spots" the priests
gathered it. Did not Shakespeare's witches learn some of their
uncanny rites from these reverend men of old? One is impressed
with the striking similarity of many customs recorded of both.
Two of the most frequently used ingredients in witches' cauldrons
were the vervain and the rue. "The former probably derived its
notoriety from the fact of its being sacred to Thor, an honor
which marked it out, like other lightning plants, as peculiarly
adapted for occult uses," says Mr. Thiselton Dyer in his
"Folk-lore of Plants." "Although vervain, therefore, as the
enchanter's plant, was gathered by witches to do mischief in
their incantations, yet, as Aubrey says, it 'hinders witches from
their will,' a circumstance to which Drayton further refers when
he speaks of the vervain as ''gainst witchcraft much avayling.'"
Now we understand why the children of Shakespeare's time hung
vervain and dill with a horseshoe over the door.

In his eighth Eclogue, Virgil refers to vervain as a charm to
recover lost love. Doubtless this was the verbena, the herba
sacra employed in ancient Roman sacrifices, according to Pliny.
In his day the bridal wreath was of verbena, gathered by the
bride herself.

NARROW-LEAVED VERVAIN (V. angustifolia), like the blue vervain,
has a densely crowded spike of tiny purple or blue flowers that
quickly give place to seeds, but usually there is only one spike
at the end of a branch. The leaves are narrow, lance-shaped,
acute, saw-edged, rough. From Massachusetts and Florida westward
to Minnesota and Arkansas one finds the plant blooming in dry
fields from June to August, after the parsimonious manner of the
vervain tribe.

It is curious that the vervain, or verbena, employed by brides
for centuries as the emblem of chastity, should be one of the
notorious botanical examples of a willful hybrid. Generally, the
individuals of distinct species do not interbreed; but verbenas
are often difficult to name correctly in every case because of
their susceptibility to each other's pollen - the reason why the
garden verbena may so easily be made to blossom forth into
whatever hue the gardener wills. His plants have been obtained,
for the most part, from the large-flowered verbena, the beautiful
purple, blue, or white species of our Western States (V.
Canadensis) crossed with brilliant-hued species imported from
South America.


MAD-DOG SKULLCAP or HELMET-FLOWER; MAD-WEED; HOODWORT
  (Scutellaria lateriflora)  Mint family

Flowers - Blue, varying to whitish; several or many, 1/4 in.
long, growing in axils of upper leaves or in 1-sided spike-like
racemes. Calyx 2-lipped, the upper lip with a helmet-like
protuberance; corolla 2-lipped; the lower, 3-lobed lip spreading;
the middle lobe larger than the side ones. Stamens, 4, in pairs,
under the upper lip; upper pair the shorter; one pistil, the
style unequally cleft in two. Stem: Square, smooth, leafy,
branched, 8 in. to 2 ft. high. Leaves: Opposite, oblong to
lance-shaped, thin, toothed, on slender pedicles, 1 to 3 in.
long, growing gradually smaller toward top of stem. Fruit: 4
nutlets.
Preferred Habitat - Wet, shady ground.
Flowering Season - July-September.
Distribution - Uneven throughout United States and the British
Possessions.

By the helmet-like appendage on the upper lip of the calyx, which
to the imaginative mind of Linnaeus suggested Scutellum (a little
dish), which children delight to spring open for a view of the
four tiny seeds attached at the base when in fruit, one knows
this to be a member of the skullcap tribe, a widely scattered
genus of blue and violet two-lipped flowers, some small to the
point of insignificance, like the present species, others showy
enough for the garden, but all rich in nectar, and eagerly sought
by bees. The wide middle lobe of the lower lip forms a convenient
platform on which to alight; the stamens in the roof of a newly
opened blossom dust the back of the visitor as he explores the
nectary; and as the stamens of an older flower wither when they
have shed their pollen, and the style then rises to occupy their
position, it follows that, in flying from the top of one spike of
flowers to the bottom of another, where the older ones are, the
visitor, for whom the whole scheme of color, form, and
arrangement was planned, deposits on the sticky top of the style
some of the pollen he has brought with him and so
cross-fertilizes the flower. When the seeds begin to form and the
now useless corolla drops off, the helmet-like appendage on the
top of the calyx enlarges and meets the lower lip, so enclosing
and protecting the tiny nutlets. After their maturity, either the
mouth gapes from dryness, or the appendage drops off altogether,
from the same cause, to release the seeds. Old herb doctors, who
professed to cure hydrophobia with this species, are responsible
for its English misnomer.

Perhaps the most beautiful member of the genus is the SHOWY
SKULLCAP (S. serrata), whose blue corolla, an inch long, has its
narrow upper lip shorter than the spreading lower one. The
flowers are set opposite each other at the end of the smooth
stem, which rises from one to two feet high in the woods
throughout a southerly and westerly range. As several other
skullcaps have distinctly saw-edged leaves, this plant might have
been given a more distinctive adjective, thinks one who did not
have the naming of 200,000 species!

Above dry, sandy soil from New York and Michigan southward the
HAIRY SKULLCAP (S. pilosa) lifts short racemes of blue flowers
that are only half an inch long, and whose lower lip and lobes at
either side are shorter than the arched upper lip. Most parts of
the plant are covered with down, the lower stem being especially
hairy; and this fact determines the species when connected with
its rather distant pairs of indented, veiny leaves, ranging from
oblong to egg-shaped, and furnished with petioles which grow
gradually shorter toward the top, where pairs of bracts, seated
on the stem, part to let the flowers spring from their axils.

The LARGER or HYSSOP SKULLCAP (S. integrifolia) rarely has a dent
in its rounded oblong leaves ,which, like the stem, are covered
with fine down. Its lovely, bright blue flowers, an inch long,
the lips of about equal length, are grouped opposite each other
at the top of a stem that never lifts them higher than two feet;
and so their beauty is often concealed in the tall grass of
roadsides and meadows and the undergrowth of woods and thickets,
where they bloom from May to August, from southern New England to
the Gulf of Mexico, westward to Texas.

This tribe of plants is almost exclusively North American, but
the hardy MARSH SKULLCAP or HOODED WILLOW-HERB (S. galericulata),
at least, roams over Europe, and Asia also, with the help of
runners, as well as seeds that, sinking into the soft earth of
swamps and the borders of brooks, find growth easy. The blue
flowers which grow singly in the axils of the upper leaves are
quite as long as those of the larger and the showy skullcaps; the
oblong, lance-shaped leaves, which are mostly seated on the
branching stem, opposite each other, have low teeth. Why do
leaves vary as they do, especially in closely allied species?
"The causes which have led to the different forms of leaves have
been, so far as I know," says Sir John Lubbock, "explained in
very few cases: those of the shapes and structure of seeds are
tolerably obvious in some species, but in the majority they are
still entirely unexplained; and, even as regards the blossoms
themselves, in spite of the numerous and conscientious labors of
so many eminent naturalists, there is as yet no single species
thoroughly known to us."


GROUND IVY or JOY; GILL-OVER-THE-GROUND; FIELD BALM; CREEPING
CHARLIE
  (Glecoma hederacea; Nepeta Glechoma of Gray)  Mint family

Flowers - Light bluish purple, dotted with small specks of
reddish violet; growing singly or in clusters along stem, seated
in leaf axils; calyx hairy, with 5 sharp teeth; corolla tubular,
over 1/2 in. long, 2-lipped, the upper lip 2-lobed, lower lip
with 3 spreading lobes, middle one largest; 4 stamens in pairs
under upper lip; the anther sacs spreading; pistil with 2-lobed
style. Stem: Trailing, rooting at intervals, sometimes 18 in.
long, leafy, the branches ascending. Leaves: From 1/2 to 1 1/2
in. across; smooth, rounded, kidney-shaped, scallop-edged.
Preferred Habitat - Waste places, shady ground.
Flowering Season - March-May.
Distribution - Eastern half of Canada and the United States, from
Georgia and Kansas northward.

Besides the larger flowers, containing both stamens and pistils,
borne on this little immigrant, smaller female flowers,
containing a pistil only, occur just as they do in thyme, mint,
marjoram, and doubtless other members of the great family to
which all belong. Muller attempted to prove that these small
flowers, being the least showy, are the last to be visited by
insects, which, having previously dusted themselves with pollen
from the stamens of the larger flowers when they first open, are
in a condition to make cross-fertilization certain. So much for
the small flower's method of making insects serve its end; the
larger flowers have another way. At first they are male; that is,
the pistil is as yet undeveloped and the four stamens are mature,
ready to shed pollen on any insect alighting on the lip. Later,
when the stamens are past maturity, the pistil elongates itself
and is ready for the reception of pollen brought from younger
flowers. Many blossoms are male on the first day of opening, and
female later, to protect themselves against self-fertilization.

In Europe, where the aromatic leaves of this little creeper were
long ago used for fermenting and clarifying beer, it is known by
such names as ale-hoof and gill ale-gill, it is said, being
derived from the old French word, guiller, to ferment or make
merry. Having trailed across Europe, the persistent hardy plant
is now creeping its way over our continent, much to the disgust
of cattle, which show unmistakable dislike for a single leaf
caught up in a mouthful of herbage.

Very closely allied to the ground ivy is the CATMINT or CATNIP
(Nepela Cataria) ,whose pale-purple, or nearly white flowers,
dark-spotted, may be most easily named by crushing the coarsely
toothed leaves in one's hand. It is curious how cats will seek
out this hoary-hairy plant in the waste places where it grows and
become half-crazed with delight over its aromatic odor.


SELF-HEAL; HEAL-ALL; BLUE CURLS; HEART-OF-THE-EARTH; BRUNELLA
(Prunella vulgaris) Mint family

Flowers - Purple and violet, in dense spikes, somewhat resembling
a clover head; from 1/2 to 1 in. long in flower, becoming 4 times
the length in fruit. Corolla tubular, irregularly 2-lipped, the
upper lip darker and hood-like; the lower one 3-lobed, spreading,
the middle and largest lobe fringed; 4 twin-like stamens
ascending under upper lip; filaments ofthe lower and longer pair
2-toothed at summit, one of the teeth bearing an anther, the
other tooth sterile; style thread-like, shorter than stamens, and
terminating in a 2-cleft stigma. Calyx 2-parted, half the length
of corolla, its teeth often hairy on edges. Stem: 2 in. to 2 ft.
high, erect or reclining, simple or branched. Leaves: Opposite,
oblong. Fruit: 4 nutlets, round and smooth.
Preferred Habitat - Fields, roadsides, waste places.
Flowering Season - May-October.
Distribution - North America, Europe, Asia.

This humble, rusty green plant, weakly lopping over the
surrounding grass, so that often only its insignificant purple,
clover-like flower heads are visible, is another of those
immigrants from the old countries which, having proved fittest in
the fiercer struggle for existence there, has soon after its
introduction here exceeded most of our more favored native
flowers in numbers. Everywhere we find the heal-all, sometimes
dusty and stunted by the roadside, sometimes truly beautiful in
its fresh purple, violet, and white when perfectly developed
under happy conditions. In England, where most flowers are deeper
hued than with us, the heal-all is rich purple. What is the
secret of this flower's successful march across three continents?
As usual, the chief reason is to be found in the facility it
offers insects to secure food; and the quantity of fertile seed
it is therefore able to ripen as the result of their visits is
its reward. Also, its flowering season is unusually long, and it
is a tireless bloomer. It is finical in no respect; its sprawling
stems root easily at the joints, and it is very hardy.

Several species of bumblebees enter the flower, which being set
in dense clusters enables them to suck the nectar from each with
the minimum loss of time, the smaller bee spending about two
seconds to each. After allowing for the fraction of time it takes
him to sweep his eyes and the top of his head with his forelegs
to free them from the pollen which must inevitably be shaken from
the stamen in the arch of the corolla as he dives deeply after
the nectar in the bottom of the throat, and to pass the pollen,
just as honeybees do, with the most amazing quickness, from the
forelegs to the middle ones, and thence to the hairy "basket" on
the hind ones - after making all allowances for such delays, this
small worker is able to fertilize all the flowers in the fullest
cluster in half a minute! When the contents of the baskets of two
different species of bumblebees caught on this blossom were
examined under the microscope, the pollen in one case proved to
be heal-all, with some from the goldenrod, and a few grains of a
third kind not identified; and in the other case; heal-all pollen
and a small proportion of some unknown kind. Bees that are
evidently out for both nectar and pollen on the same trip have
been detected visiting white and yellow flowers on their way from
one heal-all cluster to another; and this fact, together with the
presence of more than one kind of pollen in the basket, shows
that the generally accepted statement that bees confine
themselves to flowers of one kind or color during a trip is not
always according to fact.

The older name of the plant, Brunella, and the significant one,
altered by Linnaeus into the softer sound it now bears, is
doubtless derived from the German word, braune, the quinsy.
Quaint old Parkinson reads: "This is generally called prunella
and brunella from the Germans who called it brunellen, because it
cureth that disease which they call die bruen, common to soldiers
in campe, but especially in garrison, which is an inflammation of
the mouth, throat, and tongue." Among the old herbalists who
pretended to cure every ill that flesh is heir to with it, it was
variously known as carpenter's herb, sicklewort, hook-heal,
slough-heal, and brownwort.


AMERICAN or MOCK PENNYROYAL; TICKWEED; SQUAW MINT
  (Hedeoma pulegioides)  Mint family

Flowers - Very small, bluish purple, clustered in axils of upper
leaves. Calyx tubular, unequally 5-cleft; teeth of upper lip
triangular, hairy in throat. Corolla 2-lipped, upper lip erect,
notched; lower one 3-cleft, spreading; 2 anther-bearing stamens
under upper lip; 2 sterile but apparent; 1 pistil with 2-cleft
style. Stem: Low, erect, branched, square, hairy, 6 to 18 in.
high. Leaves: Small, opposite, ovate to oblong, scantily toothed,
strongly aromatic, pungent.
Preferred Habitat - Dry fields, open woodland.
Flowering Season - July-September.
Distribution - Cape Breton Island westward to Nebraska, south to
Florida.

However insignificant its flower, this common little plant
unmistakably proclaims its presence throughout the neighborhood.
So powerful is the pungent aroma of its leaves that dog doctors
sprinkle them about freely in the kennels to kill fleas, a pest
by no means exterminated in Southern Europe, however, where the
true pennyroyal of commerce (Mentha Pulegium) is native. Herb
gatherers who collect our pennyroyal, that is so similar to the
European species it is similarly employed in medicine, say they
can scent it from a greater distance than any other plant.

BASTARD PENNYROYAL, which, like the Self-heal, is sometimes
called BLUE CURLS (Trichostema dichotomum), chooses dry fields,
but preferably sandy ones, where we find its abundant, tiny blue
flowers, that later change to purple, from July to October. Its
balsam-like odor is not agreeable, neither has the plant beauty
to recommend it; yet where it grows, from Maine to Florida, and
west to Texas, it is likely to be so common we cannot well pass
it unnoticed. The low, stiff, slender, much-branched, and rather
clammy stem bears opposite, oblong, smooth-edged leaves narrowed
into petioles. One, two, or three flowers, borne at the tips of
the branches, soon fall off, leaving the 5-cleft calyx to cradle
four exposed nutlets.

>From the five-lobed tubular corolla protrude four very long,
curling, blue or violet stamens - hair stamens the Greek generic
title signifies - and the pretty popular name of blue curls also
has reference to these conspicuous filaments that are spirally
coiled in the bud.

In general habit like the two preceding plants, the FALSE
PENNYROYAL (Isanthus brachiatus) nevertheless prefers that its
sandy home should be near streams. From Quebec to Georgia,
westward to Minnesota and Texas, it blooms in midsummer, lifting
its small, tubular, pale blue flowers from the axils of pointed,
opposite leaves. An unusual characteristic in one of the mint
tribe is that the five sharp lobes of its bell-shaped calyx, and
the five rounded, spreading lobes of the corolla, are of equal
length, hence its Greek name signifying an equal flower.


WILD or CREEPING THYME
  (Thymus Serpyllum)  Mint family

Flowers - Very small purple or pink purple, fragrant, clustered
at ends of branches or in leaf axils. Hairy calyx and corolla
2-lipped, the latter with lower lip 3-cleft; stamens 4; style
2-cleft. Leaves: Oblong, opposite, aromatic. Stem: 4 to 12 in.
long) creeping, woody, branched, forming dense cushions.
Preferred Habitat - Roadsides, dry banks, and waste places.
Flowering Season - June-September.
Distribution - Naturalized from Europe. Nova Scotia to Middle
States.

    "I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
     Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows;
     Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
     With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine."
                        - A Midsummer Night's Dream.

According to Danish tradition, anyone waiting by an elder-bush on
Midsummer Night at twelve o'clock will see the king of fairyland
and all his retinue pass by and disport themselves in favorite
haunts, among others the mounds of fragrant wild thyme. How well
Shakespeare knew his folklore!

Thyme is said to have been one of the three plants which made the
Virgin Mary's bed. Indeed, the European peasants have as many
myths as there are quotations from the poets about this classic
plant. Its very name denotes that it was used as an incense in
Greek temples. No doubt it was the Common Thyme (T. vulgaris), an
erect, tall plant cultivated in gardens here as a savory, that
Horace says the Romans used so extensively for bee culture.

Dense cushions of creeping thyme usually contain two forms of
blossoms on separate plants - hermaphrodite (male and female
which are much the commoner; and pistillate, or only female,
flowers, in which the stamens develop no pollen. The latter are
more fertile; none can fertilize itself. But blossoms so rich in
nectar naturally attract quantities of insects - bees and
butterflies chiefly. A newly opened hermaphrodite flower, male on
the first day, dusts its visitors as they pass the ripe stamens.
This pollen they carry to a flower two days old, which, having
reached the female stage, receives it on the mature two-cleft
stigma, now erect and tall, whereas the stamens are past
maturity.


GARDEN, SPEAR, or MACKEREL MINT
  (Mentha spicata; M. viridis of Gray)  Mint family

Flowers - Small, pale bluish, or pinkish purple, in whorls,
forming terminal, interrupted, narrow spikes, 2 to 4 in. long in
fruit, the central one surpassing lateral ones. Calyx
bell-shaped, toothed; corolla tubular, 4-cleft. Stamens 4; style
2-cleft. Stem: Smooth, 1 to 1 1/2 ft. high, branched. Leaves:
Opposite, narrowly oblong, acute, saw-edged, aromatic.
Preferred Habitat - Moist soil.
Flowering Season  - July-September.
Distribution - Eastern half of Canada and United States. Also
Europe and Asia.

The poets tell us that Proserpine, Pluto's wife, in a fit of
jealousy changed a hated rival into the mint plant, whose name
Mentha, in its Latin form, or Minthe, the Greek equivalent, is
still that of the metamorphosed beauty, a daughter of Cocytus,
who was also Pluto's wife. Proserpine certainly contrived to keep
her rival's memory fragrant. But how she must delight in seeing
her under the chopping-knife and served up as sauce!

It is a curious fact that among the Labiates, or two-lipped
blossoms to which thymes and mints belong, there very frequently
occur species bearing flowers that are male on the first day
(staminate) and female, or pistillate, on the second day, and
also smaller female flowers on distinct plants. Muller believed
this plan was devised to attract insects, first by the more showy
hermaphrodite flower, that they might carry its pollen to the
less conspicuous female flower, which they would naturally visit
last; but this interesting theory has yet to be proved. Nineteen
species of flies, to which the mints are specially adapted, have
been taken in the act of transferring pollen. Ten varieties of
the lower hymenoptera (bees, wasps, and others) commonly resort
to the fragrant spikes of bloom.

PEPPERMINT (M. piiterita), similar in manner of growth to the
preceding, is another importation from Europe now thoroughly at
home here in wet soil. The volatile oil obtained by distilling
its leaves has long been an important item of trade in Wayne
County, New York. One has only to crush the leaves in one's hand
to name the flower.

Our native WILD MINT (M. Canadensis), common along brook-sides
and in moist soil from New Brunswick to Virginia and far
westward, has its whorls of small purplish flowers seated in the
leaf axils. Its odor is like pennyroyal. The true PENNYROYAL, not
to be confused with our spurious woodland annual, is M. Pulegium,
a native of Europe, whence a number of its less valuable
relatives, all perennials, have traveled to become naturalized
Americans.

In dry open woods and thickets and by the roadside, from late
August throughout September, we find blooming the aromatic
fragrant STONE MINT, SWEET HORSE-MINT, or AMERICAN DITTANY
(Cunila origanoides; C. Mariana of Gray). Its small pink-purple,
lilac, or whitish flowers, that are only about half as long as
the protruding pair of stamens, are borne in loose terminal
clusters at the ends of the stiff, branched, slender, sometimes
reddish, stem. A pair of rudimentary, useless stamens remain
within the two-lipped tube; the exserted pair, affording the most
convenient alighting place for the visiting flies, dust their
undersides with pollen the first day the flower opens; on the
next, the stigma will be ready to receive pollen carried from
young flowers.


NIGHTSHADE; BLUE BINDWEED; FELONWORT; BITTERSWEET; SCARLET or
SNAKE BERRY; POISON-FLOWER; WOODY NIGHTSHADE
  (Solanum Dulcamara)  Potato family

Flowers - Blue, purple, or, rarely, white with greenish spots on
each lobe; about 1/2 in. broad, clustered in slender, drooping
cymes. Calyx 5-lobed, oblong, persistent on the berry; corolla
deeply, sharply 5-cleft, wheel-shaped, or points curved backward;
5 stamens inserted on throat, yellow, protruding, the anthers
united to form a cone; stigma small. Stem: Climbing or
straggling, woody below, branched, 2 to 8 ft. long. Leaves:
Alternate, 2 to 4 in. long, 1 to 2 1/2 in. wide, pointed at the
apex, usually heart-shaped at base; some with 2 distinct leaflets
below on the petiole, others have leaflets united with leaf like
lower lobes or wings. Fruit: A bright red, oval berry.
Preferred Habitat - Moist thickets, fence rows.
Flowering Season - May-September.
Distribution - United States east of Kansas, north of New Jersey.
Canada, Europe, and Asia.

More beautiful than the graceful flowers are the drooping cymes
of bright berries, turning from green to yellow, then to orange
and scarlet, in the tangled thicket by the shady roadside in
autumn, when the unpretending, shrubby vine, that has crowded its
way through the rank midsummer vegetation, becomes a joy to the
eye. Another bittersweet, so-called, festoons the hedgerows with
yellow berries which, bursting, show their scarlet-coated seeds.
Rose hips and mountain-ash berries, among many other conspicuous
bits of color, arrest attention, but not for us were they
designed. Now the birds are migrating, and, hungry with their
long flight, they gladly stop to feed upon fare so attractive.
Hard, indigestible seeds traverse the alimentary canal without
alteration and are deposited many miles from the parent that bore
them. Nature's methods for widely distributing plants cannot but
stir the dullest imagination.

The purple pendent flowers of this nightshade secrete no nectar,
therefore many insects let them alone; but it is now believed
that no part of the plant is poisonous. Certainly one that claims
the potato, tomato, and eggplant among its kin has no right to be
dangerous. The BLACK, GARDEN, or DEADLY NIGHTSHADE, also called
MOREL (S. nigrum), bears jet-black berries that are alleged to be
fatal. Nevertheless, female bumblebees, to which its white
flowers are specially adapted, visit them to draw out pollen from
the chinks of the anthers with their jaws, just as they do in the
case of the wild, sensitive plant, and with no more disastrous
result. It has been well said that the nightshades are a blessing
both to the sick and to the doctors. The present species takes
its name from dulcis, sweet, and amaras, bitter, referring to the
taste of the juice; the generic name is derived from solamen,
solace or consolation, referring to the relief afforded by the
narcotic properties of some of these plants.


BLUE or WILD TOADFLAX; BLUE LINARIA
  (Linaria Canadensis)  Figwort family

Flowers - Pale blue to purple, small, irregular, in slender
spikes. Calyx 5-pointed; corolla 2-lipped, with curved spur
longer than its tube, which is nearly closed by a white, 2-ridged
projection or palate; the upper lip erect, 2-lobed; lower lip
3-lobed, spreading. Stamens 4, in pairs, in throat; 1 pistil.
Stem: Slender, weak, of sterile shoots, prostrate; flowering
stem, ascending or erect, 4 in. to 2 ft. high. Leaves: Small,
linear, alternately scattered along stem, or oblong in pairs or
threes on leafy sterile shoots.
Preferred Habitat - Dry soil, gravel, or sand.
Flowering Season - May-October.
Distribution - North, Central, and South Americas.

Sometimes lying prostrate in the dust, sometimes erect, the
linaria's delicate spikes of bloom wear an air of injured
innocence, yet the plant, weak as it looks, has managed to spread
over three Americas from ocean to ocean. More beautiful than the
rather scrawny flowers are the tufts of cool green foliage made
by the sterile shoots that take complete possession of a wide
area around the parent plants.

Unlike its relative butter-and-eggs, the corolla of this toadflax
is so contracted that bees cannot enter it; but by inserting
their long tongues, they nevertheless manage to drain it. Small,
short-tongued bees contrive to reach only a little nectar. The
palate, so valuable to the other linaria, has in this one lost
its function; and the larger flies, taking advantage of the
flower's weakness, pilfer both sweets and pollen. Butterflies, to
which a slender spurred flower is especially attractive, visit
this one in great numbers, and as they cannot regale themselves
without touching the anthers and stigma, they may be regarded as
the legitimate visitors.

Wolf, rat, mouse, sow, cow, cat, snake, dragon, dog, toad, are
among the many animal prefixes to the names of flowers that the
English country people have given for various and often most
interesting reasons. Just as dog, used as a prefix, expresses an
idea of worthlessness to them, so toad suggests a spurious plant;
the toadflax being made to bear what is meant to be an odious
name because before flowering it resembles the true flax, linum,
from which the generic title is derived.


MARYLAND FIGWORT; BEE PLANT; KNOTTED FIGWORT; HEAL-ALL; PILEWORT
  (Scrophularia Marylandica; S. nodosa of Gray)  Figwort family

Flowers - Very small, dull green on outside; vivid, shining
brownish purple within; borne in almost leafless terminal
clusters on slender stems; Calyx 5-parted.; corolla of 5 rounded
lobes, the 2 upper ones erect, side ones ascending, lower one
bent downward; 5 staroens, 4 of them twin-like and bearing
anthers, the fifth sterile, a mere scale on roof of the globular
corolla tube; style with knot-like stigma. Stem: From 3 to 10 ft.
high, square, with grooved sides, widely. branching. Leaves: From
3 to 12 in. long, oblong, pointed, coarsely toothed, on slender
stems, strong smelling.
Preferred Habitat - Moist, shady ground.
Flowering Season - July-September.
Distribution - New York to the Carolinas, westward to Tennessee
and Kansas; possibly beyond.

An insignificant little flower by itself, conspicuous only
because it rears itself in clusters on a level with one's eyes,
lacking beauty, perfume, and all that makes a blossom charming to
the human mind - why has it been elevated by the botanists to the
dignity of lending its name to a large and important family, and
why is it mentioned at all in a popular flower book beside the
more showy ornaments of nature's garden? Both questions have the
same answer: Because it is the typical flower of the family, and
therefore serves as an illustration of the manner in which many
others are fertilized. Beautiful blossoms are by no means always
the most important ones.

It well repays one to observe the relative times of maturing
anthers and stigmas in the flowers, as thereby hangs a tale in
which some insect plays an interesting role. The figwort matures
its stigma at the lip of the style before its anthers have
ripened their pollen. Why? By having the stigma of a newly opened
flower thrust forward to the mouth of the corolla, an insect
alighting on the lip, which forms his only convenient landing
place, must brush against it and leave upon it some pollen
brought from an older flower, whose anthers are already matured.
At this early stage of the flower's development its stamens lie
curved over in the tube of the corolla; but presently, as the
already fertilized style begins to wither, and its stigma is dry
and no longer receptive to pollen, then, since there can be no
longer any fear of self-pollination - the horror of so many
flowers - the figwort uncurls and elevates its stamens. The
insect visitor in search of nectar must get dusted with pollen
from the late maturing anthers now ready for him. By this
ingenious method the flower becomes cross-fertilized and wastes
the least pollen.

Bees and wasps evidently pursue opposite routes in going to work,
the former beginning at the bottom of a spike or raceme, where
the older, more mature flowers are, and working upward; the wasps
commencing at the top, among the newly opened ones. In spite of
the fact that we usually see hive bees about this plant,
pilfering the generous supply of nectar in each tiny cup, it is
undoubtedly the wasp that is the flower's truest benefactor,
since he carries pollen from the older blossoms of the last
raceme visited to the projecting stigmas of the newly opened
flowers at the top of the next cluster. Manifestly no flower,
even though it were especially adapted to wasps, as this one is,
could exclude bees. About one-third of all its visitors are
wasps.


HAIRY BEARD-TONGUE
  (Pentstemon hirsutus; P. pubescens of Gray)  Figwort family

Flowers - Dull violet or lilac and white, about 1 in. long, borne
in a loose spike. Calyx 5-parted, the sharply pointed sepals
overlapping; corolla, a gradually inflated tube widening where
the mouth divides into a 2-lobed upper lip and a 3-lobed lower
lip; the throat nearly closed by hairy palate at base of lower
lip; sterile fifth stamen densely bearded for half its length; 4
anther-bearing stamens, the anthers divergent. Stem: 1 to 3 ft.
high, erect, downy above. Leaves: Oblong to lance shape, upper
ones seated on stem; lower ones narrowed into petioles.
Preferred Habitat - Dry or rocky fields, thickets, and open
woods.
Flowering Season - May-July.
Distribution - Ontario to Florida, Manitoba to Texas.

It is the densely bearded, yellow, fifth stamen (pente =five,
stemon = a stamen) which gives this flower its scientific name
and its chief interest to the structural botanist. From the fact
that a blossom has a lip in the center of the lower half of its
corolla, that an insect must use as its landing place, comes the
necessity for the pistil to occupy a central position. Naturally,
a fifth stamen would be only in its way, an encumbrance to be
banished in time. In the figwort, for example, we have seen the
fifth stamen reduced, from long sterility, to a mere scale on the
roof of the corolla tube in other lipped flowers, the useless
organ has disappeared; but in the beard-tongue, it goes through a
series of curious curves from the upper to the under side of the
flower to get out of the way of the pistil. Yet it serves an
admirable purpose in helping close the mouth of the flower, which
the hairy lip alone could not adequately guard against pilferers.
A long-tongued bee, thrusting in his head up to his eyes only,
receives the pollen in his face. The blossom is male (staminate)
in its first stage and female (pistillate) in its second.

While this is the beard-tongue commonly found in the Eastern
United States, particularly southward, and one of the most
beautiful of its clan, the western species have been selected by
the gardeners for hybridizing into those more showy, but often
less charming, flowers now quite extensively cultivated. Several
varieties of these, having escaped from gardens in the East, are
locally common wild.

The LARGE-FLOWERED BEARD-TONGUE (P. grandiflorus), one of the
finest prairie species, whose lavender-blue, bell-shaped corolla
is abruptly dilated above the calyx, measures nearly two inches
long. Its sterile filament, curved over at the summit, is bearded
there only.

Handsomest of all is the COBEA BEARD-TONGUE, a native of the
Southwest, with a broadly rounded, bell-shaped corolla, hairy
without, like the leaves, but smooth within. The pale purple
blossom, delicately suffused with yellow, and pencilled with red
lines - pathfinders for the bees - has the base of its tube
creamy white. Few flowers hang from each stout clammy spike.

The more densely crowded spikes of the large SMOOTH BEARD-TONGUE
(P. glaber), a smaller blue or purple flowered, narrower-leaved
species, that shows an unusual preference for moist soil
throughout its range, is, like the other beard-tongues mentioned,
better known to the British gardener, perhaps, than to Americans,
who have yet to learn the value of many of their wild flowers
under cultivation.

The tall FOXGLOVE BEARD-TONGUE (P. digitalis), with large, showy
white blossoms tinged with purple, the one most commonly grown in
gardens here, escapes on the slightest encouragement to run wild
again from Maine to Virginia, west to Illinois and Arkansas.
Small bees crawl into the broad tube, and butterflies drain the
nectar evidently secreted for long-tongued bees, but without
certainly transferring pollen. To insure cross-fertilization, the
flower first develops its anthers, whose saw-edges grating
against the visitors thorax, aid in sifting out the dry pollen;
and later the style, which when immature clung to the top of the
corolla, lowers its receptive stigma to oppose the bee's
entrance. Professor Robertson has frequently detected the common
wasp nipping holes with her sharp jaws in the base of the tube.
With remarkable intelligence she invariably chose to insert her
tongue at the precise spots where the nectar is stored on either
side of the sterile filament.


BLUE-EYED MARY; INNOCENCE; BROAD-LEAVED COLLINSIA
  (Collinsia verna)  Figwort family

Flowers - On slender, weak stalks; whorled in axils of upper
leaves. Blue on lower lip of corolla, its middle lobe folded
lengthwise to enclose 4 adhering stamens and pistil; upper lip
white, with scalloped margins; corolla from 1/2 to 3/4 in. long,
its throat about equaling the deeply 5-cleft calyx. Stem: Hoary,
slender, simple or branched, from 6 in. to 2 ft. high. Leaves:
Thin, opposite; upper and more acute ones clasping the stem;
lower, ovate ones on short petioles. Fruit: A round capsule to
which the enlarged calyx adheres.
Preferred Habitat - Moist meadows, woods, and thickets. Flowering
Season - April-June.
Distribution - Western New York and Pennsylvania to Wisconsin,
Kentucky, and Indian Territory.

Next of kin to the great Paulonia tree, whose deliciously sweet,
vanilla-scented, trumpet-shaped violet flowers are happily fast
becoming as common here as in their native Japan, what has this
fragile, odorless blossom of the meadows in common with it?
Apparently nothing; but superficial appearances count for little
or nothing among scientists, to whom the structure of floral
organs is of prime importance; and analysis instantly shows the
close relationship between these dissimilar-looking cousins. Even
without analysis one can readily see that the monkey flower is
not far removed.

Because few writers have arisen as yet in the newly settled
regions of the middle West and Southwest, where blue-eyed Mary
dyes acres of meadow land with her heavenly color, her praises
are little sung in the books, but are loudly buzzed by myriads of
bees that are her most devoted lovers. "I regard the flower as
especially adapted to the early flying bees with abdominal
collecting brushes for pollen - i.e., species of Osmia - and
these bees," says Professor Robertson of Illinois, "although not
the exclusive visitors, are far more abundant and important than
all the other visitors together." For them are the brownish marks
on the palate provided as pathfinders. At the pressure of their
strong heads the palate yields to give them entrance, and at
their removal it springs back to protect the pollen against the
inroads of flies, mining bees, and beetles. As the longer stamens
shed their pollen before the shorter ones mature theirs, bees
must visit the flower several times to collect it all.


MONKEY-FLOWER
  (Minulus ringens)  Figwort family

Flowers - Purple, violet, or lilac, rarely whitish; about 1 in.
long, solitary, borne on slender footstems from axils of upper
leaves. Calyx prismatic, 5-angled, 5-toothed; corolla irregular,
tubular, narrow in throat, 2-lipped; upper lip 2-lobed, erect;
under lip 3-lobed, spreading; 4 stamens, a long and a short pair,
inserted on corolla tube; pistil with 2-lobed, plate-like stigma.
Stem: Square, erect, usually branched, 1 to 3 ft. high. Leaves:
Opposite, oblong to lance-shaped, saw-edged, mostly seated on
stem.
Preferred Habitat - Swamps, beside streams and ponds.
Flowering Season - June-September.
Distribution - Manitoba, Nebraska, and Texas, eastward to
Atlantic Ocean.

No wader is the square-stemmed Monkey-flower whose grinning
corolla peers at one from grassy tuffets in swamps, from the
brookside, the springy soil of low meadows, and damp hollows
beside the road; but moisture it must have to fill its nectary
and to soften the ground for the easier transit of its creeping
rootstock. Imaginative eyes see what appears to them the gaping
(ringens) face of a little ape or buffoon (mimulus) in this
common flower whose drolleries, such as they are, call forth the
only applause desired - the buzz of insects that become
pollen-laden during the entertainment.

Now the advanced stigma of this flower is peculiarly irritable,
and closes up on contact with an incoming visitor's body, thus
exposing the pollen-laden anthers behind it, and, except in rare
cases, preventing self-fertilization. Delpino was the first to
guess what advantage so sensitive a stigma might mean. Probably
the smaller bees find the tube too long for their short tongues.
The yellow palate, which partially guards the entrance to the
nectary from pilferers, of course serves also as a pathfinder to
the long-tongued bees.


AMERICAN BROOKLIME
  (Veronica Americana)  Figwort family

Flowers - Light blue to white, usually striped with deep blue or
purple structure of flower similar to that of V. officinalis, but
borne in long, loose racemes branching outward on stems that
spring from axils of most of the leaves. Stem: Without hairs,
usually branched, 6 in. to 3 ft. long, lying partly on ground and
rooting from lower joints. Leaves: Oblong, lance-shaped,
saw-edged, opposite, petioled, and lacking hairs; 1 to 3 in.
long, 1/4 to 1 in. wide. Fruit: A nearly round, compressed, but
not flat, capsule with flat seeds in 2 cells.
Preferred Habitat - In brooks, ponds, ditches, swamps.
Flowering Season - April-September.
Distribution - From Atlantic to Pacific, Alaska to California and
New Mexico, Quebec to Pennsylvania.

This, the perhaps most beautiful native speedwell, whose sheets
of blue along the brookside are so frequently mistaken for masses
of forget-me-nots by the hasty observer, of course shows marked
differences on closer investigation; its tiny blue flowers are
marked with purple pathfinders, and the plant is not hairy, to
mention only two. But the poets of England are responsible for
most of whatever confusion stills lurks in the popular mind
concerning these two flowers. Speedwell, a common medieval
benediction from a friend, equivalent to our farewell or adieu,
and forget - me-not of similar intent, have been used
interchangeably by some writers in connection with parting gifts
of small blue flowers. It was the germander speedwell that in
literature and botanies alike was most commonly known as the
forget-me-not for over two hundred years, or until only fifty
years ago. When the "Mayflower" and her sister ships were
launched; "Speedwell" was considered a happier name for a vessel
than it proved to be.

The WATER SPEEDWELL, or PIMPERNEL (V. Anagallis-aquatica),
differs from the preceding chiefly in having most of its leaves
seated on the stalk, only the lower ones possessing stems, and
those short ones. In autumn the increased growth of sterile
shoots from runners produce almost circular leaves, often two
inches broad, a certain aid to identification.

Another close relation, the MARSH or SKULLCAP SPEEDWELL (V.
scutellata), on the other hand, has long, very slender, acute
leaves, their teeth far apart; and as these three species are the
only members of their clan likely to be found in watery places
within our limits, a close examination of the leaves of any
water-loving plant bearing small four-lobed blue flowers, usually
marked with lines of a deeper blue or purple, should enable one
to correctly name the species. None of these blossoms can be
carried far after being picked; they have a tantalizing habit of
dropping off, leaving a bouquet of tiny green calices chiefly.

Many kinds of bees, wasps, flies, and butterflies fertilize all
these little flowers, which are first staminate, then pistillate,
simply by crawling over them in search of nectar.


COMMON SPEEDWELL; FLUELLIN; PAUL'S BETONY; GROUND-HELE
  (Veronica officinalis)  Figwort family

Flowers - Pale blue, very small, crowded on spike-like racemes
from axils of leaves, often from alternate axils. Calyx 4-parted;
corolla of 4 lobes, lower lobe commonly narrowest ; 2 divergent
stamens inserted at base and on either side of upper corolla lobe
; a knob-like stigma on solitary pistil. Stem: From 3 to 10 in.
long, hairy, often prostrate, and rooting at joints. Leaves:
Opposite, oblong, obtuse, saw-edged, narrowed at base. Fruit:
Compressed heart-shaped capsule, containing numerous flat seeds.
Preferred Habitat - Dry fields, uplands, open woods.
Flowering Season - May-August.
Distribution - From Michigan and Tennessee eastward, also from
Ontario to Nova Scotia. Probably an immigrant from Europe and
Asia.

An ancient tradition of the Roman Church relates that when Jesus
was on His way to Calvary, He passed the home of a certain Jewish
maiden, who, when she saw the drops of agony on His brow, ran
after Him along the road to wipe His face with her kerchief. This
linen, the monks declared, ever after bore the impress of the
sacred features - vera iconica, the true likeness. When the
Church wished to canonize the pitying maiden, an abbreviated form
of the Latin words was given her, St. Veronica, and her kerchief
became one of the most precious relics at St. Peter's, where it
is said to be still preserved. Medieval flower lovers, whose
piety seems to have been eclipsed only by their imaginations,
named this little flower from a fancied resemblance to the relic.
Of course, special healing virtue was attributed to the square of
pictured linen, and since all could not go to Rome to be cured by
it, naturally the next step was to employ the common, wayside
plant that bore the saint's name. Mental healers will not be
surprised to learn that because of the strong popular belief in
its efficacy to cure all fleshly ills, it actually seemed to
possess miraculous powers. For scrofula it was said to be the
infallible remedy, and presently we find Linnaeus grouping this
flower, and all its relatives under the family name of
Scrofulariaceae. "What's in a name?" Religion, theology,
medicine, folk-lore, metaphysics, what not?

One of the most common wild flowers in England is this same
familiar little blossom of that lovely shade of blue known by
Chinese artists as "the sky after rain." "The prettiest of all
humble roadside flowers I saw," says Burroughs, in "A Glance at
British Wild Flowers." "It is prettier than the violet, and
larger and deeper colored than our houstonia. It is a small and
delicate edition of our hepatica, done in indigo blue, and wonted
to the grass in the fields and by the waysides.

    'The little speedwell's darling blue'

sings Tennyson. I saw it blooming with the daisy and buttercup
upon the grave of Carlyle. The tender human and poetic element of
his stern, rocky nature was well expressed by it."

Only as it grows in masses is the speedwell conspicuous - a
sufficient reason for its habit of forming colonies and of
gathering its insignificant blossoms together into dense spikes,
since by these methods it issues a flaunting advertisement of its
nectar. The flower that simplifies dining for insects has its
certain reward in rapidly increased and vigorous descendants. To
save repetition, the reader interested in the process of
fertilization is referred to the account of the Maryland figwort,
since many members of the large family to which both belong
employ the same method of economizing pollen and insuring fertile
seed. In this case visitors have only to crawl over the tiny
blossoms.

>From Labrador to Alaska, throughout almost every section of the
United States, in South America, Europe, and Asia, roams the
THYME-LEAVED SPEEDWELL (V. serpyllifolia), by the help of its
numerous flat seeds, that are easily transported on the wind, and
by its branching stem, that lies partly on the ground, rooting
where the joints touch earth. The small oval leaves, barely half
an inch long, grow in pairs. The tiny blue, or sometimes white,
flowers, with dark pathfinders to the nectary, are borne on
spike-like racemes at the ends of the stem and branches that rear
themselves upward in fields and thickets to display their bloom
before the passing bee.


PALE, or NAKED, or ONE-FLOWERED BROOM-RAPE
  (Thalesia uniflora; Aphyllon uniflorum of Gray)  Broom-rape
family

Flowers - Violet, rarely white, delicately fragrant, solitary at
end of erect, glandular peduncles. Calyx hairy, bell-shaped,
5-toothed, not half the length of corolla, which is 1 in. or less
long, with curved tube spreading into 2 lips, 5-lobed,
yellow-bearded within; 4 stamens, in pairs, inserted on tube of
corolla ; 1 pistil. Stem: About 1 in. long, scaly, often entirely
underground; the 1 to 4 brownish scape-like peduncles, on which
flowers are borne, from 3 to 8 in. high. Leaves: None. Fruit: An
elongated, egg-shaped, 1-celled capsule containing numerous
seeds.
Preferred Habitat - Damp woods and thickets.
Flowering Season - April-June.
Distribution - British Possessions and United States from coast
to coast, southward to Virginia, and Texas.

A curious, beautiful parasite, fastened on the roots of honest
plants from which it draws its nourishment. The ancestors of this
species, having deserted the path of rectitude ages ago to live
by piracy, gradually lost the use of their leaves, upon which
virtuous plants depend as upon a part of their digestive
apparatus; they grew smaller and smaller, shriveled and dried,
until now that the one-flowered broom-rape sucks its food,
rendered already digestible through another's assimilation, no
leaves remain on its brownish scapes. Disuse of any talent in the
vegetable kingdom, as in the spiritual, leads to inevitable loss:
"Unto every one which hath shall be given; and from him that hath
not, even that he hath shall be taken away."


HAIRY RUELLIA
  (Ruellia ciliosa)  Acanthus family

Flowers - Pale violet blue, showy, about 2 in. long, solitary or
clustered in the axils or at the end of stem. Calyx of 5
bristle-shaped hairy segments; corolla with very slender tube
expanding above in 5 nearly equal obtuse lobes; stamens 4; pistil
with recurved style. Stem: Hairy, especially above, erect, 1 to 2
1/2 ft. high. Leaves: Opposite, oblong, narrowed at apex, entire,
covered with soft white hairs.
Preferred Habitat - Dry soil.
Flowering Season - June-September.
Distribution - New Jersey southward to the Gulf and westward to
Michigan and Nebraska.

Many charming ruellias from the tropics adorn hothouses and
window gardens in winter; but so far north as the New Jersey pine
barrens, and westward where killing frosts occur, this perennial
proves to be perfectly hardy. In addition to its showy blossoms,
which so successfully invite insects to transfer their pollen,
thereby counteracting the bad effects of close inbreeding, the
plant bears inconspicuous cleistogamous or blind ones also. These
look like arrested buds that never open; but, being fertilized
with their own pollen, ripen abundant seed nevertheless.

One frequently finds holes bitten in these flowers, as in so many
others long of tube or spur. Bumblebees, among the most
intelligent and mischievous of insects, are apt to be the chief
offenders; but wasps are guilty too, and the female carpenter
bee, which ordinarily slits holes to extract nectar, has been
detected in the act of removing circular pieces of the corolla
from this ruellia with which to plug up a thimble-shaped tube in
some decayed tree. Here she deposits an egg on top of a layer of
baby food, consisting of a paste of pollen and nectar, and seals
up the nursery with another bit of leaf or flower, repeating the
process until the long tunnel is filled with eggs and food for
larvae. Then she dies, leaving her entire race apparently
extinct, and living only in embryo for months. This is the bee
which commonly cuts her round plugs from rose leaves.

The SMOOTH RUELLIA (R. strepens), an earlier bloomer than the
preceding, and with a more southerly range, has a shorter,
thicker tube to its handsome blue flower, and lacks the hairs
which guard its relative from crawling pilferers.


BLUETS; INNOCENCE; HOUSTONIA; QUAKER LADIES; QUAKER BONNETS;
VENUS' PRIDE
  (Houstonia caerulea)  Madder family

Flowers - Very small, light to purplish blue or white, with
yellow center, and borne at end of each erect slender stem that
rises from 3 to 7 in. high. Corolla funnel-shaped, with 4 oval,
pointed, spreading lobes that equal the slender tube in length;
rarely the corolla has more divisions; 4 stamens inserted on tube
of corolla; 2 stigmas; calyx 4-lobed. Leaves: Opposite, seated on
stem, oblong, tiny; the lower ones spatulate. Fruit: A 2-lobed
pod, broader than long, its upper half free from calyx; seeds
deeply concave. Root stock: Slender, spreading, forming dense
tufts.
Preferred Habitat - Moist meadows, wet rocks and banks.
Flowering Season - April-July, or sparsely through summer.
Distribution - Eastern Canada and United States west to Michigan,
south to Georgia and Alabama.

Millions of these dainty wee flowers, scattered through the grass
of moist meadows and by the wayside, reflect the blue and the
serenity of heaven in their pure, upturned faces. Where the white
variety grows, one might think a light snowfall had powdered the
grass, or a milky way of tiny floral stars had streaked a
terrestrial path. Linnaeus named the flower for Dr. Houston, a
young English physician, botanist, and collector, who died in
South America in 1733, after an exhausting tramp about the Gulf
of Mexico.

To secure cross-fertilization, the object toward which so much
marvelous floral organism is directed, this little plant puts
forth two forms of blossoms - one with the stamens in the lower
portion of the corolla tube, and the stigmas exserted; the other
form with the stigmas below, and the stamens elevated to the
mouth of the corolla. But the two kinds do not grow in the same
patch, seed from either producing after its kind. Many insects
visit these blossoms, but chiefly small bees and butterflies.
Conspicuous among the latter is the common little meadow
fritillary (Brenthis bellona), whose tawny, dark-speckled wings
expand and close in apparent ecstasy as he tastes the tiny drop
of nectar in each dainty enameled cup. Coming to feast with his
tongue dusted from anthers nearest the nectary, he pollenizes the
large stigmas of a short-styled blossom without touching its tall
anthers. But it is evident that he could not be depended on to
fertilize the long-styled form, with its smaller stigma, because
of this ability to insert his slender tongue from the side where
it avoids contact. Flies and beetles enter the blossoms, but
small bees are best adapted as all-round benefactors. This
simple-looking blossom, that measures barely half an inch across,
is clever enough to multiply its lovely species a thousand fold,
while many a larger, and therefore one might suppose a wiser,
flower dwindles toward extinction.

John Burroughs found a single bluet in blossom one January, near
Washington, when the clump of earth on which it grew was frozen
solid. A pot of roots gathered in autumn and placed in a sunny
window has sent up a little colony of star-like flowers
throughout a winter.


WILD, COMMON, or CARD TEASEL; GYPSY COMBS
  (Dipsacus sylvestris)  Teasel family

Flowers - Purple or lilac, small, packed in dense, cylindric
heads, 3 to 4 in. long; growing singly on ends of footstalks, the
flowers set among stiffly pointed, slender scales. Calyx
cup-shaped, 4-toothed. Corolla 4-lobed; stamens 4; leaves of
involucre, slender, bristled, curved upward as high as
flower-head or beyond. Stems: 3 to 6 ft. high, stout, branched,
leafy, with numerous short prickles. Leaves: Opposite,
lance-shaped, seated on stem, with bristles along the stout
midrib.
Preferred Habitat - Roadsides and waste places.
Flowering Season - July-September.
Distribution - Maine to Virginia, westward to Ontario and the
Mississippi. Europe and Asia.

Manufacturers find that no invention can equal the natural teasel
head for raising a nap on woolen cloth, because it breaks at any
serious obstruction, whereas a metal substitute, in such a case,
tears the material. Accordingly, the plant is largely cultivated
in the west of England, and quantities that have been imported
from France and Germany may be seen in wagons on the way to the
factories in any of the woolen-trade towns. After the
flower-heads wither, the stems are cut about eight inches long,
stripped of prickles, to provide a handle, and after drying, the
natural tool is ready for use.

Bristling with armor, the teasel is not often attacked by
browsing cattle. Occasionally even the upper leaf surfaces are
dotted over with prickles enough to tear a tender tongue. This is
a curious feature, for prickles usually grow out of veins. In the
receptacle formed where the bases of the upper leaves grow
together, rain and dew are found collected - a certain cure for
warts, country people say. Venus' Cup, Bath, or Basin, and Water
Thistle, are a few of the teasel's folk names earned by its
curious little tank. In it many small insects are drowned, and
these are supposed to contribute nourishment to the plant; for
Mr. Francis Darwin has noted that protoplasmic filaments reach
out into the liquid.

Owing to the stiff spines which radiate from the flower cluster,
the bumblebees, which principally fertilize it, can reach the
florets only with their heads, and not pollenize them by merely
crawling over them as in the true compositae. But by first
maturing its anthers, then when they have shed their pollen,
elevating its stigmas, the teasel prevents self-fertilization.


HAREBELL or HAIRBELL; BLUE BELLS of SCOTLAND; LADY'S THIMBLE
  (Campanula rotundifolia)  Bellflower family

Flowers - Bright blue or violet blue, bell-shaped, 1/2 in. long
or over, drooping from hair-like stalks. Calyx of 5-pointed,
narrow, spreading lobes; slender stamens alternate with lobes of
corolla, and borne on summit of calyx tube, which is adherent to
ovary; pistil with 3 stigmas in maturity only. Stem: Very
slender, 6 in. to 3 ft. high, often several from same root;
simple or branching. Leaves: Lower ones nearly round, usually
withered and gone by flowering season; stem leaves narrow,
pointed, seated on stem. Fruit: An egg-shaped, pendent, 3-celled
capsule with short openings near base; seeds very numerous, tiny.
Preferred Habitat - Moist rocks, uplands.
Flowering Season - June-September.
Distribution - Arctic regions of Europe, Asia, and America;
southward on this continent, through Canada to New Jersey and
Pennsylvania; westward to Nebraska, to Arizona in the Rockies,
and to California in the Sierra Nevadas.

The inaccessible crevice of a precipice, moist rocks sprayed with
the dashing waters of a lake or some tumbling mountain stream,
wind-swept upland meadows, and shady places by the roadside may
hold bright bunches of these hardy bells, swaying with exquisite
grace on tremulous, hair-like stems that are fitted to withstand
the fiercest mountain blasts, however frail they appear. How
dainty, slender, tempting these little flowers are! One gladly
risks a watery grave or broken bones to bring down a bunch from
its aerial cranny.

It was a long stride forward in the evolutionary scale when the
harebell welded its five once separate petals together; first at
the base, then farther and farther up the sides, until a solid
bell-shaped structure resulted. This arrangement which makes
insect fertilization a more certain process because none of the
pollen is lost through apertures, and because the visitor must
enter the flower only at the vital point where the stigmas come
in contact with his pollen-laden body, has given to all the
flowers that have attained to it, marked ascendency.

Like most inverted blossoms, the harebell hangs its head to
protect its nectar and pollen, not only from rain, but from the
intrusion of undesirable crawling insects which would simply
brush off its pollen in the grass before reaching the pistil of
another flower, and so defeat cross-fertilization, the end and
aim of so many blossoms. Advertising for winged insects by its
bright color, the harebell attracts bees, butterflies, and many
others. These visitors cannot well walk on the upright petals,
and sooner or later must clasp the pistil if they would secure
the nectar secreted at the base. In doing so, they will dust
themselves and the immature pistil with the pollen from the
surrounding anthers; but a newly opened flower is incapable of
fertilization. The pollen, although partially discharged in the
unopened bud, is prevented from falling out by a coat of hairs on
the upper part of the style. By the time all the pollen has been
removed by visitors, however, and the stamens which matured early
have withered, the pistil has grown longer, until it looks like
the clapper in a bell; the stigma at its top has separated into
three horizontal lobes which, being sticky on the under side, a
pollen-laden insect on entering the bell must certainly brush
against them and render them fertile. But bumblebees, its chief
benefactors, and others may not have done their duty by the
flower; what then? Why, the stigmas in that case finally bend
backward to reach the left over pollen, and fertilize themselves,
obviously the next best thing for them to do. How one's reverence
increases when one begins to understand, be it ever so little of,
the divine plan!

"Probably the most striking blue and purple wild flowers we
have," says John Burroughs, "are of European origin. These
colors, except with the fall asters and gentians, seem rather
unstable in our flora." This theory is certainly borne out in the
case of the RAMPION, EUROPEAN, or CREEPING BELLFLOWER (C.
rapunculoides), now detected in the act of escaping from gardens
from New Brunswick to Ontario, Southern New York, Pennsylvania,
and Ohio, and making itself very much at home in our fields and
along the waysides. Compared with the delicate little harebell,
it is a plant of rank, rigid habit. Its erect, rather stout stem,
set with elongated oval, hairy, alternate leaves, and crowned
with a one-sided raceme of widely expanded, purple-blue bells
rising about two feet above the ground, has little of the
exquisite grace of its cousin. It blooms from July to September.
This is the species whose roots are eaten by the omnivorous
European peasant.

One of the few native campanulas, the TALL BELLFLOWER (C.
Americana), waves long, slender wands studded with blue or
sometimes whitish flowers high above the ground of moist thickets
and woods throughout the eastern half of this country, but rarely
near the sea. Doubtless the salt air, which intensifies the color
of so many flowers, would brighten its rather slatey blue. The
corolla, which is flat, round, about an inch across, and deeply
cleft into five pointed petals, has the effect of a miniature
pinwheel in motion. Mature flowers have the style elongated, bent
downward, then curved upward, that the stigmas may certainly be
in the way of the visiting insect pollen-laden from an earlier
bloomer, and be cross-fertilized. The larger bees, its
benefactors, which visit it for nectar, touch only the upper side
of the style, on which they must alight; but the anthers waste
pollen by shedding it on all sides. No insect can take shelter
from rain or pass the night in this flower, as he frequently does
in its more hospitable relative, the harebell. English gardeners,
more appreciative than our own of our native flora, frequently
utilize this charming plant in their rockwork, increasing their
stock by a division of the dense, leafy rosettes.


VENUS' LOOKING-GLASS; CLASPING BELLFLOWER
  (Legouzia perfoliata; Specularia perfoliata of Gray)
Bellflower family

Flowers - Violet blue, from 1/2 to 3/4 in. across; solitary or 2
or 3 together, seated, in axils of upper leaves. Calyx lobes
varying from 3 to 5 in earlier and later flowers, acute, rigid;
corolla a 5-spoked wheel; 5 stamens; pistil with 3 stigmas. Stem:
6 in. to 2 ft. long, hairy, densely leafy, slender, weak. Leaves:
Round, clasped about stem by heart-shaped base.
Preferred Habitat - Sterile waste places, dry woods.
Flowering Season - May-September.
Distribution - From British Columbia, Oregon, and Mexico, east to
Atlantic Ocean.

At the top of a gradually lengthened and apparently overburdened
leafy stalk, weakly leaning upon surrounding vegetation, a few
perfect blossoms spread their violet wheels, while below them
insignificant earlier flowers, which, although they have never
opened, nor reared their heads above the hollows of the little
shell-like leaves where they lie secluded, have, nevertheless,
been producing seed without imported pollen while their showy
sisters slept. But the later blooms, by attracting insects, set
cross-fertilized seed to counteract any evil tendencies that
might weaken the species if it depended upon self-fertilization
only. When the European Venus' looking-glass used to be
cultivated in gardens here, our grandmothers tell us it was
altogether too prolific, crowding out of existence its less
fruitful, but more lovely, neighbors.

The SMALL VENUS' LOOKING-GLASS (L. biflora), of similar habit to
the preceding, but with egg-shaped or oblong leaves seated on,
not clasping, its smooth and very slender stem, grows in the
South and westward to California.


GREAT LOBELIA; BLUE CARDINAL-FLOWER
  (Lobelia syphilitica)  Bellflower family

Flowers - Bright blue, touched with white, fading to pale blue,
about 1 in. long, borne on tall, erect, leafy spike. Calyx
5-parted, the lobes sharply cut, hairy. Corolla tubular, open to
base on one side, 2-lipped, irregularly 5-lobed, the petals
pronounced at maturity only. Stamens 5, united by their hairy
anthers into a tube around the style; larger anthers smooth.
Stem: 1 to 3 ft. high, stout, simple, leafy, slightly hairy.
Leaves: Alternate, oblong, tapering, pointed, irregularly
toothed, 2 to 6 in. long, 1/2 to 2 in. wide.
Preferred Habitat - Moist or wet soil; beside streams.
Flowering Season - July-October
Distribution - Ontario and northern United States west to Dakota,
south to Kansas and Georgia.

To the evolutionist, ever on the lookout for connecting links,
the lobelias form an interesting group, because their corolla,
slit down the upper side and somewhat flattened, shows the
beginning of the tendency toward the strap or ray flowers that
are nearly confined to the composites of much later development,
of course, than tubular single blossoms. Next to massing their
flowers in showy heads, as the composites do, the lobelias have
the almost equally advantageous plan of crowding theirs along a
stem so as to make a conspicuous advertisement to attract the
passing bee and to offer him the special inducement of numerous
feeding places close together.

The handsome GREAT LOBELIA, constantly and invidiously compared
with its gorgeous sister the cardinal flower, suffers unfairly.
When asked what his favorite color was, Eugene Field replied:
"Why, I like any color at all so long as it's red!" Most men, at
least, agree with him, and certainly hummingbirds do; our
scarcity of red flowers being due, we must believe, to the
scarcity of hummingbirds, which chiefly fertilize them. But how
bees love the blue blossoms!

There are many cases where the pistil of a flower necessarily
comes in contact with its own pollen, yet fertilization does not
take place, however improbable this may appear. Most orchids, for
example, are not susceptible to their own pollen. It would seem
as if our lobelia, in elevating its stigma through the ring
formed by the united anthers, must come in contact with some of
the pollen they have previously discharged from their tips, not
only on the bumblebee that shakes it out of them when he jars the
flower, but also within the tube. But when the anthers are
mature, the two lobes of the still immature stigma are pressed
together, and cannot be fertilized. Nevertheless, the hairy tips
of some of the anthers brush off the pollen grains that may have
lodged on the stigma as it passes through the ring in its ascent,
thus making surety doubly sure. Only after the stigma projects
beyond the ring of anthers does it expand its lobes, which are
now ready to receive pollen brought from another later flower by
the incoming bumblebee to which it is adapted.

Linnaeus named this group of plants for Matthias de l'Obel, a
Flemish botanist, or herbalist more likely, who became physician
to James I. of England.

Preferably in dry, sandy soil or in meadows, and over a wide
range, the slender, straight shoots of PALE SPIKED LOBELIA (L.
spicata) bloom early and throughout the summer months, the
inflorescence itself sometimes reaching a height of two feet. At
the base of the plant there is usually a tuft of broadly oblong
leaves; those higher up narrow first into spoon-shaped, then into
pointed, bracts, along the thick and gradually lengthened spike
of scattered bloom. The flowers are oft en pale enough to be
called white. Like their relatives, they first ripen their
anthers to prevent self-fertilization.

The lithe, graceful little BROOK LOBELIA (L. Kalmii), whose
light-blue flowers, at the end of thread-like footstems, form a
loose raceme, sways with a company of its fellows among the grass
on wet banks, beside meadow runnels and brooks, particularly in
limestone soil, from Nova Scotia to the Northwest Territory and
southward to New Jersey. It bears an insignificant capsule, not
inflated like the Indian tobacco's; and long, narrow,
spoon-shaped leaves. Twenty inches is the greatest height this
little plant may hope to attain.

Not only beside water, and in it, but often totally immersed,
grows the WATER LOBELIA or GLADIOLE (L. Dortmanna). The slender,
hollow, smooth stem rises from a submerged tuft of round, hollow,
fleshy leaves longitudinally divided by a partition, and bears at
the top a scattered array of pale-blue flowers from August to
September.


INDIAN or WILD TOBACCO; GAG-ROOT; ASTHMA-WEED; BLADDER-POD
LOBELIA
  (Lobelia inflata)  Bellflower family

Flowers - Pale blue or violet, small, borne at short intervals in
spike-like leafy racemes. Calyx 5-parted, its awl-shaped lobes
1/4 in. long, or as long as the tubular, 2-lipped, 5-cleft,
corolla that opens to base of tube on upper side. Stamens, 5
united by their hairy anthers into a ring around the 2-lobed
style. Stem: From 1 to 3 feet high, hairy, very acrid, much
branched, leafy. Leaves: Alternate, oblong or ovate, toothed, the
upper ones acute, seated on stem; lower ones obtuse, petioled, to
2 1/2 in. long. Fruit: A much inflated, rounded, ribbed, many
seeded capsule.
Preferred Habitat - Dry fields and thickets; poor soil.
Flowering Season - July-November.
Distribution - Labrador westward to the Missouri River, south to
Arkansas and Georgia.

The most stupid of the lower animals knows enough to let this
poisonous, acrid plant alone; but not so man, who formerly made a
quack medicine from it in the days when a drug that set one's
internal organism on fire was supposed to be especially
beneficial. One taste of the plant gives a realizing sense of its
value as an emetic. How the red man enjoyed smoking and chewing
the bitter leaves, except for the drowsiness that followed, is a
mystery.

On account of the smallness of its flowers and their scantiness,
the Indian tobacco is perhaps the least attractive of the
lobelias, none of which has so inflated a seed vessel, the
distinguishing characteristic of this common plant.


CHICORY; SUCCORY; BLUE SAILORS; BUNK
  (Cichorium Intybus)  Chicory family

Flower-head - Bright, deep azure to gray blue, rarely pinkish or
white, 1 to 1 1/2 in. broad, set close to stem, often in small
clusters for nearly the entire length; each head a composite of
ray flowers only, 5-toothed at upper edge, and set in a flat
green receptacle. Stem: Rigid, branching, to 3 ft. high. Leaves:
Lower ones spreading on ground, 3 to 6 in. long, spatulate, with
deeply cut or irregular edges, narrowed into petioles, from a
deep tap-root; upper leaves of stem and branches minute,
bract-like.
Preferred Habitat - Roadsides, waste places, fields.
Flowering Season - July-October.
Distribuition - Common in Eastern United States and Canada, south
to the Carolinas; also sparingly westward to Nebraska.

At least the dried and ground root of this European invader is
known to hosts of people who buy it undisguised or not, according
as they count it an improvement to their coffee or a disagreeable
adulterant. So great is the demand for chicory that,
notwithstanding its cheapness, it is often in its turn
adulterated with roasted wheat, rye, acorns, and carrots. Forced
and blanched in a warm, dark place, the bitter leaves find a
ready market as a salad known as "barbe de Capucin" by the
fanciful French. Endive and dandelion, the chicory's relatives,
appear on the table too, in spring, where people have learned the
possibilities of salads, as they certainly have in Europe.

>From the depth to which the tap-root penetrates, it is not
unlikely the succory derived its name from the Latin succurrere =
to run under. The Arabic name chicourey testifies to the almost
universal influence of Arabian physicians and writers in Europe
after the Conquest. As chicoree, achicoria, chicoria, cicorea,
chicorie, cichorei, cikorie, tsikorei, and cicorie the plant is
known respectively to the French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italians,
Germans, Dutch, Swedes, Russians, and Danes.

On cloudy days or in the morning only throughout midsummer the
"peasant posy" opens its "dear blue eyes"

     "Where tired feet
      Toil to and fro;
      Where flaunting Sin
      May see thy heavenly hue,
      Or weary Sorrow look from thee
      Toward a tenderer blue!"
                          - Margaret Deland.

In his "Humble Bee" Emerson, too, sees only beauty in the
"Succory to match the sky;" but, mirabile dictu, Vergil, rarely
caught in a prosaic, practical mood, wrote, "And spreading
succ'ry chokes the rising field."


IRON-WEED; FLAT TOP
  (Vernonia Noveboracensis)  Thistle family.

Flower-head - Composite of tubular florets only, intense
reddish-purple thistle-like heads, borne on short, branched
peduncles and forming broad, flat clusters; bracts of involucre,
brownish purple, tipped with awl-shaped bristles. Stem: 3 to 9
ft. high, rough or hairy, branched. Leaves: Alternate, narrowly
oblong or lanceolate, saw-edged, 3 to 10 in. long, rough.
Preferred Habitat - Moist soil, meadows, fields.
Flowering Season - July-September.
Distribution - Massachusetts to Georgia, and westward to the
Mississippi.

Emerson says a weed is a plant whose virtues we have not yet
discovered; but surely it is no small virtue in the iron-weed to
brighten the roadsides and low meadows throughout the summer with
bright clusters of bloom. When it is on the wane, the asters, for
which it is sometimes mistaken, begin to appear, but an instant's
comparison shows the difference between the two flowers. After
noting the yellow disk in the center of an aster, it is not
likely the iron-weed's thistle-like head of ray florets only will
ever again be confused with it. Another rank-growing neighbor
with which it has been confounded by the novice is the Joe Pye
weed, a far paler, pinkish flower.

To each tiny floret, secreting nectar in its tube, many insects,
attracted by the bright color of the iron-weed standing high
above surrounding vegetation, come to feast. Long-lipped bees and
flies rest awhile for refreshment, but butterflies of many
beautiful kinds are by far the most abundant visitors. Pollen
carried out by the long, hairy styles as they extend to maturity
must attach itself to their tongues. The tiger swallow-tail
butterfly appears to have a special preference for this flower.
(See Self-Heal.)


COMMON or SCALY BLAZING STAR; COLIC-ROOT; RATTLESNAKE MASTER;
BUTTON SNAKEROOT
  (Lacinaria squarrosa; Liatris squarrosa of Gray)  Thistle
family

Flower-heads - Composite, about 1 in. long, bright purple or rose
purple, of tubular florets only, from an involucre of
overlapping, rigid, pointed bracts; each of the few flower-heads
from the leaf axils along a slender stem in a wand-like raceme.
Stem: 1/2 to 2 ft. high. Leaves: Alternate, narrow, entire.
Preferred habitat - Dry, rich soil.
Flowering Season - June-September.
Distribution - Ontario to the Gulf of Mexico, westward to
Nebraska.

Beginning at the top, the apparently fringed flower-heads open
downward along the wand, whose length depends upon the richness
of the soil. All of the flowers are perfect and attract
long-tongued bees and flies (especially Exoprosopa fasciata) and
butterflies, which, as they sip from the corolla tube, receive
the pollen carried out and exposed on the long divisions of the
style. Some people have pretended to cure rattlesnake bites with
applications of the globular tuber of this and the next species.

The LARGE BUTTON SNAKEROOT, BLUE BLAZING STAR, or GAY FEATHER (L.
scariosa), may attain six feet, but usually not more than half
that height; and its round flower-heads normally stand well away
from the stout stem on foot-stems of their own. The bristling
scales of the involucre, often tinged with purple at the tips,
are a conspicuous feature. With much the same range and choice of
habitat as the last species, this Blazing Star is a later
bloomer, coming into flower in August, and helping the goldenrods
and asters brighten the landscape throughout the early autumn.
The name of gay feather, miscellaneously applied to several
blazing stars, is especially deserved by this showy beauty of the
family.

Unlike others of its class, the DENSE BUTTON SNAKEROOT, DEVIL'S
BIT, ROUGH or BACKACHE ROOT, PRAIRIE PINE or THROATWORT (L.
spicata), the commonest species we have, chooses moist soil, even
salt marshes near the coast, and low meadows throughout a range
nearly corresponding with that of the scaly blazing star.
Resembling its relatives in general manner of growth, we note
that its oblong involucre, rounded at the base, has blunt, not
sharply pointed, bracts; that the flower-heads are densely set
close to the wand for from four to fifteen inches; that the five
to thirteen bright rose-purple florets which compose each head
occasionally come white; that its leaves are long and very
narrow, and that October is not too late to find the plant in
bloom.


BLUE and PURPLE ASTERS or STARWORTS
  Thistle family

Evolution teaches us that thistles, daisies, sunflowers, asters,
and all the triumphant horde of composites were once very
different flowers from what we see today. Through ages of natural
selection of the fittest among their ancestral types, having
finally arrived at the most successful adaptation of their
various parts to their surroundings in the whole floral kingdom,
they are now overrunning the earth. Doubtless the aster's remote
ancestors were simple green leaves around the vital organs, and
depended upon the wind, as the grasses do - a most extravagant
method - to transfer their pollen. Then some rudimentary flower
changed its outer row of stamens into petals, which gradually
took on color to attract insects and insure a more economical
method of transfer. Gardeners today take advantage of a blossom's
natural tendency to change stamens into petals when they wish to
produce double flowers. As flowers and insects developed side by
side, and there came to be a better and better understanding
between them of each other's requirements, mutual adaptation
followed. The flower that offered the best advertisement, as the
composites do, by its showy rays; that secreted nectar in tubular
flowers where no useless insect could pilfer it; that fastened
its stamens to the inside wall of the tube where they must dust
with pollen the underside of every insect, unwittingly
cross-fertilizing the blossom as he crawled over it; that massed
a great number of these tubular florets together where insects
might readily discover them and feast with the least possible
loss of time - this flower became the winner in life's race.
Small wonder that our June fields are white with daisies and the
autumn landscape is glorified with goldenrod and asters!

Since North America boasts the greater part of the two hundred
and fifty asters named by scientists, and as variations in many
of our common species frequently occur, the tyro need expect no
easy task in identifying every one he meets afield. However, the
following are possible acquaintances to everyone:

In dry, shady places the LARGE or BROAD-LEAVED ASTER (A.
macrophyllus), so called from its three or four conspicuous,
heart-shaped leaves on long petioles, in a clump next the ground,
may be more easily identified by these than by the pale lavender
or violet flower-heads of about sixteen rays each which crown its
reddish angular stem in August and September. The disk turns
reddish brown.

In prairie soil, especially about the edges of woods in western
New York, southward and westward to Texas and Minnesota, the
beautiful SKY-BLUE ASTER (A. azureus) blooms from August till
after frost. Its slender, stiff, rough stem branches above to
display the numerous bright blue flowers, whose ten to twenty
rays measure only about a quarter of an inch in length. The upper
leaves are reduced to small flat bracts; the next are linear; and
the lower ones, which approach a heart shape, are rough on both
sides, and may be five or six inches long.

Much more branched and bushy is the COMMON BLUE, BRANCHING, WOOD,
or HEART-LEAVED ASTER (A. cordifolius), whose generous masses of
small, pale lavender flower-heads look like a mist hanging from
one to five feet above the earth in and about the woods and shady
roadsides from September even to December in favored places.

The WAVY or VARIOUS-LEAVED ASTER or SMALL FLEABANE (A. undulatus)
has a stiff, rough, hairy, widely branching stalk, whose thick,
rough lowest leaves are heart-shaped and set on long foot-stems;
above these, the leaves have shorter stems, dilating where they
clasp the stalk; the upper leaves, lacking stems, are seated on
it, while those of the branches are shaped like tiny awls. The
flowers, which measure less than an inch across, often grow along
one side of an axis as well as in the usual raceme. Eight to
fifteen pale blue to violet rays surround the disks which, yellow
at first, become reddish brown in maturity. We find the plant in
dry soil, blooming in September and October.

By no means tardy, the LATE PURPLE ASTER, so-called, or PURPLE
DAISY (A. patens), begins to display its purplish-blue,
daisy-like flower-heads early in August, and farther north may be
found in dry, exposed places only until October. Rarely the
solitary flowers, that are an inch across or more, are a deep,
rich violet. The twenty to thirty rays which surround the disk,
curling inward to dry, expose the vase-shaped, green, shingled
cups that terminate each little branch. The thick, somewhat
rigid, oblong leaves, tapering at the tip, broaden at the base to
clasp the rough, slender stalk. Range similar to the next
species.

Certainly from Massachusetts, northern New York, and Minnesota
southward to the Gulf of Mexico one may expect to find the NEW
ENGLAND ASTER or STARWORT (A. Novae-Angliae) one of the most
striking and widely distributed of the tribe, in spite of its
local name. It is not unknown in Canada. The branching clusters
of violet or magenta-purple flower-heads, from one to two inches
across - composites containing as many as forty to fifty purple
ray florets around a multitude of perfect five-lobed, tubular,
yellow disk florets in a sticky cup - shine out with royal
splendor above the swamps, moist fields, and roadsides from
August to October. The stout, bristle-hairy stem bears a quantity
of alternate lance-shaped leaves lobed at the base where they
clasp it.

In even wetter ground we find the RED-STALKED, PURPLE-STEMMED, or
EARLY PURPLE ASTER, COCASH, SWANWEED, or MEADOW SCABISH (A.
puniceus) blooming as early as July or as late as November. Its
stout, rigid stem, bristling with rigid hairs, may reach a height
of eight feet to display the branching clusters of pale violet or
lavender flowers. The long, blade-like leaves, usually very rough
above and hairy along the midrib beneath, are seated on the stem.
The lovely SMOOTH or BLUE ASTER (A. laevis), whose sky-blue or
violet flower-heads, about one inch broad, are common through
September and October in dry soil and open woods, has strongly
clasping, oblong, tapering leaves, rough margined, but rarely
with a saw-tooth, toward the top of the stem, while those low
down on it gradually narrow into clasping wings.

In dry, sandy soil, mostly near the coast, from Massachusetts to
Delaware, grows one of the loveliest of all this beautiful clan,
the LOW, SHOWY, or SEASIDE PURPLE ASTER (A. spectabilis). The
stiff, usually unbranched stem does its best in attaining a
height of two feet. Above, the leaves are blade-like or narrowly
oblong, seated on the stem, whereas the tapering, oval basal
leaves are furnished with long footstems, as is customary with
most asters. The handsome, bright, violet-purple flower-heads,
measuring about an inch and a half across, have from fifteen to
thirty rays, or only about half as many as the familiar New
England aster. Season August to November.

The low-growing BOG ASTER (A. nemoralis), not to be confused with
the much taller Red-stalked species often found growing in the
same swamp, and having, like it, flower-heads measuring about an
inch and a half across, has rays that vary from light violet
purple to rose pink. Its oblong to lance-shaped leaves, only two
inches long at best, taper to a point at both ends, and are
seated on the stem. We look for this aster in sandy bogs from New
Jersey northward and westward during August and September.

The STIFF or SAVORY-LEAVED ASTER, SANDPAPER, or PINE STARWORT
(Ionactis linariifolius), now separated from the other asters
into a genus by itself, is a low, branching little plant with no
basal leaves, but some that are very narrow and blade-like,
rigid, entire and one-nerved, ascending the stiff stems. The
leaves along the branches are minute and awl-shaped, like those
on a branch of pine. Only from ten to fifteen violet ray flowers
(pistillate) surround the perfect disk florets. From Quebec to
the Gulf of Mexico, and westward beyond the Mississippi this prim
little shrub grows in tufts on dry or rocky soil, and blooms from
July to October.


ROBIN'S, or POOR ROBIN'S, or ROBERT'S PLANTAIN; BLUE SPRING
DAISY; DAISY-LEAVED FLEABANE
  (Erigeron pulchellus; E. bellifolium of Gray)  Thistle family

Flower-heads - Composite, daisy-like, 1 to 1/2 in. across; the
outer circle of about 50 pale bluish-violet ray florets; the disk
florets greenish yellow. Stem: Simple, erect, hairy, juicy,
flexible, from 10 in. to 2 ft. high, producing runners and
offsets from base. Leaves: Spatulate, in a flat tuft about the
root; stem leaves narrow, more acute, seated, or partly clasping.
Preferred Habitat - Moist ground, hills, banks, grassy fields.
Flowering Season - April-June.
Distribution - United States and Canada, east of the Mississippi.

Like an aster blooming long before its season, Robin's plantain
wears a finely cut lavender fringe around a yellow disk of minute
florets; but one of the first, not the last, in the long
procession of composites has appeared when we see gay companies
of these flowers nodding their heads above the grass in the
spring breezes as if they were village gossips.

Doubtless it was the necessity for attracting insects which led
the Robin's plantain and other composites to group a quantity of
minute florets, each one of which was once an independent,
detached blossom, into a common head. In union there is strength.
Each floret still contains, however, its own tiny drop of nectar,
its own stamens, its own pistil connected with embryonic seed
below; therefore, when an insect alights where he can get the
greatest amount of nectar for the least effort, and turns round
and round to exhaust each nectary, he is sure to dust the pistils
with pollen, and so fertilize an entire flower-head in a trice.
The lavender fringe and the hairy involucre and stem serve the
end of discouraging crawling insects, which cannot transfer
pollen from plant to plant, from pilfering sweets that cannot be
properly paid for. Small wonder that, although the composites
have attained to their socialistic practices at a comparatively
recent day as evolutionists count time, they have become as
individuals and as species the most numerous in the world; the
thistle family, dominant everywhere, containing not less than ten
thousand members.

COMMON or PHILADELPHIA FLEABANE, or SKEVISH (E. Philadelphicus),
a smaller edition of Robin's plantain, with a more findely cut
fringe, its reddish-purple ray florets often numbering one
hundred and fifty, may be found in low fields and woods
throughout North America, except in the circumpolar regions.


THISTLES
  (Carduus)  Thistle family

Is land fulfilling the primal curse because it brings forth
thistles? So thinks the farmer, no doubt, but not the goldfinches
which daintily feed among the fluffy seeds, nor the bees, nor the
"painted lady," which may be seen in all parts of the world where
thistles grow, hovering about the beautiful rose-purple flowers.
In the prickly cradle of leaves, the caterpillar of this thistle
butterfly weaves a web around its main food store.

When the Danes invaded Scotland, they stole a silent night march
upon the Scottish camp by marching barefoot; but a Dane
inadvertently stepped on a thistle, and his sudden, sharp cry,
arousing the sleeping Scots, saved them and their country: hence
the Scotch emblem.

>From July to November blooms the COMMON, BURR, SPEAR, PLUME,
BANK, HORSE, BULL, BLUE, BUTTON, BELL, or ROADSIDE THISTLE
(C. lanceolatus or Circium lanceolatum of Gray), a native of
Europe and Asia, now a most thoroughly naturalized American from
Newfoundland to Georgia, westward to Nebraska. Its violet
flower-heads, about an inch and a half across, and as high as
wide, are mostly solitary at the ends of formidable branches, up
which few crawling creatures venture. But in the deep tube of
each floret there is nectar secreted for the flying visitor who
can properly transfer pollen from flower to flower. Such a one
suffers no inconvenience from the prickles, but, on the contrary,
finds a larger feast saved for him because of them. Dense,
matted, wool-like hairs, that cover the bristling stems of most
thistles, make climbing mighty unpleasant for ants, which ever
delight in pilfering sweets. Perhaps one has the temerity to
start upward.

     "

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