Wild Flowers Part 15

"With fantastic garlands did she come, Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples,"

is it probable he so combined flowers having different seasons of bloom? Dr. Prior suggests that the purple orchis (0. mascula) might have been the flower Ophelia wore; but, as long purples has been the folk name of this loosestrife from time immemorial in England, it seems likely that Shakespeare for once may have made a mistake.

BLUE WAX-WEED; CLAMMY CUPHEA; TAR-WEED (Parsonia petiolata; Cuphea viscosissima of Gray) Loosestrife family

Flowers - Purplish pink, about 1/4 in. across, on short peduncles from leaf axils, solitary or cl.u.s.tered. Calyx sticky, tubular, 12-ribbed, with 6 primary teeth, oblique at mouth, extending into a rounded swelling on upper side at base; 6 unequal, wrinkled petals, on short claws; 11 or 12 stamens inserted on calyx throat; pistil with 2-lobed stigma. Stem: 6 to 20 in. high, branched, very sticky-hairy. Leaves: Opposite, on slender petioles, lance-shaped, rounded at base, harsh to the touch.

Preferred Habitat - Dry soil, waste places, fields, roadsides.

Flowering Season - July-October.

Distribution - Rhode Island to Georgia, westward to Louisiana, Kansas, and Illinois.

A first cousin of the familiar Mexican cigar plant, or fire-cracker plant (Cuphea platycentra), whose abundant little vermilion tubes, with black-edged lower lip tipped with white, brighten the borders of so many Northern flower-beds. Kyphos, the Greek for curved, from which cuphea was derived, has reference to the peculiar, swollen little seedpod. From a slit on one side of the clammy cuphea's capsule the placenta, set with tiny flattened seeds, sticks out like a handle. Probably the flower has already fertilized itself in the bud, although, from the fact that the plant has taken such pains to punish crawling insect foes by coating itself with sticky hairs, one might imagine it was wholly dependent upon winged insects to transfer its pollen. What an unworthy relative of the purple loosestrife, whose elaborate scheme to insure cross-fertilization is one of the botanical wonders!

MEADOW-BEAUTY; DEER GRa.s.s (Rhexia Virginica) Meadow-beauty family

Flowers - Purplish pink, 1 to 1 1/2 in. across, pedicelled, cl.u.s.tered at top of stem. Calyx 4-lobed, tubular or urn-shaped, narrowest at neck; 4 rounded, spreading petals, joined for half their length; 8 equal, prominent stamens in 2 rows; pistil. Stem: 1 to 1 1/2 ft. high, square, more or less hairy, erect, sometimes branching at top. Leaves: Opposite, ascending, seated on stem, oval, acute at tip, mostly 5-nerved, the margins saw-edged.

Preferred Habitat - Sandy swamps or near water.

Flowering Season - July-September.

Distribution - United States, chiefly east of Mississippi.

Suggesting a brilliant magenta evening primrose in form, the meadow-beauty is likewise a rather n.i.g.g.ardly bloomer, only a few flowers in each cl.u.s.ter opening at once; but where ma.s.ses adorn our marshes, we cannot wonder so effective a plant is exported to European peat gardens. Its lovely sister, the MARYLAND MEADOW-BEAUTY (R. Mariana), a smaller, less brilliant flower, found no farther north than the swamps and pine barrens of New Jersey, also goes abroad to be admired; yet neither is of any value for cutting, for the delicate petals quickly discolor and drop off when handled. Blossoms so attractively colored naturally have many winged visitors to transfer their pollen. All too soon after fertilization the now useless petals fall, leaving the pretty urn-shaped calyx, with the large yellow protruding stamens, far more conspicuous than some flowers. "Its seed-vessels are perfect little cream pitchers of graceful form,"

said Th.o.r.eau. Within the smooth capsule the minute seeds are coiled like snail-sh.e.l.ls.

GREAT OR SPIKED WILLOW-HERB; FIRE-WEED (Chamaenerion angustifolium; Epilobium angustifolium of Gray) Evening Primrose family

Flowers - Magenta or pink, sometimes pale, or rarely white, more or less than 1 in. across, in an elongated, terminal, spike-like raceme. Calyx tubular, narrow, in 4 segments; 4 rounded, spreading petals; 8 stamens; 1 pistil, hairy at base; the stigma 4-lobed. Stem: 2 to 8 ft. high, simple, smooth, leafy. Leaves: Narrow, tapering, willow-like, 2 to 6 in. long. Fruit: A slender, curved, violet-tinted capsule, from 2 to 3 in. long, containing numerous seeds attached to tufts of fluffy, white, silky threads.

Preferred Habitat - Dry soil, fields, roadsides, especially in burnt-over districts.

Flowering Season - June-September.

Distribution - From Atlantic to Pacific, with few interruptions; British Possessions and United States southward to the Carolinas and Arizona. Also Europe and Asia.

Spikes of these beautiful brilliant flowers towering upward above dry soil, particularly where the woodsman's axe and forest fires have devastated the landscape, ill.u.s.trate Nature's abhorrence of ugliness. Other kindly plants have earned the name of fire-weed, but none so quickly beautifies the blackened clearings of the pioneer, nor blossoms over the charred trail in the wake of the locomotive. Beginning at the bottom of the long spike, the flowers open in slow succession upward throughout the summer, leaving behind the attractive seed-vessels, which, splitting lengthwise in September, send adrift white silky tufts attached to seeds that will one day cover far distant wastes with beauty.

Almost perfect rosettes, made by the young plants, are met with on one's winter walks.

Epi, upon, and lobos, a pod, combine to make a name applicable to many flowers of this family. In general structure the fire-weed closely resembles its relative the evening primrose. Bees, not moths, however, are its benefactors. Coming to a newly opened flower, the bee finds abundant pollen on the anthers and a sip of nectar in the cup below. At this stage the flower keeps its still immature style curved downward and backward lest it should become self-fertilized - an evil ever to be guarded against by ambitious plants. In a few days, or after the pollen has been removed, up stretches the style, spreading its four receptive stigmas just where an incoming bee, well dusted from a younger flower, must certainly leave some pollen on their sticky surfaces.

The GREAT HAIRY WILLOW-HERB (Epilobium hirsutum), whose white tufted seeds came over from Europe in the ballast to be blown over Ontario and the Eastern States, spreads also by underground shoots, until it seems destined to occupy wide areas. In these showy magenta flowers, about one inch across, the stigmas and anthers mature simultaneously but cross-fertilization is usually insured because the former surpa.s.s the latter, and naturally are first touched by the insect visitor. In default of visits, however, the stigmas, at length curling backward, come in contact with the pollen-laden anthers. The fire-weed, on the contrary, is unable to fertilize itself.

A pale magenta-pink or whitish, very small-flowered, branching species, one to two feet high, found in swamps from New Brunswick to the Pacific, and southward to Delaware, is the LINEAR-LEAVED WILLOW-HERB (F. lineare), whose distinguishing features are its very narrow, acute leaves, its h.o.a.riness throughout, the dingy threads on its tiny seeds, and the occasional bulblets it bears near the base of the stem. It is scarcely to be distinguished by one not well up in field practice from another bog lover, the DOWNY or SOFT WILLOW-HERB (F. strictum), which, however, is a trifle taller, glandular throughout, and with sessile, not petioled, leaves. The PURPLE-LEAVED WILLOW-HERB (E. coloratum), common in low grounds, may best be named by the reddish-brown coma to which its seeds are attached. Both leaves and stem are often highly colored.

BOG WINTERGREEN (Pyrola uliginosa; P. rotundifolia, var. uliginosa of Gray) Wintergreen family

Flowers - Magenta pink, fragrant, about 1/2 in. across, 7 to 15 on a leafless scape 6 to 15 in. high. Calyx 5-parted; 5 concave petals; 10 stamens; style curved upward, exserted. Leaves: From the root, broadly oval or round, rather thick and dull, on petioles.

Preferred Habitat - Swamps and bogs.

Flowering Season - June.

Distribution - Nova Scotia to British Columbia, southward to New York and Colorado.

Fragrant colonies of this little plant cuddled close to the moss of cool, northern peat bogs draw forth our admiration when we go orchid hunting in early summer. A similar species, the LIVER-LEAF WINTERGREEN (P. asarifolia), with shining, not dull, leaves and rose-colored flowers, not to mention minor differences, is likewise found in swamps and wet woods. These two wintergreens, formerly counted mere varieties of the white-flowered rotundifolia, a lover of dry woods, have now been given specific individuality by later-day systematists. Short-lipped bees and flies may be detected in the act of applying their mouths to the orifices of the anthers through which pollen is shed, and some must be carried to the stigma of another flower.

PIPSISSEWA; PRINCE'S PINE (Chimaphila umbellata) Wintergreen family

Flowers - Flesh-colored, or pinkish, fragrant, waxy, usually with deep pink ring around center, and the anthers colored; about 1/2 in. across; several flowers in loose, terminal cl.u.s.ter. Calyx 5-cleft; corolla of 5 concave, rounded, spreading petals; 10 stamens, the filaments hairy style short, conical, with a round stigma. Stem: Trailing far along ground, creeping, or partly subterranean, sending up sterile and flowering branches 3 to 10 in. high. Leaves: Opposite or in whorls, evergreen, bright, shining, spatulate to lance-shaped, sharply saw-edged.

Preferred Habitat - Dry woods, sandy leaf-mould.

Flowering Season - June-August.

Distribution - British Possessions and the United States north of Georgia from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Also Mexico, Europe, and Asia.

A lover of winter indeed (cheima = winter and phileo = to love) is the prince's pine, whose beautiful dark leaves keep their color and gloss in spite of snow and intense cold. A few yards of the trailing stem, easily ripped from the light soil of its woodland home, make a charming indoor decoration, especially when the little brown seed-cases remain. Few flowers are more suggestive of the woods than these shy, dainty, deliciously fragrant little blossoms.

The SPOTTED WINTERGREEN, or PIPSISSEWA (C. maculata), closely resembles the prince's pine, except that its slightly larger white or pinkish flowers lack the deep pink ring; and the lance-shaped leaves, with rather distant saw-teeth, are beautifully mottled with white along the veins. When we see short-lipped bees and flies about these flowers, we may be sure their pollen-covered mouths come in contact with the moist stigma on the summit of the little top-shaped style, and so effect cross-fertilization.

WILD HONEYSUCKLE; PINK, PURPLE, or WILD AZALEA; PINXTER-FLOWER (Azalea nudiflora) Heath family

Flowers - Crimson pink, purplish or rose pink, to nearly white, 1 1/2 to 2 in. across, faintly fragrant, cl.u.s.tered, opening before or with the leaves, and developed from cone-like, scaly brown buds. Calyx minute, 5-parted; corolla funnel-shaped, the tube narrow, hairy, with 5 regular, spreading lobes; 5 long red stamens; 1 pistil, declined, protruding. Stem: Shrubby, usually simple below, but branching above, 2 to 6 ft. high. Leaves: Usually cl.u.s.tered, deciduous, oblong, acute at both ends, hairy on midrib.

Preferred Habitat - Moist, rocky woods, or dry woods and thickets.

Flowering Season - April-May.

Distribution - Maine to Illinois, and southward to the Gulf.

Woods and hillsides are glowing with fragrant, rosy ma.s.ses of this lovely azalea, the Pinxter-bloem or Whitsunday flower of the Dutch colonists, long before the seventh Sunday after Easter.

Among our earliest exports, this hardy shrub, the swamp azalea, and the superb flame-colored species of the Alleghanies, were sent early in the eighteenth century to the old country, and there crossed with A. Pontica of southern Europe by the Belgian horticulturalists, to whom we owe the Ghent azaleas, the final triumphs of the hybridizer, that glorify the shrubberies on our own lawns to-day. The azalea became the national flower of Flanders. These hardy species lose their leaves in winter, whereas the hothouse varieties of A. Indica, a native of China and j.a.pan, have thickish leaves, almost if not quite evergreen. A few of the latter stand our northern winters, especially the pure white variety now quite commonly planted in cemetery lots. In that delightfully enthusiastic little book, "The Garden's Story,"

Mr. Ellw.a.n.ger says of the Ghent azalea "In it I find a charm presented by no other flower. Its soft tints of buff, sulphur, and primrose; its dazzling shades of apricot, salmon, orange, and vermilion are always a fresh revelation of color. They have no parallel among flowers, and exist only in opals, sunset skies, and the flush of autumn woods." Certainly American horticulturists were not clever in allowing the industry of raising these plants from our native stock to thrive on foreign soil.

Naturally the azalea's protruding style forms the most convenient alighting place for the female bee, its chief friend; and there she leaves a few grains of pollen, brought on her hairy underside from another flower, before again dusting herself there as she crawls over the pretty colored anthers on her way to the nectary.

Honey produced from azaleas by the hive bee is in bad repute. All too soon after fertilization the now useless corolla slides along to the tip of the pistil, where it swings a while before dropping to earth.

Our beautiful wild honeysuckle, called naked (nudiflora), because very often the flowers appear before the leaves, has a peculiar j.a.panese grace on that account. Every farmer's boy's mouth waters at sight of the cool, juicy May-apple, the extraordinary pulpy growth on this plant and the swamp pink. This excrescence seems to have no other use than that of a gratuitous, harmless gift to the thirsty child, from whom it exacts no reward of carrying seeds to plant distant colonies, as the mandrake's yellow, tomato-like May-apple does. But let him beware, as he is likely to, of the similar looking, but hollow, stringy apples growing on the bushy Andromeda, which turn black with age.

>From Maine to Florida and westward to Texas, chiefly near the coast, in low, wet places only need we look for the SWAMP PINK or HONEYSUCKLE, WHITE or CLAMMY AZALEA (A. viscosa), a more hairy species than the Pinxter-flower, with a very sticky, glandular corolla tube, and deliciously fragrant blossoms, by no means invariably white. John Burroughs is not the only one who has pa.s.sed "several patches of swamp honeysuckles, red with blossoms"

("Wake-Robin"). But as this species does not bloom until June and July, when the sun quickly bleaches the delicate flowers, it is true we most frequently find them white, merely tinged with pink.

The leaves are well developed before the blossoms appear.

Concerning azaleas' poisonous property, see the discussion under mountain laurel that follows.

RHODORA (Rhodora Canadensis; Rhododendron Rhodora of Gray) Heath family

Flowers - Purplish pink, rose, or nearly white, 1 1/2 in. broad or less, in cl.u.s.ters on short, stiff, hairy pedicels, and usually appearing before the leaves, from scaly, terminal buds. Calyx minute; corolla 2-lipped, upper lip unequally 2-3 lobed; lower lip 2-cleft; 10 stamens; pistil, the style slightly protruding.

Stem: 1 to 3 ft. high, shrubby, branching. Leaves: Deciduous, oval to oblong, dark green above, pale and hairy beneath.

Preferred Habitat - Wet hillsides, damp woods, beside sluggish streams, cool bogs.

Flowering Season - May.

Distribution - Newfoundland to Pennsylvania mountains.

A superficial glance at this low, little, thin shrub might mistake it for a magenta variety of the leafless Pinxter-flower.

It does its best to console the New Englanders for the scarcity of the magnificent rhododendron, with which it was formerly cla.s.sed. The Sage of Concord, who became so enamored of it that Ma.s.sachusetts people often speak of it as "Emerson's flower,"

extols its loveliness in a sonnet:

"Rhodora! If the sages ask thee why This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, Tell them, dear, if eyes were made for seeing, Then Beauty is its own excuse for being."