Wild Flowers Part 19

But small and shy as it is, does Nature's garden contain a lovelier sight than scores of these deliciously fragrant pink bells swaying above a carpet of the little evergreen leaves in the dim aisle of some deep, cool, lonely forest? Trailing over prostrate logs and mossy rocks, racing with the partridge vine among the ferns and dwarf cornels, the plant sends up "twin-born heads" that seem more fair and sweet than the most showy pampered darlings of the millionaire's conservatory. Little wonder that Linnaeus loved these little twin sisters, or that Emerson enshrined them in his verse.

Contrary to popular impression, this vine, that suggests the dim old forest and exhales the very breath of the spring woods, will consent to run about our rock gardens, although it seems almost a sacrilege to move it from natural surroundings so impressively beautiful. Unlike the arbutus, which remains ever a wildling, pining slowly to death on close contact with civilization, the twin-flower thrives in light, moist garden soil where the sun peeps for a little while only in the morning. By nodding its head the flower protects its precious contents from rain, the hairs inside exclude small pilferers; but bees, attracted by the fragrance and color, are guided to the nectary by five dark lines and a patch of orange color near it.

JOE-PYE WEED; TRUMPET WEED; PURPLE THOROUGHWORT; GRAVEL or KIDNEY-ROOT; TALL or PURPLE BONESET (Eupatorium purpureum) Thistle family

Flower-heads - Pale or dull magenta or lavender pink, slightly fragrant, of tubular florets only, very numerous, in large, terminal, loose, compound cl.u.s.ters, generally elongated. Several series of pink overlapping bracts form the oblong involucre from which the tubular floret and its protruding fringe of style-branches arise. Stem: 3 to 10 ft. high, green or purplish, leafy, usually branching toward top. Leaves: In whorls of 3 to 6 (usually 4), oval to lance-shaped, saw-edged, petioled, thin, rough.

Preferred Habitat - Moist soil, meadows, woods, low ground.

Flowering Season - August-September.

Distribution - New Brunswick to the Gulf of Mexico, westward to Manitoba and Texas.

Towering above the surrounding vegetation of low-lying meadows, this vigorous composite spreads cl.u.s.ters of soft, fringy bloom that, however deep or pale of tint, are ever conspicuous advertis.e.m.e.nts, even when the goldenrods, sunflowers, and asters enter into close compet.i.tion for insect trade. Slight fragrance, which to the delicate perception of b.u.t.terflies is doubtless heavy enough, the florets' color and slender tubular form indicate an adaptation to them, and they are by far the most abundant visitors, which is not to say that long-tongued bees and flies never reach the nectar and transfer pollen, for they do.

But an excellent place for the b.u.t.terfly collector to carry his net is to a patch of Joe-Pye weed in September. As the spreading style-branches that fringe each tiny floret are furnished with hairs for three-quarters of their length, the pollen caught in them comes in contact with the alighting visitor. Later, the lower portion of the style-branches, that is covered with stigmatic papillae along the edge, emerges from the tube to receive pollen carried from younger flowers when the visitor sips his reward. If the hairs still contain pollen when the stigmatic part of the style is exposed, insects self-fertilize the flower; and if in stormy, weather no insects are flying, the flower is nevertheless able to fertilize itself, because the hairy fringe must often come in contact with the stigmas of neighboring florets. It is only when we study flowers with reference to their motives and methods that we understand why one is abundant and another rare. Composites long ago utilized many principles of success in life that the triumphant Anglo-Saxon carries into larger affairs today.

Joe-Pye, an Indian medicine-man of New England, earned fame and fortune by curing typhus fever and other horrors with decoctions made from this plant.

COMMON BURDOCK; c.o.c.kLE-BUR; BEGGARS b.u.t.tONS; CLOT-BUR; CUCKOO b.u.t.tON (Arctium minus; Lappa officinalis: var. minor of Gray) Thistle family

Flower-heads - Composite of tubular florets only, about 1/2 in.

broad; magenta varying to purplish or white; the prominent round involucre of many overlapping leathery bracts, tipped with hooked bristles. Stem: 2 to 5 ft. high, simple or branching, coa.r.s.e.

Leaves: Large, the lower ones often 1 ft. long, broadly ovate, entire edged, pale or loosely cottony beneath, on hollow petioles.

Preferred Habitat - Waste ground, waysides, fields, barnyards.

Flowering Season - July-October.

Distribution - Common throughout our area. Naturalized from Europe.

A larger burdock than this (A. Lappa) may be more common in a few localities of the East, but wherever one wanders, this plebeian boldly a.s.serts itself. In close-cropped pastures it still flourishes with the well-armed thistles and mulleins, for the great leaves contain an exceedingly bitter, sour juice, distasteful to grazers. Nevertheless the unpaid cattle, like every other beast and man, must nolens volens transplant the burs far away from the parent plant to found new colonies. Literally by hook or by crook they steal a ride on every switching tail, every hairy dog and woolly sheep, every trouser-leg or petticoat.

Even the children, who make dolls and baskets of burdock burs, aid them in their insatiate love of travel. Wherever man goes, they follow, until, having crossed Europe - with the Romans? - they are now at home throughout this continent. Their vitality is amazing; persecution with scythe and plow may r.e.t.a.r.d, but never check their victorious march. Opportunity for a seed to germinate may not come until late in the summer; but at once the plant sets to work putting forth flowers and maturing seed, losing no time in developing superfluous stalk and branches. b.u.t.terflies, which, like the Hoboken Dutch, ever delight in magenta, and bees of various kinds, find these flowers, with a slight fragrance as an additional attraction, generous entertainers.

Pink, of all colors, is the most unstable in our flora, and the most likely to fade. Magentas incline to purple, on the one hand, or to pure pink on the other, and delicate shades quickly blanch when long exposed to the sun's rays. Thus we frequently find white blossoms of the once pink rhododendron, laurel, azalea, bouncing Bet, and turtle-head. Albinos, too, regularly occur in numerous species. Many colored flowers show a tendency among individuals to revert to the white type of their ancestors. The reader should bear these facts in mind, and search for his unidentified flower in the previous section or in the following one if this group does not contain it.

WHITE AND GREENISH FLOWERS

"The transition from wind-fertilization to insect-fertilization and the first traces of adaptation to insects, could only be due to the influence of quite short-lipped insects with feebly developed color sense. The most primitive flowers are therefore for the most part simple, widely open, regular, devoid of nectar or with their nectar unconcealed and easily accessible, and greenish, white, or yellow in color.... Lepidoptera, by the thinness, sometimes by the length, of their tongues, were able to produce special modifications. Through their agency were developed flowers with long and narrow tubes, whose colors and time of opening were in relation to the tastes and habits of their visitors." - Hermann Muller.

"Of all colors, white is the prevailing one; and of white flowers a considerably larger proportion smell sweetly than of any other color, namely, 14.6 per cent; of red only 8.2 per cent are odoriferous. The fact of a large proportion of white flowers smelling sweetly may depend in part on those which are fertilized by moths requiring the double aid of conspicuousness in the dusk and of odor. So great is the economy of Nature, that most flowers which are fertilized by crepuscular or nocturnal insects emit their odor chiefly or exclusively in the evening." - Charles Darwin.

WATER-PLANTAIN (Alisma Plantago-aquatica) Water-plantain family

Flowers - Very small and numerous, white, or pale pink, whorled in bracted cl.u.s.ters forming a large, loose panicle 6 to 15 in.

long on a usually solitary scape 1/2 to 3 ft. high. Calyx of 3 sepals corolla of 3 deciduous petals; 6 or more stamens; many carpels in a ring on a small flat receptacle. Leaves: Erect or floating, oblong or ovate, with several ribs, or lance-shaped or gra.s.s-like, petioled, all from root.

Perferred Habitat - Shallow water, mud, marshes.

Flowering Season - June-September.

Distribution - North America, Europe, Asia.

Unlike its far more showy, decorative cousin the arrow-head, this wee-blossomed plant, whose misty white panicles rise with compensating generosity the world around, bears only perfect, regular flowers. Twelve infinitesimal drops of nectar, secreted in a fleshy ring around the center, are eagerly sought by flies.

As the anthers point obliquely outward and away from the stigmas, an incoming fly, bearing pollen on his under side, usually alights in the center, and leaves some of the vitalizing dust just where it is most needed. But a "fly starting from a petal,"

says Muller, "usually applies its tongue to the nectar-drops one by one, and after each it strokes an anther with its labellae; in so doing it may bring various parts of its body in contact with the anthers. As a rule, however, the parts which come in contact with the anthers are not those which come in contact with the stigmas in the same flower." Any plant that lives in shallow water, which may dry up as summer advances, is under special necessity to produce an extra quant.i.ty of cross-fertilized seed to guard against extinction during drought. For the same reason it bears several kinds of leaves adapted to its environment: broad ones that spread their surfaces to the sunshine, and long gra.s.s-like ones to glide through currents of water that would tear those of any other shape. What diversity of leaf-form and structure we meet daily, and yet how very little does the wisest man of science understand of the reasons underlying such marvellous adaptability!

BROAD-LEAVED ARROWHEAD (Sagittaria latifolia; S. variabilis of Gray) Water-plantain family

Flowers - White, 1 to 1 1/2 in. wide, in 3-bracted whorls of 3, borne near the summit of a leafless scape 4 in. to 4 ft. tall.

Calyx of 3 sepals corolla of 3 rounded, spreading petals. Stamens and pistils numerous, the former yellow in upper flowers usually absent or imperfect in lower pistillate flowers. Leaves: Exceedingly variable; those under water usually long and gra.s.slike; upper ones sharply arrow-shaped or blunt and broad, spongy or leathery, on long petioles.

Preferred Habitat - Shallow water and mud.

Flowering Season - July-September.

Distribution - From Mexico northward throughout our area to the circ.u.mpolar regions.

Wading into shallow water or standing on some muddy sh.o.r.e, like a heron, this striking plant, so often found in that bird's haunts, is quite as decorative in a picture, and, happily, far more approachable in life. Indeed, one of the comforts of botany as compared with bird study is that we may get close enough to the flowers to observe their last detail, whereas the bird we have followed laboriously over hill and dale, through briers and swamps, darts away beyond the range of field-gla.s.ses with tantalizing swiftness.

While no single plant is yet thoroughly known to scientists, in spite of the years of study devoted by specialists to separate groups, no plant remains wholly meaningless. When Keppler discovered the majestic order of movement of the heavenly bodies, he exclaimed, "Oh G.o.d, I think Thy thoughts after Thee!" - the expression of a discipleship every reverent soul must be conscious of in penetrating, be it ever so little a way, into the inner meaning of the humblest wayside weed.

Fragile, delicate, pure white, golden-centered flowers of the arrowhead, usually cl.u.s.tered about the top of the scape, naturally are the first to attract the attention whether of man or insect. Below these, dull green, unattractive collections of pistils, which by courtesy only may be called flowers, also form little groups of three. Like the Quakers at meeting, the male and female arrowhead flowers are separated, often on distinct plants.

Of course the insect visitors - bees and flies chiefly - alight on the showy staminate blossoms first, and transfer pollen from them to the dull pistillate ones later, as it was intended they should, to prevent self-fertilization. How endless are the devices of the flowers to guard against this evil and to compel insects to cross-pollinate them! The most minute detail of the mechanism involved, which the microscope reveals, only increases our interest and wonder.

Any plant which elects to grow in shallow water must be amphibious; it must be able to breathe beneath the surface as the fish do, and also be adapted to thrive without those parts that correspond to gills; for ponds and streams have an unpleasant way of drying up in summer, leaving it stranded on the sh.o.r.e. This accounts in part for the variable leaves on the arrowhead, those underneath the water being long and ribbon-like, to bring the greatest possible area into contact with the air with which the water is charged. Broad leaves would be torn to shreds by the current through which gra.s.s-like blades glide harmlessly; but when this plant grows on sh.o.r.e, having no longer use for its lower ribbons, it loses them, and expands only broad arrow-shaped surfaces to the sunny air, leaves to be supplied with carbonic acid to a.s.similate, and sunshine to turn off the oxygen and store up the carbon into their system.

WATER ARUM; MARSH CALLA (Calla pal.u.s.tris) Arum family

Flowers - Minute, greenish yellow, cl.u.s.tered on a cylinder-like, fleshy spadix about 1 in. long, partly enfolded by a large, white, oval, pointed, erect spathe, the whole resembling a small calla lily open in front. The solitary "flower" on a scape as long as the petioles of leaves, and, like them, sheathed at base.

Leaves: Thick, somewhat heart-shaped, their spreading or erect petioles 4 to 8 in. long. Fruit: Red berries cl.u.s.tered in a head.

Preferred Habitat - Cool Northern bogs; in or beside sluggish water.

Flowering Season - May-June.

Distribution - Nova Scotia southward to Virginia, westward to Minnesota and Iowa.

At a glance one knows this beautiful denizen of Northern bogs and ditches to be a poor relation of the stately Ethiopian calla lily of our greenhouses. Where the arum grows in rich, cool retreats, it is apt to be abundant, its slender rootstocks running hither and thither through the yielding soil with thrifty rapidity until the place is carpeted with its handsome dark leaves, from which the pure white "flowers" arise; and yet many flower lovers well up in field practice know it not. Th.o.r.eau, for example, was no longer young when he first saw, or, rather, noticed it. "Having found this in one place," he wrote, "I now find it in another.

Many an object is not seen, though it falls within the range of our visual ray, because it does not come within the range of our intellectual ray. So, in the largest sense, we find only the world we look for."

Now, the true flowers of the arum and all its spadix-bearing kin are so minute that one scarcely notices them where they are cl.u.s.tered on the club-shaped column in the center of the apparent "flower." The beautiful white banner of the marsh calla, or the green and maroon striped pulpit from which Jack preaches, is no more the flower proper than the papery sheath below the daffodil is the daffodil. In the arum the white advertis.e.m.e.nt flaunted before flying insects is not even essential to the florets'

existence, except as it helps them attract their pollen-carrying friends. Almost all waterside plants, it will be noticed, depend chiefly upon flies and midges, and these lack aesthetic taste.

"Such plants have usually acquired small and inconspicuous separate flowers," says Grant Allen; "and then, to make up for their loss in attractiveness, like cheap sweetmeats, they have very largely increased their numbers. Or, to put the matter more simply and physically, in waterside situations those plants succeed best which have a relatively large number of individually small and unnoticeable flowers ma.s.sed together into large and closely serried bundles. Hence, in such situations, there is a tendency for petals to be suppressed, and for blossoms to grow minute; because the large and bright flowers seldom succeed in attracting big land insects like bees or b.u.t.terflies, while the small and thick-set ones usually do succeed in attracting a great many little flitting midges." Flies, which are guided far more by their sense of smell than by sight, resort to the petalless, insignificant florets of the ill-scented marsh calla in numbers; and as the uppermost cl.u.s.ters are staminate only, while the lower florets contain stamens and pistil, it follows they must often effect cross-pollination as they crawl over the spadix. But here is no trap to catch the tiny benefactors such as is set by wicked Jack-in-the-pulpit, or the skunk-cabbage, or another cousin, a still more terrible executioner, the cuckoo-pint (Arum maculatum) of Europe.

Few coroner's inquests are held over the dead bodies of our feathered friends; and it is not known whether the innocent-looking marsh calla really poisons the birds on which it depends to carry its bright seeds afar or not. The cuckoo-pint, as is well known, destroys the winged messenger bearing its offspring to plant fresh colonies in a distant bog, because the decayed body of the bird acts as the best possible fertilizer into which the seedling may strike its roots. Most of our noxious weeds, like our vermin, have come to us from Europe; but Heaven deliver us from this cannibalistic pest!

The very common GREEN ARROW-ARUM (Peltandra Virginica), found in shallow water, ditches, swamps, and the muddy sh.o.r.es of ponds throughout the eastern half of the United States, attracts us more by its stately growth and the beauty of its bright, l.u.s.trous green arrow-shaped leaves (which have been found thirty inches long), than by the insignificant florets cl.u.s.tered on the spadix within a long pointed green sheath that closely enfolds it.

Pistillate florets cover it for only about one-fourth its length.

To them flies carry pollen from the staminate florets covering the rest of the spadix. After the club is set with green berries - green, for this plant has no need to attract birds with bright red ones - the flower stalk curves, bends downward, and the pointed leathery sheath acting as an auger, it bores a hole into the soft mud in which the seeds germinate with the help of their surrounding jelly as a fertilizer.

AMERICAN WHITE h.e.l.lEBORE; INDIAN POKE; ITCH-WEED (Veratrum viride) Bunch-flower family

Flowers - Dingy, pale yellowish or whitish green, growing greener with age, 1 in. or less across, very numerous, in stiff-branching, spike-like, dense-flowered panicles. Perianth of 6 oblong segments; 6 short curved stamens; 3 styles. Stem: Stout, leafy, 2 to 8 ft. tall. Leaves: Plaited, lower ones broadly oval, pointed, 6 to 12 in. long; parallel ribbed, sheathing the stem where they clasp it; upper leaves gradually narrowing; those among flowers small.

Preferred Habitat - Swamps, wet woods, low meadows.

Flowering Season - May-July.