Wild Flowers Part 25

EARLY SAXIFRAGE (Saxifraga Virginiensis) Saxifrage family

Flowers - White, small, numerous, perfect, spreading into a loose panicle. Calyx 5-lobed; 5 petals; 10 stamens; 1 pistil with 2 styles. Scape: 4 to 12 in. high, naked, sticky-hairy. Leaves: Cl.u.s.tered at the base, rather thick, obovate, toothed, and narrowed into spatulate-margined petioles. Fruit: Widely spread, purplish-brown pods.

Preferred Habitat - Rocky woodlands, hillsides.

Flowering Season - March-May Distribution - New Brunswick to Georgia, and westward a thousand miles or more.

Rooted in clefts of rock that, therefore, appears to be broken by this vigorous plant, the saxifrage shows rosettes of fresh green leaves in earliest spring, and soon whitens with its blossoms the most forbidding niches. (Saxum = a rock; frango = 1 break.) At first a small ball of green buds nestles in the leafy tuffet, then pushes upward on a bare scape, opening its tiny, white, five-pointed star flowers as it ascends, until, having reached the allotted height, it scatters them in spreading cl.u.s.ters that last a fortnight. Again we see that, however insignificantly small nectar-bearing flowers may be, they are somehow protected from crawling pilferers; in this case by the commonly employed sticky hairs in which ants' feet become ensnared. As the anthers mature before the stigmas are ready to receive pollen, certainly the flowers cannot afford to send empty away the benefactors on whom the perpetuation of their race depends; and must prevent it even with the most heroic measures.

FALSE MITERWORT; COOLWORT; FOAM-FLOWER; NANCY-OVER-THE-GROUND (Tiarella cordifolia) Saxifrage family.

Flowers - White, small, feathery, borne in a close raceme at the top of a scape 6 to 12 in. high. Calyx white, 9-lobed; 5 clawed petals; 10 stamens, long-exserted; 1 pistil with 2 styles.

Leaves: Long-petioled from the rootstock or runners, rounded or broadly heart-shaped, 3 to 7-lobed, toothed, often downy along veins beneath.

Preferred Habitat - Rich, moist woods, especially along mountains.

Flowering Season - April-May.

Distribution - Nova Scotia to Georgia, and westward scarcely to the Mississippi.

Fuzzy, bright white foam-flowers are most conspicuous in the forest when seen against their unevenly colored leaves that carpet the ground. A relative, the TRUE MITERWORT or BISHOP'S CAP (Mittella diphylla), with similar foliage, except that two opposite leaves may be found almost seated near the middle of its hairy stem, has its flowers rather distantly scattered on the raceme, and their fine petals deeply cut like fringe. Both species may be found in bloom at the same time, offering an opportunity for comparison to the confused novice. Now, tiarella, meaning a little tiara, and mitella, a little miter, refer, of course, to the odd forms of their seed-cases; but all of us are not gifted with the imaginative eyes of Linnaeus, who named the plants. Xenophon's a.s.sertion that the royal tiara or turban of the Persians was encircled with a crown helps us no more to see what Linnaeus saw in the one case than the fact that the papal miter is encircled by three crowns helps in the other. And as for the lofty, two-peaked cap worn by bishops in the Roman Church, a dozen plants, with equal propriety, might be said to wear it.

CAROLINA GRa.s.s OF PARNa.s.sUS (Parna.s.sia Caroliniana) Saxifrage family

Flowers - Creamy white, delicately veined with greenish, solitary, 1 in. broad or over, at the end of a scape 8 in. to 2 ft. high, 1 ovate leaf clasping it. Calyx deeply 5-lobed; corolla of 5 spreading, parallel veined petals; 5 fertile stamens alternating with them, and 3 stout imperfect stamens cl.u.s.tered at base of each petal; 1 very short pistil with 4 stigmas. Leaves: >From the root, on long petioles, broadly oval or rounded, heart-shaped at base, rather thick.

Preferred Habitat - Wet ground, low meadows, swamps.

Flowering Season - July-September.

Distribution - New Brunswick to Virginia, west to Iowa.

What's in a name? Certainly our common gra.s.s of Parna.s.sus, which is no gra.s.s at all, never starred the meadows round about the home of the Muses, nor sought the steaming savannas of the Carolinas. The European counterpart (P. pal.u.s.tris), fabled to have sprung up on Mount Parna.s.sus, is at home here only in the Canadian border States and northward.

At first a.n.a.lysis one is puzzled by the cl.u.s.ters of filaments at the base of each petal. Of what use are they? We have seen in the case of the beard-tongue and the turtle-head that even imperfect stamens sometimes serve useful ends, or they would doubtless have been abolished. A fly or bee mistaking, as he well may, the abortive anthers for beads of nectar on this flower, alights on one of the white petals, a convenient, spreading landing place; but finding his mistake, and guided by the greenish lines, the pathfinders to the true nectaries situated on the other side of the curious fringy structures, he must, because of their troublesome presence, climb over them into the center of the flower to suck its sweets from the point where he will dust himself with pollen in young blossoms. Of course he will carry some of their vitalizing powder to the late maturing stigmas of older ones. Without the fringe of imperfect stamens, that serves as a harmless trellis easily climbed over, the visitor might stand on the petals and sip nectar without rendering any a.s.sistance in cross-fertilizing his entertainers.

NINEBARK (Opulaster opulifolius; Spiraea opulifolia of Gray) Rose family

Flowers - White or pink, small, in numerous rounded terminal cl.u.s.ters to 2 in. broad. Calyx 5-lobed; 5 rounded petals inserted in its throat; 20 to 40 stamens; several pistils. Stem: Shrubby, 3 to 10 ft. high, with long, recurved branches, the loose bark peeling off annually in thin strips. Leaves: Simple, heart-shaped or rounded, 3-lobed, toothed. Fruit: 3 to 5 smooth, shining, reddish, inflated, pointed pods.

Preferred Habitat - Rocky banks, riversides.

Flowering Season - June.

Distribution - Canada to Georgia, west to Kansas.

Whether the nurserymen agree with Dr. Gray or not when he says these b.a.l.l.s of white flowers possess "no beauty," the fact remains that numbers of the shrubs are sold for ornament, especially a golden-leaved variety. But the charm certainly lies in their fruit. (Opulus = a wild cranberry tree.) When this is plentifully set at the ends of long branches that curve backward, and the bladder-like pods have taken on a rich purplish or reddish hue, the shrub is undeniably decorative. Even the old flowers, after they have had their pollen carried away by the small bees and flies, show a reddish tint on the ovaries which deepens as the fruit forms; and Ludwig states that this is not only to increase the conspicuousness of the shrubs, but to entice unbidden guests away from the younger flowers. Who will tell us why the old bark should loosen every year and the thin layers separate into not nine, but dozens of ragged strips?

MEADOW-SWEET; QUAKER LADY; QUEEN-OF-THE-MEADOW (Spiraea salicifolia) Rose family

Flowers - Small, white or flesh pink, cl.u.s.tered in dense pyramidal terminal panicles. Calyx 5 cleft; carolla of 5 rounded petals; stamens numerous; pistils 5 to 8. Stem: 2 to 4 ft. high, simple or bushy, smooth, usually reddish. Leaves: Alternate, oval or oblong, saw-edged.

Preferred Habitat - Low meadows, swamps, fence-rows, ditches.

Flowering Season - June-August.

Distribution - Newfoundland to Georgia, west to Rocky Mountains.

Europe and Asia.

Fleecy white plumes of meadow-sweet, the "spires of closely cl.u.s.tered bloom" sung by Dora Read Goodale, are surely not frequently found near dusty "waysides scorched with barren heat,"

even in her Berkshires; their preference is for moister soil, often in the same habitat with a first cousin, the pink steeple-bush. But plants, like humans, are capricious creatures.

If the meadow-sweet always elected to grow in damp ground whose rising mists would clog the pores of its leaves, doubtless they would be protected with a woolly absorbent, as its cousins are.

Inasmuch as perfume serves as an attraction to the more highly specialized, aesthetic insects, not required by the spiraeas, our meadow-sweet has none, in spite of its misleading name. Small bees (especially Andrenidae), flies (Syrphidae), and beetles, among other visitors, come in great numbers, seeking the accessible pollen, and, in this case, nectar also, secreted in a conspicuous orange-colored disk. When a floret first opens, or even before, the already mature stigmas overtop the incurved, undeveloped stamens, so that any visitor dusted from other cl.u.s.ters cross-fertilizes it; but as the stigmas remain fresh even after the stamens have risen and shed their abundant pollen, it follows that in long-continued stormy weather, when few insects are flying, the flowers fertilize themselves.

Self-fertilization with insect help must often occur in the flower's second stage. The fragrant yellowish-white ENGLISH MEADOW-SWEET (S. ulmaria), often cultivated in old-fashioned gardens here, has escaped locally.

In long, slender, forking spikes the GOAT'S-BEARD (Aruncus Aruncus - Spiraea aruncus of Gray) lifts its graceful panicles of minute whitish flowers in May and June from three to seven feet above the rich soil of its woodland home. The petioled, pinnate leaves are compounded of several leaflets like those on its relative the rose-bush. From New York southward and westward to Missouri, also on the Pacific Coast to Alaska, is its range on this Continent. Very many more beetles than any other visitors transfer pollen from the staminate flowers on one plant to the pistillate ones on another; other plants produce only perfect flowers - the reason different panicles vary so much in appearance.

Another herbaceous perennial once counted a spiraea is the common INDIAN PHYSIC or BOWMAN'S-ROOT (Porteranthus trifoliatus - Gillensia trifoliata of Gray) found blooming in the rich woods during June and July from western New York southward and westward. Two to four feet high, it displays its very loose, pretty cl.u.s.ters of white or pale pink flowers, comparatively few in the whole panicle, each blossom measuring about a half inch across and borne on a slender pedicel. A tubular, 5-toothed calyx has the long slender petals inserted within. Owing to the depth and narrowness of the tube, the small, long-tongued bees cannot reach the nectar without dusting their heads with pollen from the anthers inserted in a ring around the entrance or leaving some on the stigmas of other blossoms. Later, the five carpels make as many hairy, awl-tipped little pods within the reddish cup. The leaves may be compounded of three oblong or ovate, saw-edged leaflets, or merely three-lobed, and with small stipules at their base.

WILD RED RASPBERRY (Rubus strigosus) Rose family

Flowers - White, about 1/2 in. across, on slender, bristly pedicels, in a loose cl.u.s.ter. Calyx deeply 5-parted, persistent in fruit; 5 erect, short-lived petals, about the length of the sepals; stamens numerous; carpels numerous, inserted on a convex spongy receptacle, and ripening into drupelets. Stem: 3 to 6 ft.

high, shrubby, densely covered with bristles; older, woody stems with rigid, hooked p.r.i.c.kles. Leaves: Compounded of 3 to 5 ovate, pointed, and irregularly saw-edged leaflets, downy beneath, on bristly petioles. Fruit: A light red, watery, tender, high-flavored, edible berry; ripe July-September.

Preferred Habitat - Dry soil, rocky hillsides, fence-rows, hedges.

Flowering Season - May-July.

Distribution - Labrador to North Carolina, also in Rocky Mountain region.

Who but the bees and such small visitors care about the raspberry blossoms? Notwithstanding the nectar secreted in a fleshy ring for their benefit, comparatively few insects enter the flowers, whose small, erect petals imply no hospitable welcome.

Occasionally a visitor laden with pollen from another plant alights in the center of a blossom, and leaves some on the stigmas in bending his head down between them and the stamens to reach the refreshment; but inasmuch as the erect petals allow no room for the stamens to spread out and away from the stigmas, it follows that self-fertilization very commonly occurs.

Of course, men and children, bears and birds, are vastly more interested in the delicious berries; men for the reason that several excellent market varieties, some white or pale red, the Cuthbert and Hansall berries among others, owe their origin to this hardy native. Many superior sorts derived from its European counterpart (R. Idaeus) cannot well endure our rigorous northern climate. As in the case of most berry-bearing species, the raspberry depends upon the birds to drop its undigested seeds over the country, that new colonies may arise under freer conditions. Indeed, one of the best places for the budding ornithologist to take opera-gla.s.ses and notebook is to a raspberry patch early in the morning.

The BLACK RASPBERRY, BLACK CAP or SCOTCH CAP or THIMBLE-BERRY (R.

occidentalis), common in such situations as the red raspberry chooses, but especially in burned-over districts from Virginia northward and westward, has very long, smooth, cane-like stems, often bending low until they root again at the tips. These are only sparingly armed with small, hooked p.r.i.c.kles, no bristles.

The flowers, which are similar to the preceding, but cl.u.s.tered more compactly, are sparingly visited by insects; nevertheless when self-fertilized, as they usually are, abundant purplish-black berries, hollow like a thimble where they drop from the spongy receptacle, ripen in July. Numerous garden hybrids have been derived from this prolific species also. Indeed its offspring are the easiest raspberries to grow, since they form new plants at the tips of the branches, yet do not weaken themselves with suckers, and so, even without care, yield immense crops. One need not stir many feet around a good raspberry patch to enjoy a Transcendental feast.

HIGH BUSH BLACKBERRY; BRAMBLE (Rubus villosus) Rose family

Flowers - White, 1 in. or less across, in terminal raceme-like cl.u.s.ters. Calyx deeply 5-parted, persistent; 5 large petals; stamens and carpels numerous, the latter inserted on a pulpy receptacle. Stem: 3 to 10 ft. high, woody, furrowed, curved, armed with stout, recurved p.r.i.c.kles. Leaves: Compounded of 3 to 5 ovate, saw-edged leaflets, the end one stalked, all hairy beneath. Fruit: Firmly attached to the receptacle; nearly black, oblong juicy berries 1 in. long or less, hanging in cl.u.s.ters.

Ripe, July-August.

Preferred Habitat - Dry soil, thickets, fence-rows, old fields, waysides. Low alt.i.tudes.

Flowering Season - May-June.

Distribution - New England to Florida, and far westward.

"There was a man of our town, And he was wondrous wise, He jumped into a bramble bush" -

If we must have poetical a.s.sociations for every flower, Mother Goose furnishes several.

But for the practical mind this plant's chief interest lies in the fact that from its wild varieties the famous Lawton and Kittatinny blackberries have been derived. The late Peter Henderson used to tell how the former came to be introduced. A certain Mr. Secor found an unusually fine blackberry growing wild in a hedge at New Roch.e.l.le, New York, and removed it to his garden, where it increased apace. But not even for a gift could he induce a neighbor to relieve him of the superfluous bushes, so little esteemed were blackberries in his day. However, a shrewd lawyer named Lawton at length took hold of it, exhibited the fruit, advertised it cleverly, and succeeded in pocketing a snug little fortune from the sale of the prolific plants. Another fine variety of the common wild blackberry, which was discovered by a clergyman at the edge of the woods on the Kittatinny Mountains in New Jersey, has produced fruit under skilled cultivation that still remains the best of its cla.s.s. When cl.u.s.ters of blossoms and fruit in various stages of green, red, and black hang on the same bush, few ornaments in Nature's garden are more decorative.

Because bramble flowers show greater executive ability than the raspberries do, they flaunt much larger petals, and spread them out flat to attract insect workers as well as to make room for the stamens to spread away from the stigmas - an arrangement which gives freer access to the nectar secreted in a fleshy ring at the base. Heavy b.u.mblebees, which require a firm support, naturally alight in the center, just as they do in the wild roses, and deposit on the early maturing stigmas some imported pollen. They may therefore be regarded as the truest benefactors, and it will be noticed that for their special benefit the nectar is rather deeply concealed, where short-tongued insects cannot rob them of it. Small bees, which come only to gather pollen from first the outer and then the inner rows of stamens, and a long list of other light-weight visitors, too often alight on the petals to effect cross-fertilization regularly, but they usually self-fertilize the blossoms. Compet.i.tion between these flowers and the next is fierce, for their seasons overlap.

The DEWBERRY or LOW RUNNING BLACKBERRY (R. Canadensis), that trails its woody stem by the dusty roadside, in dry fields, and on sterile, rocky hillsides, calls forth maledictions from the bare-footed farmer's boy, except during June and July, when its p.r.i.c.kles are freely forgiven it in consideration of the delicious, black, seedy berries it bears. He is the last one in the world to confuse this vine with the SWAMP BLACKBERRY (R.

hispidus), a smaller flowered runner, slender and weakly p.r.i.c.kly as to its stem, and insignificant and sour as to its fruit. Its greatest charm is when we come upon it in some low meadow in winter, when its still persistent, shining, large leaves, that have taken on rich autumnal reds, glow among the dry, dead weeds and gra.s.ses.

CREEPING DALIBARDA (Dalibarda repens) Rose family