Wild Flowers Part 29

FLOWERING DOGWOOD (Cornus florida) Dogwood family

Flowers - (Apparently) large, white or pinkish, the four conspicuous parts simulating petals, notched at the top, being really bracts of an involucre below the true flowers, cl.u.s.tered, in the center, which are very small, greenish yellow, 4-parted, perfect. Stem: A large shrub or small tree, wood hard, bark rough. Leaves: Opposite, oval, entire-edged, petioled, paler underneath. Fruit: Cl.u.s.ters of egg-shaped scarlet berries, tipped with the persistent calyx.

Preferred Habitat - Woodlands rocky thickets, wooded roadsides.

Flowering Season - April-June.

Distribution - Maine to Florida, west to Ontario and Texas.

Has Nature's garden a more decorative ornament than the flowering dogwood, whose spreading flattened branches whiten the woodland borders in May as if an untimely snowstorm had come down upon them, and in autumn paint the landscape with glorious crimson, scarlet, and gold, dulled by comparison only with the cl.u.s.ters of vivid red berries among the foliage? Little wonder that nurserymen sell enormous numbers of these small trees to be planted on lawns. The horrors of pompous monuments, urns, busts, shafts, angels, lambs, and long-drawn-out eulogies in stone in many a cemetery are mercifully concealed in part by these boughs, laden with blossoms of heavenly purity.

"Let dead names be eternized in dead stone, But living names by living shafts be known.

Plant thou a tree whose leaves shall sing Thy deeds and thee each fresh, recurrent spring."

Fit symbol of immortality! Even before the dogwood's leaves fall in autumn, the round buds for next year's bloom appear on the twigs, to remain in consoling evidence all winter with the scarlet fruit. When the buds begin to swell in spring, the four reddish-purple, scale-like bracts expand, revealing a dozen or more tiny green flowers cl.u.s.tered within for the large, white, petal-like parts, with notched, tinted, and puckered lips, into which these reddish bracts speedily develop, and which some of us have mistaken for a corolla, are not petals at all - not the true flowers - merely appendages around the real ones, placed there, like showy advertis.e.m.e.nts, to attract customers. Nectar, secreted in a disk on each minute ovary, is eagerly sought by little Andrena and other bees, besides flies and b.u.t.terflies. Insects crawling about these cl.u.s.ters, whose florets are all of one kind, get their heads and undersides dusted with pollen, which they transfer as they suck. Hungry winter birds, which bolt the red fruit only when they can get no choicer fare, distribute the smooth, indigestible stones far and wide.

When the Ma.s.sachusetts farmers think they hear the first brown thrasher in April advising them to plant their Indian corn, rea.s.suringly calling, "Drop it, drop it - cover it up, cover it up - pull it up, pull it up, pull it up" (Th.o.r.eau), they look to the dogwood flowers to confirm the thrasher's advice before taking it.

The LOW or DWARF CORNEL, or BUNCHBERRY (C. canadensus) whose scaly stem does its best to attain a height of nine inches, bears a whorl of from four to six oval, pointed, smooth leaves at the summit. From the midst of this whorl comes a cl.u.s.ter of minute greenish florets, encircled by four to six large, showy, white petal-like bracts, quite like a small edition of the flowering dogwood blossom. Tight cl.u.s.ters of round berries, that are lifted upward on a gradually lengthened peduncle after the flowers fade (May-July), brighten with vivid touches of scarlet shadowy, mossy places in cool, rich woods, where the dwarf cornels, with the partridge vine, twin flower, gold thread, and fern, form the most charming of carpets.

Other common dogwoods there are - shrubs from three to ten feet in height - which bear flat cl.u.s.ters of small white flowers without the showy petal-like bracts, imitating a corolla, as in the two preceding species, but each little four-parted blossom attracting its miscellaneous crowd of benefactors by a.s.sociation with dozens of its counterparts in a showy cyme. Because these flowers expand farther than the minute florets of the dwarf cornel or the flowering dogwood, and the sweets are therefore more accessible, all the insects which fertilize them come to the shrub dogwoods too, and in addition very many beetles, to which their odor seems especially attractive. ("Odore carabico o scarabeo" - Delpino.) The ROUND-LEAVED CORNEL or DOGWOOD [now ROUNDLEAF DOGWOOD] (C. circinata), found on shady hillsides, in open woodlands, and roadside thickets - especially in rocky districts - from Nova Scotia to Virginia, and westward to Iowa, may be known by its greenish, warty twigs; its broadly ovate, or round petioled, opposite leaves, short-tapering to a point, and downy beneath; and, in May and June, by its small, flat, white flower-cl.u.s.ters about two inches across, that are followed by light-blue (not edible) berries.

Even more abundant is the SILKY CORNEL, KINNIKINNICK, or SWAMP DOGWOOD [now SILKY DOGWOOD] (C. amonum; C. sericca of Gray) found in low, wet ground, and beside streams, from Nebraska to the Atlantic Ocean, south to Florida and north to New Brunswick. Its dull-reddish twigs, oval or oblong leaves, rounded at the base but tapering to a point at the apex, and usually silky-downy with fine, brownish hairs underneath (to prevent the pores from clogging with vapors arising from its damp habitat); its rather compact, flat cl.u.s.ters of white flowers from May to July, and its bluish berries are its distinguishing features. The Indians loved to smoke its bark for its alleged tonic effect.

The RED-OSIER CORNEL or DOGWOOD (C. stolonifera), which has spread, with the help of running shoots, through the soft soil of its moist retreats, over the British Possessions north of us and throughout the United States from ocean to ocean, except at the extreme south, may be known by its bright purplish-red twigs; its opposite, slender, petioled leaves, rather abruptly pointed at the apex, roughish on both sides, but white or nearly so beneath; its small, flat-topped white flower-cl.u.s.ters in June or July; and finally, by its white or lead-colored fruit.

In good, rich, moist soil another white-fruited species, the PANICLED CORNEL or DOGWOOD (C. candidissima; C. paniculata of Gray) rears its much-branched, smooth, gray stems. In May or June the shrub is beautiful with numerous convex, loose cl.u.s.ters of white flowers at the ends of the twigs. So far do the stamens diverge from the pistil that self-pollination is not likely; but an especially large number of the less specialized insects, seeking the freely exposed nectar, do all the necessary work as they crawl about and fly from shrub to shrub. This species bears comparatively long and narrow leaves, pale underneath. Its range is from Maine to the Carolinas and westward to Nebraska.

WHITE ALDER; SWEET PEPPERBUSH; ALDER-LEAVED CLETHRA (Clethra alnifolia) White Alder family

Flowers - Very fragrant, white, about 1/3 in. across, borne in long, narrow, upright, cl.u.s.tered spikes, with awl-shaped bracts.

Calyx of 5 sepals; 5 longer petals; 10 protruding stamens, the style longest. Stem: A much-branched shrub, 3 to 10 ft. high.

Leaves: Alternate, oblong or ovate, finely saw-edged above the middle at least, green on both sides, tapering at base into short petioles.

Preferred Habitat - Low, wet woodland and roadside thickets; swamps; beside slow streams; meadows.

Flowering Season - July-August.

Distribution - Chiefly near the coast, in States bordering the Atlantic Ocean.

Like many another neglected native plant, the beautiful sweet pepperbush improves under cultivation; and when the departed lilacs, syringa, s...o...b..ll, and blossoming almond, found with almost monotonous frequency in every American garden, leave a blank in the shrubbery at midsummer, these fleecy white spikes should exhale their spicy breath about our homes. But wild flowers, like a prophet, may remain long without honor in their own country. This and a similar but more hairy species found in the Alleghany region, the MOUNTAIN SWEET PEPPERBUSH (C.

ac.u.minata), with pointed leaves, pale beneath, and spreading or drooping flower-spikes, go abroad to be appreciated. Planted beside lakes and streams on n.o.blemen's estates, how overpowering must their fragrance be in the heavy, moisture-laden air of England! Even in our drier atmosphere, it hangs about the thickets like incense.

ROUND-LEAVED PYROLA; PEAR-LEAVED, or FALSE WINTERGREEN; INDIAN or CANKER LETTUCE (Pyrola rolundifolia) Wintergreen family

Flowers - Very fragrant, white, in a spike; 6 to 20, nodding from an erect, bracted scape 6 to 20 in. high. Calyx 5-parted corolla, over 1/2 in. across, of 5 concave, obtuse petals 10 stamens, protruding pistil, style curved, stigma 5-lobed. Leaves: All spreading from the base by margined petioles; shining leathery green, round or broadly oval, obtuse, 1 1/2 to 3 in. long, persistent through the winter.

Preferred Habitat - Open woods.

Flowering Season - June-July.

Distribution - Nova Scotia to Georgia, west to Ohio and Minnesota.

Deliciously fragrant little flowers, nodding from an erect, slender stalk, when seen at a distance are often mistaken for lilies-of-the-valley growing wild. But closer inspection of the rounded, pearlike leaves in a cl.u.s.ter from the running root, and the concave, not bell-shaped, white, waxen blossoms, with the pistil protruding and curved, indicate the commonest of the pyrolas. Some of its kin dwell in bogs and wet places, but this plant and the shin-leaf carpet drier woodland where dwarf cornels, partridge vines, pipsissewa, and goldthread weave their charming patterns too. Certain of the lovely pyrola clan, whose blossoms range from greenish white, flesh-color, and pink to deep purplish rose, have so many features in common they were once counted mere varieties of this round-leaved wintergreen - an easygoing cla.s.sification broken up by later-day systematists, who now rank the varieties as distinct species. It will be noticed that all these flowers have their anthers erect in the bud but reversed at flowering time, each of the two sacs opening by a pore which, in reality, is at the base of the sac, though by reversion it appears to be at the top. To these pores small bees and flies fasten their short lips to feed on pollen, some of which will be necessarily .jarred out on them as they struggle for a foothold on the stamens, and will be carried by them to another flower's protruding stigma, which impedes their entrance purposely to receive the imported pollen.

By reason of the old custom of clapping on a so-called "shinplaster" to every bruise, regardless of its location on the human body, a lovely little plant, whose leaves were once counted a first aid to the injured, still suffers instead under an unlovely name. The SHIN-LEAF (P. elliptica) sends up a naked flower-stalk, scaly at the base, often with a bract midway, and bearing at the top from seven to fifteen very fragrant, nodding, waxen, greenish-white blossoms, similar to the round-leaved wintergreen's. But on the thinner, dull, dark-green, upright leaves, with slight wavy indentations, scarcely to be called teeth, on the margins, their shorter leaf-stalks often reddish, one chiefly depends to name this common plant. It is usually found, in company with a few or many of its fellows, in rich woodlands so far west as the Rocky Mountains, blooming from June to August, according to the climate of its wide range.

When the little SERRATED or ONE-SIDED WINTERGREEN (P. secunda) first sends up its slender raceme in June or July, it is erect but presently the small, greenish-white flowers, opening irregularly along one side, appear to weigh it downward into a curve. Usually several bracted scapes rise from a running, branched rootstock, to a height of from three to (rarely) ten inches above a cl.u.s.ter of basal evergreen leaves. These latter are rather thin, oval, slightly pointed, wavy or slightly saw-edged, the midrib prominent above and below. A peculiarity of the flowers is, that their petals are partially welded together into little bells, with the clapper (alias the straight green pistil) protruding, and the stamens united around its base. After the blossoms have been fertilized, the tiny, round, five-scalloped seed capsules, with the pistil still protruding, remain in evidence for months, as is usual in the pyrola clan.

Small as the plant is, it has managed to distribute itself over Europe, Asia, and the woods and thickets of our own land from Labrador to Alaska, southward to California, Mexico, and the District of Columbia.

Another little globe-trotter, so insignificant in size that one is apt to overlook it until its surprisingly large blossom appears in June or July, is the ONE-FLOWERED WINTERGREEN (Moneses uniflora), found in cool northern woods, especially about the roots of pines, in such yielding soil as will enable its long stem to run just below the surface. ONE-FLOWERED PYROLA, it is often called, although it belongs to a genus all its own. A boldly curved stalk, like a miniature Bo-peep crook, enables the solitary white or pink widely open flower to droop from the tip, thus protecting its precious contents from rain, and from crawling pilferers, to whom a pendent blossom is as inaccessible as a hanging bird's nest is to snakes. This five-petalled waxen flower, half an inch across or over, with its ten white, yellow-tipped stamens, and green, club-shaped pistil projecting from a conspicuous round ovary, never nods more than six inches above the ground, often at only half that height. When there is no longer need for the stalk to crook, that is to say, after the flower has begun to fruit, it gradually straightens itself out so that the little seed capsule, with the style and its five-lobed stigma still persistent, is held erect. The thin, rounded, finely notched leaves, measuring barely an inch in length, are cl.u.s.tered in whorls next the ground. Whether one comes upon colonies of this gregarious little plant, or upon a lonely straggler, the "single delight" (moneses), as Dr. Gray called the solitary flower, is one of the joys of a tramp through the summer woods.

INDIAN PIPE; ICE-PLANT; GHOST-FLOWER; CORPSE-PLANT (Monotropa uniflora) Indian-pipe family

Flowers - Solitary, smooth, waxy, white (rarely pink), oblong-bell shaped, nodding from the tip of a fleshy, white, scaly scape 4 to 10 in. tall. Calyx of 2 to 4 early-falling white sepals; 4 or 5 oblong, scale-like petals; 8 or 10 tawny, hairy stamens; a 5-celled, egg-shaped ovary, narrowed into the short, thick style. Leaves: None. Roots: A ma.s.s of brittle fibers, from which usually a cl.u.s.ter of several white scapes arises. Fruit: A 5-valved, many-seeded, erect capsule.

Preferred Habitat - Heavily shaded, moist, rich woods, especially under oak and pine trees.

Flowering Season - June-August.

Distribution - Almost throughout temperate North America.

Colorless in every part, waxy, cold, and clammy, Indian pipes rise like a company of wraiths in the dim forest that suits them well. Ghoulish parasites, uncanny saprophytes, for their matted roots prey either on the juices of living plants or on the decaying matter of dead ones, how weirdly beautiful and decorative, they are! The strange plant grows also in j.a.pan, and one can readily imagine how fascinated the native artists must be by its chaste charms.

Yet to one who can read the faces of flowers, as it were, it stands a branded sinner. Doubtless its ancestors were industrious, honest creatures, seeking their food in the soil, and digesting it with the help of leaves filled with good green matter (chlorophyll) on which virtuous vegetable life depends; but some ancestral knave elected to live by piracy, to drain the already digested food of its neighbors; so the Indian pipe gradually lost the use of parts for which it had need no longer, until we find it today without color and its leaves degenerated into mere scaly bracts. Nature has manifold ways of ill.u.s.trating the parable of the ten pieces of money. Spiritual law is natural law: "From him that hath not, even that he hath shall be taken away." Among plants as among souls, there are all degrees of backsliders. The foxglove, which is guilty of only sly, petty larceny, wears not the equivalent of the striped suit and the shaved head; nor does the mistletoe, which steals crude food from the tree, but still digests it itself, and is therefore only a dingy yellowish green. Such plants, however, as the broomrape, pinesap, beechdrops, the Indian pipe, and the dodder - which marks the lowest stage of degradation of them all - appear among their race branded with the mark of crime as surely as was Cain.

No wonder this degenerate hangs its head; no wonder it grows black with shame on being picked, as if its wickedness were only just then discovered! To think that a plant related on one side to many of the loveliest flowers in Nature's garden- - the azaleas, laurels, rhododendrons, and the bonny heather - and on the other side to the modest but no less charming wintergreen tribe, should have fallen from grace to such a depth! Its scientific name, meaning a flower once turned, describes it during only a part of its career. When the minute, innumerable seeds begin to form, it proudly raises its head erect, as if conscious that it had performed the one righteous act of its life.

LABRADOR TEA (Ledum Groenlandic.u.m; L. latifolium of Gray) Heath family

Flowers - White, 5-parted, 1/2 in. across or less, numerous, borne in terminal, umbellate cl.u.s.ters rising from scaly, sticky bud-bracts. Stem: A compact shrub 1 to 4 ft. high, resinous, the twigs woolly-hairy. Leaves: Alternate, thick, evergreen, oblong, obtuse, small, dull above, rusty-woolly beneath, the margins curled.

Preferred Habitat - Swamps, bogs, wet mountain woods. Flowering Season - May-June.

Distribution - Greenland to Pennsylvania, west to Wisconsin.

Whoever has used the homeopathic lotion distilled from the leaves of Ledum pal.u.s.tre, a similar species found at the far North, knows the tea-like fragrance given forth by the leaves of this common shrub when crushed in a warm hand. But because the homeopathists claim that like is cured by like, are we to a.s.sume that these little bushes, both of which afford a soothing lotion, also irritate and poison? It may be; for they are next of kin to the azaleas, laurels, and rhododendrons, known to be injurious since Xenophon's day. At the end of May, when the Labrador tea is white with abundant flower cl.u.s.ters, one cannot but wonder why so desirable an acquisition is never seen in men's gardens here among its relatives. Over a hundred years ago the dense, compact little shrub was taken to England to adorn sunny bog gardens on fine estates. Doubtless the leaves have woolly mats underneath for the reason given in reference to the Steeple-bush.

WILD ROSEMARY; MARCH HOLY ROSE; WATER ANDROMEDA; MOORWORT (Andromeda Polifolia) Heath family

Flowers - White or pink-tinted, small, round, tubular, 5-toothed at the tip; drooping from curved footstalks in few-flowered terminal umbels. Calyx deeply 5-parted; 10 bearded stamens; style like a column. Stem: A sparingly branched, dwarf shrub, 6 in. to 3 ft. tall. Leaves: Linear to lance-shape, evergreen, dark and glossy above, with a prominent white bloom underneath, the margins curled.

Preferred Habitat - Cool bogs, wet places.

Flowering Season - May-June.

Distribution - Pennsylvania and Michigan, far northward.

Only a delightfully imaginative optimist like Linnaeus could feel the enthusiasm he expended on this dwarf shrub, with its little, white, heath-like flowers, which most of us consider rather insignificant, if the truth be told. But then the blossoms he found in Lapland must have been much pinker than any seen in American swamps, since they reminded him of "a fine female complexion."

"This plant is always fixed on some little turfy hillock in the midst of the swamps," he wrote, "just as Andromeda herself was chained to a rock in the sea, which bathed her feet as the fresh water does the roots of this plant.... As the distressed virgin cast down her blushing face through excessive affliction, so does this rosy-colored flower hang its head, growing paler and paler till it withers away." Under the old go-as-you-please method of applying scientific names, most of this shrub's relatives shared with it the name of the fair maid whom Perseus rescued from the dragons.

The beautiful, low-growing STAGGERBUSH (Pieris Mariana) has its small, cylindric, five-parted, white or pink-tinted flowers cl.u.s.tered at intervals along one side of the upright, nearly leafless, smooth, dark-dotted branches of the preceding year.

When the glossy oval leaves, black dotted beneath, are freshly put forth in early summer - for the shrub is not strictly an evergreen, however late the old leaves may cling - it is said that stupid sheep and calves, which find them irresistibly attractive, stagger about from their poisonous effect just as they do after feeding on this shrub's relative the Lambkill (q.v.). In sandy soil from southern New England to Florida, rarely far inland, one finds the staggerbush in bloom from May to July. On the dry plains of Long Island, where it is common indeed, it appears a not unworthy relative of the FETTERBUSH (Pieris fioribunda), that exquisite little evergreen with quant.i.ties of small white urns drooping along its twigs, which nurserymen acquire from the mountains of our Southern States to adorn garden shrubbery at home and abroad. Mr. William Robinson, in his delightful book, "The English Flower Garden" (a book, by the way, that Rudyard Kipling reads as the Puritan read his Bible), counts this fetterbush among the "indispensables."

Much taller than the preceding dwarfs is the COMMON PRIVET ANDROMEDA found in swamps and low ground from New England to the Gulf and in the southwest (Xolisma ligustrina). Whoever has seen the privet almost universally grown in hedges is familiar with the general aspect of this much-branched shrub. Most farmers'

boys know the Andromeda's mock May-apple, a hollow, stringy growth of insect origin, which they are not likely to confuse with the pulpy, juicy apple found on the closely related azaleas (q.v.). Abundant terminal spike-like or branched cl.u.s.ters of white, globular, four or five parted flowers in close array, attract quant.i.ties of bees from the end of May to early July, notwithstanding each individual flower measures barely an eighth of an inch across. We have seen the fine hair-triggers which other members of this same family, the beautiful pink laurels (q.v.), have set to be sprung by an incoming visitor. Now this Andromeda, and similarly several of its immediate kin, have a quite different, but equally effective, method of throwing pollen on its friends who come to call. When one of the little banded bees clings, as he must, to the tiny flower scarce half his size, thrusting his tongue obliquely through the globe's narrow opening to reach the nectar, suddenly a shower of pollen is inhospitably thrown upon him from within. In probing between the ring of anthers (that are pressed against the style by the S-shaped curvature of the filaments so as to retain the pollen), he needs must displace some of them and release the vitalizing dust through the large terminal pores in the anther-sacs. Is he discouraged by such rough treatment? Not at all. Off he flies to another Andromeda blossom, and leaves some of the dust with which he is powdered on the sticky stigma that impedes his entrance, before precipitating a fresh shower as he sips another reward.

The straight column-like pistil, stigmatic on its tip only, allows the flower's own pollen to slide harmlessly down its sides. How exquisite are the most minute adjustments of floral mechanism! Is it possible for one to remain an agnostic after the evidences even the flowers show us of infinite wisdom and love?