Wild Flowers Part 46

After the flowering time come the vivid green crowns of leaves that at least please the eye. Lizards make their home beneath them, and many a yellowthroat, taking advantage of the plant's foul odor, gladly puts up with it herself and builds her nest in the hollow of the cabbage as a protection for her eggs and young from four-footed enemies. Cattle let the plant alone because of the stinging, acrid juices secreted by it, although such tender, fresh, bright foliage must be especially tempting, like the h.e.l.lebore's, after a dry winter diet. Sometimes tiny insects are found drowned in the wells of rain water that acc.u.mulate at the base of the grooved leafstalks.

RED, WOOD, FLAME, or PHILADELPHIA LILY (Lilium Philadelphic.u.m) Lily family

Flowers - Erect, tawny or red-tinted outside; vermilion, or sometimes reddish orange, and spotted with madder brown within; 1 to 5, on separate peduncles, borne at the summit. Perianth of 6 distinct, spreading, spatulate segments, each narrowed into a claw, and with a nectar groove at its base; 6 stamens; 1 style, the club-shaped stigma 3-lobed. Stem: 1 to 3 ft. tall, from a bulb composed of narrow, jointed, fleshy scales. Leaves: In whorls of 3's to 8's, lance-shaped, seated at intervals on the stem.

Preferred Habitat - Dry woods, sandy soil, borders, and thickets.

Flowering Season - June-July.

Distribution - Northern border of United States, westward to Ontario, south to the Carolinas and West Virginia.

Erect, as if conscious of its striking beauty, this vivid lily lifts a chalice that suggests a trap for catching sunbeams from fiery old Sol. Defiant of his scorching rays in its dry habitat, it neither nods nor droops even during prolonged drought; and vet many people confuse it with the gracefully pendent, swaying bells of the yellow Canada lily, which will grow in a swamp rather than forego moisture. Li, the Celtic for white, from which the family derived its name, makes this bright-hued flower blush to own it.

Seedmen, who export quant.i.ties of our superb native lilies to Europe, supply bulbs so cheap that no one should wait four years for flowers from seed, or go without their splendor in our over-conventional gardens. Why this early lily is radiantly colored and speckled is told in the description of the Canada lily (q.v.).

The WESTERN RED LILY (L. umbellatum), that takes the place of the Philadelphia species from Ohio, Minnesota, and the Northwest Territory, southward to Missouri, Arkansas, and Colorado, lifts similar but smaller red, orange, or yellow flowers on a more slender stem, two feet high or less, set with narrow, linear, alternate leaves, or perhaps the upper ones in whorls. It blooms in June or July, in dry soil, preferably in open, sandy situations.

LARGE CORAL-ROOT (Corallorhiza multiflora) Orchid family

Flowers - Dull brownish purple, about 1/2 in. high; 10 to 30 borne in a raceme 2 to 8 in. long. Petals about the length of sepals, and somewhat united at the base; spur yellowish, the oval lip white, spotted and lined with purplish; 3-lobed, wavy edged.

Scape, 8 to 20 in. tall, colored, furnished with several flat scales. Leaves: None. Root: A branching, coral-like ma.s.s.

Preferred Habitat - Dry woods.

Flowering Season - July-September.

Distribution - Nova Scotia, westward to British Columbia; south to Florida, Missouri, and California.

To the majority of people the very word orchid suggests a millionaire's hothouse, or some fashionable florist's show window, where tropical air plants send forth gorgeous blossoms, exquisite in color, marvelous in form; so that when this insignificant little stalk pokes its way through the soil at midsummer and produces some dull flowers of indefinite shades and no leaves at all to help make them attractive, one feels that the coral-root is a very poor relation of theirs indeed. The prettily marked lower lip, at once a platform and nectar guide to the insect alighting on it, is all that suggests ambition worthy of an orchid.

If poverty of men and nations can be traced to certain radical causes by the social economist, just as surely can the botanist account for loss of leaves - riches - by closely examining the poverty-stricken plant. Every phenomenon has its explanation. A glance at the extraordinary formation under ground reveals the fact that the coral-roots, although related to the most aristocratic and highly organized plants in existence, have stooped to become ghoulish saprophytes. An honest herb abounds in good green coloring matter (chlorophyll), that serves as a light screen to the cellular juices of leaf and stem. It also forms part of its digestive apparatus, aiding a plant in the manufacture of its own food out of the soil, water, and gases; whereas a plant that lives by piracy - a parasite - or a saprophyte, that sucks up the already a.s.similated products of another's decay, loses its useless chlorophyll as surely as if it had been kept in a cellar. In time its equally useless leaves dwindle to bracts, or disappear. Nature wastes no energy. Fungi, for example, are both parasites and saprophytes; and so when plants far higher up in the evolutionary scale than they lose leaves and green color too, we may know they are degenerates belonging to that disreputable gang of branded sinners which includes the Indian-pipe, broom-rape, dodder, pine-sap, and beech-drops. Others, like the gerardias and foxgloves, may even now be detected on the brink of a fall from grace.

The EARLY CORAL-ROOT (C. Corallorhiza; C. innata of Gray) - a similar but smaller species, whose loose spike of dull purplish flowers likewise terminates a scaly purplish or yellowish scape arising from a ma.s.s of short, thick, whitish, fleshy, blunt fibers, may be found in the moist woods blooming in May or June. It has a more northerly range, however, extending from the mountains of Georgia, it is true, but chiefly from the northern boundary of the United States, from New England westward to the State of Washington, and northward to Nova Scotia and Alaska.

ADAM AND EVE; PUTTY-ROOT (Aplectrum spicatum; A. hyemale of Gray)) Orchid family

Flowers - Dingy yellowish brown and purplish, about 1 in. long, each on a short pedicel, in a few-flowered, loose, bracted raceme 2 to 4 in. long. No spur; sepals and petals similar, small and narrow, the lip wavy-edged. Scape: to 2 ft. high, smooth, with about 3 sheathing scales. Leaf: Solitary, rising from the corm in autumn, elliptic, broad, plaited-nerved, 4 to 6 in. long. Root: A corm usually attached to one of the preceding season.

Preferred Habitat - Moist woods or swamps.

Flowering Season - May-June.

Distribution - Georgia, Missouri, and California northward, into British Possessions.

More curious than beautiful is this small orchid whose dingy flowers of indefinite color and without spurs interest us far less than the two corms barely hidden below ground. These singular solid bulbs, about an inch thick, are connected by a slender stalk, suggesting to the imaginative person who named the plant our first parents standing hand in hand in the Garden of Eden.

But usually several old corms - not always two, by any means - remain attached to the nearest one, a bulb being produced each year until Cain and Abel often join Adam and Eve to make up quite a family group. A strong, glutinous matter within the corms has been used as a cement, hence the plant's other popular name. From the newest bulb added, a solitary large leaf arises in late summer or autumn, to remain all winter. The flower stalk comes up at one side of it the following spring. Meantime the old corms retain their life, apparently to help nourish the young one still joined to them, while its system is taxed with flowering.

WILD GINGER; CANADA SNAKEROOT; ASARABACCA (Asarum Canadense) Birthwort family

Flower - Solitary, dull purplish brown, creamy white within, about 1 in. broad when expanded, borne on a short peduncle close to or upon the ground. Calyx cup-shaped, deeply cleft, its 3 acutely pointed lobes spreading, curved; corolla wanting; 12 short, stout stamens inserted on ovary; the thick style 6-lobed, its stigmas radiating on the lobes. Leaves: A single pair, dark green, reniform, 4 to 7 in. broad, on downy petioles 6 to 12 in.

high, from a creeping, thick, aromatic, pungent rootstock.

Preferred Habitat - Rich, moist woods; hillsides.

Flowering Season - March-May.

Distribution - North Carolina, Missouri, and Kansas, northward, to New Brunswick and Manitoba.

Like the wicked servant who buried the one talent entrusted to his care, the wild ginger hides its solitary flower if not actually under the dry leaves that clothe the ground in the still leafless woodlands, then not far above them. Why? When most plants flaunt their showy blossoms aloft, where they may be seen of all, why should this one bear only one dull, firm cup, inconspicuous in color as in situation? In early spring - and it is one of the earliest flowers - gnats and small flies are warming into active life from the maggots that have lain under dead leaves and the bark of decaying logs all winter. To such guests a flower need offer few attractions to secure them in swarms. Bright, beautiful colors, sweet fragrance, luscious nectar, with which the highly specialized bees, b.u.t.terflies, and moths are wooed, would all be lost on them, lacking as they do esthetic taste. For flies, a snug shelter from cold spring winds such as Jack-in-the-pulpit, the marsh calla, the pitcher-plant, or the skunk cabbage offers; sometimes a fetid odor like the latter's, or dull purplish red or brownish color resembling stale meat, which the purple trillium likewise wears as an additional attraction, are necessary when certain carrion flies must be catered to; and, above all, an abundance of pollen for food - with any or all of these seductions a flower dependent on flies has nothing to fear from neglect. Therefore the wild ginger does not even attempt to fertilize itself. Within the cozy cup one can usually find a contented fly seeking shelter or food. Close to the ground it is warm and less windy. When the cup first opens, only the stigmas are mature and sticky to receive any pollen the visitors may bring in on their bodies from other asylums where they have been hiding. These stigmas presently withering, up rise the twelve stamens beside them to dust with pollen the flies coming in search of it. Only one flower from a root compels cross-fertilizing between flowers of distinct plants - a means to insure the most vigorous seed, as Darwin proved. Evidently the ginger is striving to attain some day the ambitious mechanism for temporarily imprisoning its guests that its cousin the Dutchman's pipe has perfected. After fertilization the cup nods, inverted, and the leathery capsule following it bursts irregularly, discharging many seeds.

No ruminant will touch the leaves, owing to their bitter juices, nor will a grub or nibbling rodent molest the root, which bites like ginger; nevertheless credulous mankind once utilized the plant as a tonic medicine.

DUTCHMAN'S PIPE; PIPE-VINE (Aristolochia macrophylla; A. Sipho of Gray))

Flower - An inflated, curved, yellowish-green, veiny tube (calyx), pipe-shaped, except that it abruptly broadens beyond the contracted throat into 3 flat, spreading, dark purplish or reddish-brown lobes; pipe 1 to 1 1/2 in. long, borne on a long, drooping peduncle, either solitary or 2 or 3 together, from the bracted leaf-axils; 6 anthers, without filaments, in united pairs under the 3 lobes of the short, thick stigma. Stem: A very long, twining vine, the branches smooth and green. Leaves: Thin, reniform to heart-shaped, slender petioled, downy underneath when young; 6 to 15 in. broad when mature. Fruit: An oblong, cylindric capsule, containing quant.i.ties of seeds within its six sections.

Preferred Habitat - Rich, moist woods.

Flowering Season - May-June.

Distribution - Pennsylvania, westward to Minnesota, south to Georgia and Kansas. Escaped from cultivation further north.

After learning why the pitcher plant, Jack-in-the-pulpit, and skunk cabbage are colored and shaped as they are, no one will be surprised on opening this curious flower to find numbers of little flies within the pipe. Certain relatives of this vine produce flowers that are not only colored like livid, putrid meat around the entrance, but also emit a fetid odor to attract carrion flies especially. (See purple trillium.)

In May, when the pipe-vine blooms, gauzy-winged small flies and gnats gladly seek food and shelter from the wind within so attractive an asylum as the curving tube offers. They enter easily enough through the narrow throat, around which fine hairs point downward - an entrance resembling an eel trap's. Any pollen they may bring in on their bodies now rubs off on the sticky stigma lobes, already matured at the bottom of a newly opened flower, in which they buzz, crawl, slide, and slip, seeking an avenue of escape. None presents itself: they are imprisoned. The hairs at the entrance, approached from within, form an impenetrable stockade. Must the poor little creatures perish? Is the flower heartless enough to murder its benefactors, on which the continuance of its species depends? By no means is it so shortsighted! A few tiny drops of nectar exuding from the center table prevent the visitors from starving. Presently the fertilized stigmas wither, and when they have safely escaped the danger of self-fertilization, the pollen hidden under their lobes ripens and dusts afresh the little flies so impatiently awaiting the feast. Now, and not till now, it is to the advantage of the species that the prisoners be released, that they may carry the vitalizing dust to stigmas waiting for it in younger flowers.

Accordingly, the slippery pipe begins to shrivel, thus offering a foothold; the once stiff hairs that guarded its exit grow limp, and the happy gnats, after a generous entertainment and snug protection, escape uninjured, and by no means unwilling to repeat the experience. Evidently the wild ginger, belonging to a genus next of kin, is striving to perfect a similar prison. In the language of the street, the ginger flower does not yet "work"

its.visitors "for all they are worth."

Later, when we see the exquisite dark, velvety, blue-green, pipe-vine, swallow-tail b.u.t.terfly (Papilio philenor) hovering about verandas or woodland bowers that are shaded with the pipe-vine's large leaves, we may know she is there only to lay eggs that her caterpillar descendants may find themselves on their favorite food store.

The VIRGINIA SNAKEROOT or SERPENTARY (A. serpentaria), found in dry woods, chiefly in the Middle States and South, although its range extends northward to Connecticut, New York, and Michigan, is the species whose aromatic root is used in medicine. It is a low-growing herb, not a vine; its heart-shaped leaves, which are narrow and tapering to a point, are green on both sides, and the curious, greenish, S-shaped flower, which grows alone at the tip of a scaly footstalk from the root, appears in June or July.

Sometimes the flowers are cleistogamous (see violet wood-sorrel).

FIRE PINK; VIRGINIA CATCHFLY (Silene Virginica) Pink family

Flowers - Scarlet or crimson, 1 1/2 in. broad or less, a few on slender pedicels from the upper leaf-axils. Calyx sticky, tubular, bell-shaped, 5-cleft, enlarged in fruit; corolla of 5 wide-spread, narrow, notched petals, sometimes deeply 2-cleft; 10 stamens; 3 styles. Stem: 1 to 2 ft. high; erect, slender, sticky.

Leaves: Thin, spatulate, 3 to 5 in. long; or upper ones oblong to lance-shaped.

Preferred Habitat - Dry, open woodland.

Flowering Season - May-September.

Distribution - Southern New Jersey to Minnesota, south to Georgia and Missouri.

The rich, glowing scarlet of these pinks that fleck the Southern woodland as with fire, will light up our Northern rock gardens too, if we but sow the seed under gla.s.s in earliest spring, and set out the young plants in well-drained, open ground in May.

Division of old perennial roots causes the plants to sulk; dampness destroys them.

To the brilliant blossoms b.u.t.terflies chiefly come to sip (see wild pink), and an occasional hummingbird, fascinated by the color that seems ever irresistible to him, hovers above them on whirring wings. Hapless ants, starting to crawl up the stem, become more and more discouraged by its stickiness, and if they persevere in their attempts to steal from the b.u.t.terfly's legitimate preserves, death overtakes their erring feet as speedily as if they ventured on sticky fly paper. How humane is the way to protect flowers from crawling thieves that has been adopted by the high-bush cranberry and the partridge pea (q.v.), among other plants! These provide a free lunch of sweets in the glands of their leaves to satisfy pilferers, which then seek no farther, leaving the flowers to winged insects that are at once despoilers and benefactors.

WILD COLUMBINE (Aquilegia Canadensis) Crowfoot family

Flower - Red outside, yellow within, irregular, 1 to 2 in. long, solitary, nodding from a curved footstalk from the upper leaf-axils. Petals 5, funnel-shaped, but quickly narrowing into long, erect, very slender hollow spurs, rounded at the tip and united below by the 5 spreading red sepals, between which the straight spurs ascend; numerous stamens and 5 pistils projecting.

Stem: 1 to 2 ft. high; branching, soft-hairy or smooth. Leaves: More or less divided, the lobes with rounded teeth; large lower compound leaves on long petioles. Fruit: An erect pod, each of the 5 divisions tipped with a long, sharp beak.

Preferred Habitat - Rocky places, rich woodland.

Flowering Season - April-July.

Distribution - Nova Scotia to the Northwest Territory; southward to the Gulf States. Rocky Mountains.

Although under cultivation the columbine nearly doubles its size, it never has the elfin charm in a conventional garden that it possesses wild in Nature's. Dancing in red and yellow petticoats to the rhythm of the breeze, along the ledge of overhanging rocks, it coquettes with some Punchinello as if daring him to reach her at his peril. Who is he? Let us sit a while on the rocky ledge and watch for her lovers.

Presently a big muscular b.u.mblebee booms along. Owing to his great strength, an inverted, pendent blossom, from which he must cling upside down, has no more terrors for him than a trapeze for the trained acrobat. His long tongue - if he is one of the largest of our sixty-two species of Bombus - can suck almost any flower unless it is especially adapted to night-flying sphinx moths, but can he drain this? He is the truest benefactor of the European columbine (q.v.), whose spurs suggested the talons of an eagle (aquila) to imaginative Linnaeus when he gave this group of plants its generic name. Smaller b.u.mblebees, unable through the shortness of their tongues to feast in a legitimate manner, may be detected nipping holes in the tips of all columbines, where the nectar is secreted, just as they do in larkspurs, Dutchman's breeches, squirrel corn, b.u.t.ter and eggs, and other flowers whose deeply hidden nectaries make dining too difficult for the little rogues. Fragile b.u.t.terflies, absolutely dependent on nectar, hover near our showy wild columbine with its five tempting horns of plenty, but sail away again, knowing as they do that their weak legs are not calculated to stand the strain of an inverted position from a pendent flower, nor are their tongues adapted to slender tubes unless these may be entered from above. The tongues of both b.u.t.terflies and moths bend readily only when directed beneath their bodies. It will be noticed that our columbine's funnel-shaped tubes contract just below the point where the nectar is secreted - doubtless to protect it from small bees.