Wild Flowers Worth Knowing Part 12

_Distribution_--Labrador to the Gulf of Mexico and westward. From Alaska to California. Europe and Asia.

Here is a bloodthirsty little miscreant that lives by reversing the natural order of higher forms of life preying upon lower ones, an anomaly in that the vegetable actually eats the animal. The dogbane, as we shall see, simply catches the flies that dare trespa.s.s upon the b.u.t.terflies' preserves, for excellent reasons of its own; the Silenes and phloxes, among others, spread their calices with a sticky gum that acts as limed twigs do to birds, in order to guard the nectar secreted for flying benefactors from pilfering ants; the honey bee being an imported, not a native, insect, and therefore not perfectly adapted to the milkweed, occasionally gets entrapped by it; the big b.u.mblebee is sometimes fatally imprisoned in the moccasin flower's gorgeous tomb--the punishment of insects that do not benefit the flowers is infinite in its variety. But the local Venus's flytrap (_Dionaea muscipula_), gathered only from the low savannas in North Carolina to entertain the owners of hothouses as it promptly closes the crushing trap at the end of its sensitive leaves over a hapless fly, and the common sundew that tinges the peat-bogs of three continents with its little reddish leaves, belong to a distinct cla.s.s of carnivorous plants which actually masticate their animal food, depending upon it for nourishment as men do upon cattle slaughtered in an abattoir. Darwin's luminous account of these two species alone, which occupies more than three hundred absorbingly interesting pages of his "Insectivorous Plants," should be read by every one interested in these freaks of nature.

When we go to some sunny cranberry bog to look for these sundews, nothing could be more innocent looking than the tiny plant, its nodding raceme of buds, usually with only a solitary little blossom (that opens only in the sunshine) at the top of the curve, its leaves glistening with what looks like dew, though the midsummer sun may be high in the heavens. A little fly or gnat, attracted by the bright jewels, alights on a leaf only to find that the clear drops, more sticky than honey, instantly glue his feet, that the pretty reddish hairs about him act like tentacles, reaching inward, to imprison him within their slowly closing embrace. Here is one of the horrors of the Inquisition operating in this land of liberty before our very eyes! Excited by the struggles of the victim, the sensitive hairs close only the faster, working on the same principle that a vine's tendrils do when they come in contact with a trellis. More of the sticky fluid pours upon the hapless fly, plastering over his legs and wings and the pores on his body through which he draws his breath. Slowly, surely, the leaf rolls inward, making a temporary stomach; the cruel hairs bind, the glue suffocates and holds him fast. Death alone releases him. And now the leaf's orgy begins: moistening the fly with a fresh peptic fluid, which helps in the a.s.similation, the plant proceeds to digest its food.

Curiously enough, chemical a.n.a.lysis proves that this sundew secrets a complex fluid corresponding almost exactly to the gastric juice in the stomach of animals.

Darwin, who fed these leaves with various articles, found that they could dissolve matter out of pollen, seeds, gra.s.s, etc.; yet without a human caterer, how could a leaf turn vegetarian? When a bit of any undesirable substance, such as chalk or wood, was placed on the hairs and excited them, they might embrace it temporarily; but as soon as the mistake was discovered, it would be dropped! He also poisoned the plants by administering acids, and gave them fatal attacks of indigestion by overfeeding them with bits of raw beef!

SAXIFRAGE FAMILY _(Saxifragaceae)_

Early Saxifrage

_Saxifraga virginiensis_

_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_ = I 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.

Foam-flower; False Miterwort; Cool wort; Nancy-over-the-Ground

_Tiarella cordifolia_

_Flowers_--White, small, feathery, borne in a close raceme at the top of a scape 6 to 12 in. high. Calyx white, 5-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.

Gra.s.s of Parna.s.sus

_Parna.s.sia caroliniana_

_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.

WITCH-HAZEL FAMILY _(Hamamelidaceae)_

Witch-hazel

_Hamamelis virginiana_

_Flowers_--Yellow, fringy, cl.u.s.tered in the axils of branches. Calyx 4-parted; 4 very narrow curving petals about 3/4 in. long; 4 short stamens, also 4 that are scale-like; 2 styles. _Stem_: A tall, crooked shrub. _Leaves_: Broadly oval, thick, wavy-toothed, mostly fallen at flowering time. _Fruit_: Woody capsules maturing the next season and remaining with flowers of the succeeding year (_Hama_ = together with; _mela_ = fruit).

The literature of Europe is filled with allusions to the witch-hazel, which, however, is quite distinct from our shrub. Swift wrote:

"They tell us something strange and odd About a certain magic rod That, bending down its top divines Where'er the soil has hidden mines; Where there are none, it stands erect Scorning to show the least respect."

A good story is told on Linnaeus in Baring-Gould's "Curious Myths of the Middle Ages": "When the great botanist was on one of his voyages, hearing his secretary highly extol the virtues of his divining-wand, he was willing to convince him of its insufficiency, and for that purpose concealed a purse of one hundred ducats under a ranunculus, which grew by itself in a meadow, and bid the secretary find it if he could. The wand discovered nothing, and Linnaeus's mark was soon trampled down by the company present, so that when he went to finish the experiment by fetching the gold himself, he was utterly at a loss where to find it. The man with the wand a.s.sisted him, and informed him that it could not lie in the way they were going, but quite the contrary; so they pursued the direction of the wand, and actually dug out the gold. Linnaeus said that another such experiment would be sufficient to make a proselyte of him."

Many a well has been dug even in this land of liberty where our witch-hazel indicated; but here its kindly magic is directed chiefly through the soothing extract distilled from its juices. Its yellow, thread-like blossoms are the latest to appear in the autumn woods.

ROSE FAMILY _(Rosaceae)_

Hardhack; Steeple Bush

_Spiraea tomentosa_

_Flowers_--Pink or magenta, rarely white, very small, in dense, pyramidal cl.u.s.ters. Calyx of 5 sepals; corolla of 5 rounded petals; stamens, 20 to 60; usually 5 pistils, downy. _Stem:_ 2 to 3 ft. high, erect, shrubby, simple, downy. _Leaves:_ Dark green above, covered with whitish woolly hairs beneath; oval, saw-edged, 1 to 2 in. long.

_Preferred Habitat_--Low, moist ground, roadside ditches, swamps.

_Flowering Season_--July-September.

_Distribution_--Nova Scotia westward, and southward to Georgia and Kansas.

An instant's comparison shows the steeple bush to be closely related to the fleecy, white meadow-sweet, often found growing near. The pink spires, which bloom from the top downward, have pale brown tips where the withered flowers are, toward the end of summer.