Wild Flowers Worth Knowing Part 20

_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."

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. canadensis)_, 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.

Even more abundant is the Silky Cornel, Kinnikinnick, or Swamp Dogwood (_C. Amomum_) 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.

HEATH FAMILY (_Ericaceae_)

Pipsissewa; Prince's Pine

_Chimaphila umbellata_

_Flowers_--Flesh-colored, or pinkish, fragrant, waxy, usually with deep pink ring around centre, and the anthers colored; about 1/2 in. across; several flowers in loose, terminal cl.u.s.ter. Calyx 5-cleft; corolla of 5 concave, rounded, spreading petals; 10 stamens, the filaments hairy; style short, conical, with a round stigma. _Stem:_ Trailing far along ground, creeping, or partly subterranean, sending up sterile and flowering branches 3 to 10 in. high. _Leaves:_ Opposite or in whorls, evergreen, bright, shining, spatulate to lance-shaped, sharply saw-edged.

_Preferred Habitat_--Dry woods, sandy leaf mould.

_Flowering Season_--June-August.

_Distribution_--British Possessions and the United States north of Georgia from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Also Mexico, Europe, and Asia.

A lover of winter indeed (_cheima_ = winter and _phileo_ = to love) is the Prince's Pine, whose beautiful dark leaves keep their color and gloss in spite of snow and intense cold. A few yards of the trailing stem, easily ripped from the light soil of its woodland home, make a charming indoor decoration, especially when the little brown seed-cases remain. Few flowers are more suggestive of the woods than these shy, dainty, deliciously fragrant little blossoms.

The Spotted Wintergreen, or Pipsissewa (_C. maculata_), closely resembles the Prince's Pine, except that its slightly larger white or pinkish flowers lack the deep pink ring; and the lance-shaped leaves, with rather distant saw-teeth, are beautifully mottled with white along the veins. When we see short-lipped bees and flies about these flowers, we may be sure their pollen-covered mouths come in contact with the moist stigma on the summit of the little top-shaped style, and so effect cross-fertilization.

Indian Pipe; Ice-plant; Ghost-flower; Corpse-plant

_Monotropa uniflora_

_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 fibres, 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 has need no longer, until we find it to-day without color and its leaves degenerated into mere scaly bracts. Nature had 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 broom-rape, Pine Sap, beech-drops, 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.

Pine Sap; False Beech-drops; Yellow Bird's-nest

_Monotropa Hypopitis_

_Flowers_--Tawny, yellow, ecru, brownish pink, reddish, or bright crimson, fragrant, about 1/2 in. long; oblong bell-shaped; borne in a one-sided, terminal, slightly drooping raceme, becoming erect after maturity. _Scapes:_ Cl.u.s.tered from a dense ma.s.s of fleshy, fibrous roots; 4 to 12 in. tall, scaly bracted, the bractlets resembling the sepals. _Leaves:_ None.

_Preferred Habitat_--Dry woods, especially under fir, beech, and oak trees.

_Flowering Season_--June-October.

_Distribution_--Florida and Arizona, far northward into British Possessions. Europe and Asia.

Branded a sinner, through its loss of leaves and honest green coloring matter (chlorophyll), the Pine Sap stands among the disreputable gang of thieves that includes its next of kin the Indian Pipe, the broom-rape, dodder, coral-root, and beech-drops. Degenerates like these, although members of highly respectable, industrious, virtuous families, would appear to be as low in the vegetable kingdom as any fungus, were it not for the flowers they still bear. Petty larceny, no greater than the foxglove's at first, then greater and greater thefts, finally lead to ruin, until the pine-sap parasite either sucks its food from the roots of the trees under which it takes up its abode, or absorbs, like a ghoulish saprophyte, the products of vegetable decay. A plant that does not manufacture its own dinner has no need of chlorophyll and leaves, for a.s.similation of crude food can take place only in those cells which contain the vital green. This substance, universally found in plants that grub in the soil and literally sweat for their daily bread, acts also as a moderator of respiration by its absorptive influence on light, and hence allows the elimination of carbon dioxide to go on in the cells which contain it. Fungi and these degenerates which lack chlorophyll usually grow in dark, shady woods.

Wild Honeysuckle; Pink, Purple, or Wild Azalea; Pinxter-flower

_Rhododendron nudiflorum_

_Flowers--_Crimson pink, purplish or rose pink, to nearly white, 1-1/2 to 2 in. across, faintly fragrant, cl.u.s.tered, opening before or with the leaves, and developed from cone-like, scaly brown buds. Calyx minute, 5-parted; corolla funnel-shaped, the tube narrow, hairy, with 5 regular, spreading lobes; 5 long red stamens; 1 pistil, declined, protruding.

_Stem:_ Shrubby, usually simple below, but branching above, 2 to 6 ft.

high. _Leaves:_ Usually cl.u.s.tered, deciduous, oblong, acute at both ends, hairy on midrib.

_Preferred Habitat_--Moist, rocky woods, or dry woods and thickets.

_Flowering Season_--April-May.

_Distribution_--Maine to Illinois, and southward to the Gulf.

Woods and hillsides are glowing with fragrant, rosy ma.s.ses of this lovely azalea, the Pinxter-bloem or Whitsunday flower of the Dutch colonists, long before the seventh Sunday after Easter. Among our earliest exports, this hardy shrub, the Swamp Azalea, and the superb flame-colored species of the Alleghanies, were sent early in the eighteenth century to the old country, and there crossed with _A.

Pontica_ of southern Europe by the Belgian horticulturists, to whom we owe the Ghent azaleas, the final triumphs of the hybridizer, that glorify the shrubberies on our own lawns to-day. The azalea became the national flower of Flanders. These hardy species lose their leaves in winter, whereas the hothouse varieties of _A. Indica_, a native of China and j.a.pan, have thickish leaves, almost if not quite evergreen. A few of the latter stand our northern winters, especially the pure white variety now quite commonly planted in cemetery lots. In that delightfully enthusiastic little book, "The Garden's Story," Mr. Ellw.a.n.ger says of the Ghent Azalea: "In it I find a charm presented by no other flower.

Its soft tints of buff, sulphur, and primrose; its dazzling shades of apricot, salmon, orange, and vermilion are always a fresh revelation of color. They have no parallel among flowers, and exist only in opals, sunset skies, and the flush of autumn woods." Certainly American horticulturists were not clever in allowing the industry of raising these plants from our native stock to thrive on foreign soil.

From Maine to Florida and westward to Texas, chiefly near the coast, in low, wet places only need we look for the Swamp Pink or Honeysuckle, White or Clammy Azalea (_Rhododendron viscosum_), a more hairy species than the Pinxter-flower, with a very sticky, glandular corolla tube, and deliciously fragrant blossoms, by no means invariably white. John Burroughs is not the only one who has pa.s.sed "several patches of swamp honeysuckles, red with blossoms"

("Wake-Robin"). But as this species does not bloom until June and July, when the sun quickly bleaches the delicate flowers, it is true we most frequently find them white, merely tinged with pink. The leaves are well developed before the blossoms appear.

American or Great Rhododendron; Great Laurel; Rose Tree, or Bay

_Rhododendron maximum_