Wild Flowers Worth Knowing Part 24

CONVOLVULUS FAMILY _(Convolvulaceae)_

Hedge or Great Bindweed; Wild Morning-glory; Rutland Beauty; Bell-bind; Lady's Nightcap

_Convolvulus sepium_

_Flowers_--Light pink, with white stripes or all white, bell-shaped, about 2 in. long, twisted in the bud, solitary, on long peduncles from leaf axils. Calyx of 5 sepals, concealed by 2 large bracts at base.

Corolla 5-lobed, the 5 included stamens inserted on its tube; style with 2 oblong stigmas. _Stem:_ Smooth or hairy, 3 to 10 ft. long, twining or trailing over ground. _Leaves:_ Triangular or arrow-shaped, 2 to 5 in.

long, on slender petioles.

_Preferred Habitat_--Wayside hedges, thickets, fields, walls.

_Flowering Season_--June-September.

_Distribution_--Nova Scotia to North Carolina, westward to Nebraska.

Europe and Asia.

No one need be told that the pretty, bell-shaped pink and white flower on the vigorous vine clambering over stone walls and winding about the shrubbery of wayside thickets in a suffocating embrace is akin to the morning-glory of the garden trellis (_C. Major_). An exceedingly rapid climber, the twining stem often describes a complete circle in two hours, turning against the sun, or just contrary to the hands of a watch. Late in the season, when an abundance of seed has been set, the flower can well afford to keep open longer hours, also in rainy weather; but early in the summer, at least, it must attend to business only while the sun shines and its benefactors are flying. Usually it closes at sundown. On moonlight nights, however, the hospitable blossom keeps open for the benefit of certain moths.

From July until hard frost look for that exquisite little beetle, _Ca.s.sida aurichalcea_, like a drop of molten gold, clinging beneath the bindweed's leaves. The small perforations reveal his hiding places. "But you must be quick if you would capture him," says William Hamilton Gibson, "for he is off in a spangling streak of glitter. Nor is this golden sheen all the resource of the little insect; for in the s.p.a.ce of a few seconds, as you hold him in your hand, he has become a milky, iridescent opal, and now mother-of-pearl, and finally crawls before you in a coat of dull orange." A dead beetle loses all this wonderful l.u.s.tre. Even on the morning-glory in our gardens we may sometimes find these jewelled mites, or their fork-tailed, black larvae, or the tiny chrysalids suspended by their tails, although it is the wild bindweed that is ever their favorite abiding place.

Gronovius' or Common Dodder; Strangle-weed; Love Vine; Angel's Hair

_Cuscuta Gronovii_

_Flowers_--Dull, white minute, numerous, in dense cl.u.s.ters. Calyx inferior, greenish white, 5-parted; corolla bell-shaped, the 5 lobes spreading, 5 fringed scales within; 5 stamens, each inserted on corolla throat above a scale; 2 slender styles. _Stem:_ Bright orange yellow, thread-like, twining high, leafless.

_Preferred Habitat_--Moist soil, meadows, ditches, beside streams.

_Flowering Season_--July-September.

_Distribution_--Nova Scotia and Manitoba, south to the Gulf states.

Like tangled yellow yarn wound spirally about the herbage and shrubbery in moist thickets, the dodder grows, its beautiful bright threads plentifully studded with small flowers tightly bunched. Try to loosen its hold on the support it is climbing up, and the secret of its guilt is out at once; for no honest vine is this, but a parasite, a degenerate of the lowest type, with numerous sharp suckers (haustoria) penetrating the bark of its victim, and spreading in the softer tissues beneath to steal all their nourishment. So firmly are these suckers attached, that the golden thread-like stem will break before they can be torn from their hold.

Not a leaf now remains on the vine to tell of virtue in its remote ancestors; the absence of green matter (chlorophyll) testifies to dishonest methods of gaining a living (see Indian Pipe), not even a root is left after the seedling is old enough to twine about its hard-working, respectable neighbors. Starting out in life with apparently the best intentions, suddenly the tender young twiner develops an appet.i.te for strong drink and murder combined, such as would terrify any budding criminal in Five Points or Seven Dials! No sooner has it laid hold of its victim and tapped it, than the now useless root and lower portion wither away leaving the dodder in mid-air, without any connection with the soil below, but abundantly nourished with juices already stored up, and even a.s.similated, at its host's expense. By rapidly lengthening the cells on the outer side of its stem more than on the inner side, the former becomes convex, the latter concave; that is to say, a section of spiral is formed by the new shoot, which, twining upward, devitalizes its benefactor as it goes. Abundant, globular seed-vessels, which develop rapidly while the blossoming continues unabated, soon sink into the soft soil to begin their piratical careers close beside the criminals which bore them; or better still, from their point of view, float downstream to found new colonies afar. When the beautiful jewel-weed--a conspicuous sufferer--is hung about with dodder, one must be grateful for at least such symphony of yellows.

POLEMONIUM FAMILY _(Polemoniaceae)_

Ground or Moss Pink

_Phlox subulata_

_Flowers_--Very numerous, small, deep purplish pink, lavender or rose, varying to white, with a darker eye, growing in simple cymes, or solitary in a Western variety. Calyx with 5 slender teeth; corolla salver-form with 5 spreading lobes; 5 stamens inserted on corolla tube; style 3-lobed. _Stems:_ Rarely exceeding 6 in. in height, tufted like mats, much branched, plentifully set with awl-shaped, evergreen leaves barely 1/2 in. long, growing in tufts at joints of stem.

_Preferred Habitat_--Rocky ground, hillsides.

_Flowering Season_--April-June.

_Distribution_--Southern New York to Florida, westward to Michigan and Kentucky.

A charming little plant, growing in dense evergreen mats with which Nature carpets dry, sandy, and rocky hillsides, is often completely hidden beneath its wealth of flowers. Far beyond its natural range, as well as within it, the Moss Pink glows in gardens, cemeteries, and parks, wherever there are rocks to conceal or sterile wastes to beautify. Very slight encouragement induces it to run wild. There are great rocks in Central Park, New York, worth travelling miles to see in early May, when their stern faces are flushed and smiling with these blossoms.

BORAGE FAMILY _(Boraginaceae)_

Forget-me-not; Mouse-ear; Scorpion Gra.s.s; Snake Gra.s.s; Love Me

_Myosotis scorpioides (M. pal.u.s.tris)_

_Flowers_--Pure blue, pinkish, or white, with yellow eye; flat, 5-lobed, borne in many-flowered, long, often 1-sided racemes. Calyx 5-cleft; the lobes narrow, spreading, erect, and open in fruit; 5 stamens inserted on corolla tube; style thread-like; ovary 4-celled. _Stem:_ Low, branching, leafy, slender, hairy, partially reclining. _Leaves:_ (_Myosotis_ = mouse-ear) oblong, alternate, seated on stem; hairy. _Fruit:_ Nutlets, angled and keeled on inner side.

_Preferred Habitat_--Escaped from gardens to brooksides, marshes, and low meadows.

_Flowering Season_--May-July.

_Distribution_--Native of Europe and Asia, now rapidly spreading from Nova Scotia southward to New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and beyond.

How rare a color blue must have been originally among our flora is evident from the majority of blue and purple flowers that, although now abundant here and so perfectly at home, are really quite recent immigrants from Europe and Asia. But our dryer, hotter climate never brings to the perfection attained in England

"The sweet forget-me-nots That grow for happy lovers."

Tennyson thus ignores the melancholy a.s.sociation of the flower in the popular legend which tells how a lover, when trying to gather some of these blossoms for his sweetheart, fell into a deep pool, and threw a bunch on the bank, calling out, as he sank forever from her sight, "Forget me not." Another dismal myth sends its hero forth seeking hidden treasure caves in a mountain, under the guidance of a fairy. He fills his pockets with gold, but not heeding the fairy's warning to "forget not the best"--_i.e._, the myosotis--he is crushed by the closing together of the mountain. Happiest of all is the folk-tale of the Persians, as told by their poet Shiraz: "It was in the golden morning of the early world, when an angel sat weeping outside the closed gates of Paradise. He had fallen from his high estate through loving a daughter of earth, nor was he permitted to enter again until she whom he loved had planted the flowers of the forget-me-not in every corner of the world. He returned to earth and a.s.sisted her, and together they went hand in hand. When their task was ended, they entered Paradise together, for the fair woman, without tasting the bitterness of death, became immortal like the angel whose love her beauty had won when she sat by the river twining forget-me-nots in her hair."

It was the golden ring around the forget-me-not's centre that first led Sprengel to believe the conspicuous markings at the entrance of many flowers served as pathfinders to insects. This golden circle also shelters the nectar from rain, and indicates to the fly or bee just where it must probe between stigma and anthers to touch them with opposite sides of its tongue. Since it may probe from any point of the circle, it is quite likely that the side of the tongue that touched a pollen-laden anther in one flower will touch the stigma in the next one visited, and so cross-fertilize it. But forget-me-nots are not wholly dependent on insects. When these fail, a fully mature flower is still able to set fertile seed by shedding its own pollen directly on the stigma.

Viper's Bugloss; Blue-weed; Viper's Herb or Gra.s.s; Snake-flower; Blue Thistle; Blue Devil

_Echium vulgare_

_Flowers_--Bright blue, afterward reddish purple, pink in the bud, numerous, cl.u.s.tered on short, 1-sided curved spikes rolled up at first, and straightening out as flowers expand. Calyx deeply 5-cleft; corolla 1 in. long or less, funnel form, the 5 lobes unequal, acute; 5 stamens inserted on corolla tube, the filaments spreading below, and united above into slender appendage, the anthers forming a cone; 1 pistil with 2 stigmas. _Stem:_ 1 to 2 1/2 ft. high; bristly-hairy, erect, spotted.

_Leaves:_ Hairy, rough, oblong to lance-shaped, alternate, seated on stem, except at base of plant.

_Preferred Habitat_--Dry fields, waste places, roadsides

_Flowering Season_--June-July.

_Distribution_--New Brunswick to Virginia, westward to Nebraska; Europe and Asia.