Wild Flowers Worth Knowing Part 8

Tall Meadow-rue

_Thalictrum polygamum (T. Cornuti)_

_Flowers_--Greenish white, the calyx of 4 or 5 sepals, falling early; no petals; numerous white, thread-like, green-tipped stamens, spreading in feathery tufts, borne in large, loose, compound terminal cl.u.s.ters 1 ft.

long or more. _Stem_: Stout, erect, 3 to 11 ft. high, leafy, branching above. _Leaves_: Arranged in threes, compounded of various shaped leaflets, the lobes pointed or rounded, dark above, paler below.

_Preferred Habitat_--Open sunny swamps, beside sluggish water, low meadows.

_Flowering Season_--July-September

_Distribution_--Quebec to Florida, westward to Ohio.

Ma.s.ses of these soft, feathery flowers, towering above the ranker growth of midsummer, possess an unseasonable, ethereal, chaste, spring-like beauty. On some plants the flowers are fleecy white and exquisite; others, again, are dull and coa.r.s.er. Why is this? Because these are what botanists term polygamous flowers, _i.e._, some of them are perfect, containing both stamens and pistils; some are male only; others, again, are female. Naturally an insect, like ourselves, is first attracted to the more beautiful male blossoms, the pollen bearers, and of course it transfers the vitalizing dust to the dull pistillate flowers visited later. But the meadow-rue, which produces a super-abundance of very light, dry pollen, easily blown by the wind, is often fertilized through that agent also, just as gra.s.ses, plantains, sedges, birches, oaks, pines, and all cone-bearing trees are. As might be expected, a plant which has not yet ascended the evolutionary scale high enough to economize its pollen by making insects carry it invariably overtops surrounding vegetation to take advantage of every breeze that blows.

The Early Meadow-rue (_T. dioic.u.m_), found blooming in open, rocky woods during April and May, from Alabama northward to Labrador, and westward to Missouri, grows only one or two feet high, and, like its tall sister, bears fleecy, greenish-white flowers, the staminate and the pistillate ones on different plants.

Liver-leaf; Hepatica; Liverwort; Round-lobed, or Kidney Liver-leaf; n.o.ble Liverwort; Squirrel Cup

_Hepatica triloba (H. Hepatica)_

_Flowers_--Blue, lavender, purple, pinkish, or white; occasionally, not always, fragrant; 6 to 12 petal-like, colored sepals (not petals, as they appear to be), oval or oblong; numerous stamens, all bearing anthers; pistils numerous; 3 small, sessile leaves, forming an involucre directly under flower, simulate a calyx, for which they might be mistaken. _Stems:_ Spreading from the root, 4 to 6 in. high, a solitary flower or leaf borne at end of each furry stem. _Leaves:_ 3-lobed and rounded, leathery, evergreen; sometimes mottled with, or entirely, reddish purple; spreading on ground, rusty at blooming time, the new leaves appearing after the flowers. _Fruit:_ Usually as many as pistils, dry, 1-seeded, oblong, sharply pointed, never opening.

_Preferred Habitat_--Woods; light soil on hillsides.

_Flowering Season_--December-May.

_Distribution_--Canada to northern Florida, Manitoba to Iowa and Missouri. Most common East.

Even under the snow itself bravely blooms the delicate hepatica, wrapped in fuzzy furs as if to protect its stems and nodding buds from cold.

After the plebeian Skunk Cabbage, that ought scarcely to be reckoned among true flowers--and William Hamilton Gibson claimed even before it--it is the first blossom to appear. Winter sunshine, warming the hillsides and edges of woods, opens its eyes.

"Blue as the heaven it gazes at, Startling the loiterer in the naked groves With unexpected beauty; for the time Of blossoms and green leaves is yet afar."

"There are many things left for May," says John Burroughs, "but nothing fairer, if as fair, as the first flower, the hepatica. I find I have never admired this little firstling half enough. When at the maturity of its charms, it is certainly the gem of the woods. What an individuality it has! No two cl.u.s.ters alike; all shades and sizes.... A solitary blue-purple one, fully expanded and rising over the brown leaves or the green moss, its cl.u.s.ter of minute anthers showing like a group of pale stars on its little firmament, is enough to arrest and hold the dullest eye. Then, ... there are individual hepaticas, or individual families among them, that are sweet scented. The gift seems as capricious as the gift of genius in families. You cannot tell which the fragrant ones are till you try them. Sometimes it is the large white ones, sometimes the large purple ones, sometimes the small pink ones. The odor is faint, and recalls that of the sweet violets. A correspondent, who seems to have carefully observed these fragrant hepaticas, writes me that this gift of odor is constant in the same plant; that the plant which bears sweet-scented flowers this year will bear them next."

Pollen-feeding flies and female hive bees frequent these blossoms on the first warm days. Whether or not they are rewarded by finding nectar is still a mooted question. They seem to do so.

Wood Anemone; Wind-flower

_Anemone quinquefolia_

_Flowers_--Solitary, about 1 in. broad, white or delicately tinted with blue or pink outside. Calyx of 4 to 9 oval, petal-like sepals; no petals; stamens and carpels numerous, of indefinite number. _Stem:_ Slender, 4 to 9 in. high, from horizontal elongated rootstock. _Leaves:_ On slender petioles, in a whorl of 3 to 5 below the flower, each leaf divided into 3 to 5 variously cut and lobed parts; also a late-appearing leaf from the base.

_Preferred Habitat_--Woodlands, hillsides, light soil, partial shade.

_Flowering Season_--April-June.

_Distribution_--Canada and United States, south to Georgia, west to Rocky Mountains.

According to one poetical Greek tradition, Anemos, the wind, employs these exquisitely delicate little star-like namesakes as heralds of his coming in early spring, while woods and hillsides still lack foliage to break his gusts' rude force. Pliny declared that only the wind could open anemones! Another legend utilized by countless poets pictures Venus wandering through the forests grief-stricken over the death of her youthful lover.

"Alas, the Paphian! fair Adonis slain!

Tears plenteous as his blood she pours amain; But gentle flowers are born and bloom around From every drop that falls upon the ground: Where streams his blood, there blushing springs the rose; And where a tear has dropped, a wind-flower blows."

Indeed, in reading the poets ancient and modern for references to this favorite blossom, one realizes as never before the significance of an anthology, literally a flower gathering.

But it is chiefly the European Anemone that is extolled by the poets.

Nevertheless our more slender, fragile, paler-leaved, and smaller-flowered species, known, strange to say, by the same scientific name, possesses the greater charm. Doctors, with more prosaic eyes than the poets, find acrid and dangerous juices in the anemone and its kin.

Certain European peasants will run past a colony of these pure, innocent blossoms in the belief that the very air is tainted by them. Yet the Romans ceremonially picked the first anemone of the year, with an incantation supposed to guard them against fever. The identical plant that blooms in our woods, which may be found also in Asia, is planted on graves by the Chinese, who call it the "death flower."

Note the cl.u.s.ters of tuberous, dahlia-like roots, the whorl of thin, three-lobed rounded leaflets on long, fine petioles immediately below the smaller pure white or pinkish flowers usually growing in loose cl.u.s.ters, to distinguish the more common Rue Anemone _(Anemonella thalictroides_ or _Syndesmon thalictroides_ or _Thalictrum anemonoides)_ from its cousin the solitary flowered wood or true anemone. Generally there are three blossoms of the Rue Anemone to a cl.u.s.ter, the central one opening first, the side ones only after it has developed its stamens and pistils to prolong the season of bloom and encourage cross-pollination by insects. In the eastern half of the United States, and less abundantly in Canada, these are among the most familiar spring wild flowers. Pick them and they soon wilt miserably; lift the plants early, with a good ball of soil about the roots, and they will unfold their fragile blossoms indoors, bringing with them something of the unspeakable charm of their native woods and hillsides just waking into life.

Virgin's Bower; Virginia Clematis; Traveller's Joy; Old Man's Beard

_Clematis virginiana_

_Flowers_--White and greenish, about 1 in. across or less, in loose cl.u.s.ters from the axils. Calyx of 4 or 5 petal-like sepals; no petals; stamens and pistils numerous, of indefinite number; the staminate and pistillate flowers on separate plants; the styles feathery, and more than 1 in. long in fruit. _Stem:_ Climbing, slightly woody. _Leaves:_ Opposite, slender petioled, divided into 3 pointed and 2 widely toothed or lobed leaflets.

_Preferred Habitat_--Climbing over woodland borders, thickets, roadside shrubbery, fences, and walls; rich, moist soil.

_Flowering Season_--July-September.

_Distribution_--Georgia and Kansas northward; less common beyond the Canadian border.

Charles Darwin, who made so many interesting studies of the power of movement in various plants, devoted special attention to the clematis clan, of which about one hundred species exist; but, alas! none to our traveller's joy, that flings out the right hand of good fellowship to every twig within reach, winds about the sapling in brotherly embrace, drapes a festoon of flowers from shrub to shrub, hooks even its sensitive leafstalks over any available support as it clambers and riots on its lovely way. By rubbing the footstalk of a young leaf with a twig a few times on any side, Darwin found a clematis leaf would bend to that side in the course of a few hours, but return to the straight again if nothing remained on which to hook itself.

In early autumn, when the long, silvery, decorative plumes attached to a ball of seeds form feathery, h.o.a.ry ma.s.ses even more fascinating than the flower cl.u.s.ters, the name of old man's beard is most suggestive. These seeds never open, but, when ripe, each is borne on the autumn gales, to sink into the first moist, springy resting place.

Marsh Marigold; Meadow-gowan; American Cowslip

_Caltha pal.u.s.tris_

_Flowers_--Bright, shining yellow, 1 to 1-1/2 in. across, a few in terminal and axillary groups. No petals; usually 5 (often more) oval, petal-like sepals; stamens numerous; many pistils (carpels) without styles. _Stem:_ Stout, smooth, hollow, branching, 1 to 2 ft. high.

_Leaves:_ Mostly from root, rounded, broad, and heart-shaped at base, or kidney-shaped, upper ones almost sessile, lower ones on fleshy petioles.

_Preferred Habitat_--Springy ground, low meadows, swamps, river banks, ditches.

_Flowering Season_--April-June.

_Distribution_--Carolina to Iowa, the Rocky Mountains, and very far north.

Not a true marigold, and even less a cowslip, it is by these names that this flower, which looks most like a b.u.t.tercup, will continue to be called, in spite of the protests of scientific cla.s.sifiers.