Chapter II: Part 2

Flowers - Dull purplish, very pale or bright reddish purple in close, round, terminal clusters, each flower 1/3 in. or less across, 5-parted, the petals twice as long as the sepals; 10 stamens, alternate ones attached to petals; pistils 4 or 5. Stem: 2 ft. high or less, erect, simple, in tufts, very smooth, pale green, juicy, leafy. Leaves: Alternate, oval, slightly scalloped, thick, fleshy, smooth, juicy, pale gray green, with stout midrib, seated on stalk. Preferred Habitat - Fields, waysides, rocky soil, originally escaped from gardens. Flowering Season - June- September. Distribution - Quebec westward, south to Michigan and Maryland.

Children know the live-forever, not so well by the variable flower - for it is a niggardly bloomer - as by the thick leaf that they delight to hold in the mouth until, having loosened the membrane, they are able to inflate it like a paper bag. Sometimes dull, sometimes bright, the flower clusters never fail to attract many insects to their feast, which is accessible even to those of short tongues. Each blossom is perfect in itself, i.e., it contains both stamens and pistils; but to guard against self-fertilization it ripens its anthers and sheds its pollen on the insects that carry it away to older flowers before its own stigmas mature and become susceptible to imported pollen. After the seed-cases take on color, they might be mistaken for blossoms.

As if the plant did not already possess enough popular names, it needs must share with the European goldenrod and our common mullein the title of Aaron's rod. Sedere, to sit, the root of the generic name, applies with rare appropriateness to this entire group that we usually find seated on garden walls, rocks, or, in Europe, even on the roofs of old buildings. Rooting freely from the joints, our plant forms thrifty tufts where there is little apparent nourishment; yet its endurance through prolonged drought is remarkable. Long after the farmer's scythe, sweeping over the roadside, has laid it low, it thrives on the juices stored up in fleshy leaves and stem until it proves its title to the most lusty of all folk names.

PURPLE or WATER AVENS
(Geum rivale) Rose family

Flowers - Purple, with some orange chrome, 1 in. broad or less, terminal, solitary, nodding; calyx 5-lobed, purplish, spreading; 5 petals, abruptly narrowed into claws, forming a cup-shaped corolla; stamens and pistils of indefinite number; the styles, jointed and bent in middle, persistent, feathery below. Stem: 1 to 2 ft. high, erect, simple or nearly so, hairy, from thickish rootstock. Leaves: Chiefly from root, on footstems; lower leaves irregularly parted; the side segments usually few and small; the 1 to 3 terminal segments sharply, irregularly lobed; the few distant stem leaves 3-foliate or simple, mostly seated on stem. Fruit: A dry, hairy head stalked in calyx. Preferred Habitat - Swamps and low, wet ground. Flowering Season - May-July. Distribution - Newfoundland far westward, south to Colorado, eastward to Missouri and Pennsylvania, also northern parts of Old World.

Mischievous bumblebees, thrusting their long tongues between the sepals and petals of these unopened flowers, steal nectar without conferring any favor in return. Later, when they behave properly and put their heads inside to feast at the disk on which the stamens are inserted, they dutifully carry pollen from old flowers to the early maturing stigmas of younger ones. Self-fertilization must occur, however, if the bees have not removed all the pollen when a blossom closes. When the purple avens opens in Europe, the bees desert even the primrose to feast upon its abundant nectar. Since water is the prime necessity in the manufacture of this sweet, and since insects that feed upon it have so much to do with the multiplication of flowers, it is not surprising that the swamp, which has been called "nature's sanctuary," should have its altars so exquisitely decked. This blossom hangs its head, partly to protect its precious nectar from rain, and partly to make pilfering well nigh impossible to the unwelcome crawling insect that may have braved the forbidding hairy stems.

WILD LUPINE; OLD MAID'S BONNETS; WILD PEA; SUN DIAL
(Lupinus perennis) Pea family

Flowers - Vivid blue, very rarely pink or white, butterfly-shaped corolla consisting of standard, wings, and keel; about 1/2 in. long, borne in a long raceme at end of stern; calyx 2-lipped, deeply toothed. Stem: Erect, branching, leafy, to 2 ft. high. Leaves: Palmnate, compounded of from 7 to 11 (usually 8) leaflets. Fruit: A broad, flat, very hairy pod, 1 1/2 in. long, and containing 4 or 5 seeds. Preferred Habitat - Dry, sandy places, banks, and hillsides. Flowering Season - May-June. Distribution - United States east of Mississippi, and eastern Canada.

Farmers once thought that this plant preyed upon the fertility of their soil, as we see in the derivation of its name, from lupus, a wolf; whereas the lupine contents itself with sterile waste land no one should grudge it - steep gravelly banks, railroad tracks, exposed sunny hills, where even it must often burn out under fierce sunshine did not its root penetrate to surprising depths. It spreads far and wide in thrifty colonies, reflecting the vivid color of June skies, until, as Thoreau says, "the earth is blued with it."

What is the advantage gained in the pea-shaped blossom? As usual, the insect that fertilizes the flower best knows the answer. The corolla has five petals, the upper one called the standard, chiefly a flaunted advertisement; two side wings, or platforms, to alight on; and a keel like a miniature boat, formed by the two lower petals, whose edges meet. In this the pistil, stamens, and nectar are concealed and protected. The pressure of a bee's weight as he alights on the wings, light as it must be, is nevertheless sufficient to depress and open the keel, which is elastically affected by their motion, and so to expose the pollen just where the long-lipped bee must rub off some against his underside as he sucks the nectar. He actually seems to pump the pollen that has fallen into the forward part of the keel upon himself, as he moves about. As soon as he leaves the flower, the elastic wings resume their former position, thus closing the keel to prevent waste of pollen. Take a sweet pea from the garden, press down its wings with the thumb and forefinger to imitate the action of the bee on them; note how the keel opens to display its treasures, and resumes its customary shape when the pressure is removed.

The lupine is another of those interesting plants which go to sleep at night. Some members of the genus erect one half of the leaf and droop the other half until it becomes a vertical instead of the horizontal star it is by day. Frequently the leaflets rotate as much as 90 degrees on their own axes. Some lupines fold their leaflets, not at night only, but during the day also there is more or less movement in the leaves. Sun dial, a popular name for the wild lupine, has reference to this peculiarity. The leaf of our species shuts downward around its stem, umbrella fashion, or the leaflets are erected to prevent the chilling which comes to horizontal surfaces by radiation, some scientists think. "That the sleep movements of leaves are in some manner of high importance to the plants which exhibit them," says Darwin, "few will dispute who have observed how complex they sometimes are."

CANADIAN or SHOWY TICK-TREFOIL
(Meibomia Canadensis; Desmodium Canadense of Gray) Pea family

Flowers - Pinkish or bluish purple, butterfly-shaped, about 1/2 in. long, borne in dense, terminal, elongated racemes. Stem; Erect, hairy, leafy, 2 to 8 ft. high. Leaves: Compounded of 3 oblong leaflets, the central one largest; upper leaves nearly seated on stem; bracts, conspicuous before flowering, early falling off. Fruit: A flat pod, about 1 in. long, jointed, and covered with minute hooked bristles, the lower edge of pod scalloped; almost seated in calyx. Preferred Habitat - Thickets, woods, riverbanks, bogs. Flowering Season - July-September. Distribution - New Brunswick to Northwest Territory, south to North Carolina, westward to Indian Territory and Dakota.

As one travels hundreds or even thousands of miles in a comfortable railway carriage and sees the same flowers growing throughout the length and breadth of the area, one cannot but wonder however the plants manage to make the journey. We know some creep along the ground, or under it, a tortoise pace, but a winning one; that some send their offspring flying away from home, like dandelions and thistles; and many others with wings and darts are blown by the wind. Berries have their seeds dropped afar by birds. Aquatic plants and those that grow beside running water travel by river and flood. European species reach our shores among the ballast. Darwin raised over sixty wild plants from seed carried in a pellet of mud taken from the leg of a partridge. So on and so on. The imagination delights to picture these floral vagabonds, each with its own clever method of getting a fresh start in the world. But by none of these methods just mentioned do the tick-trefoils spread abroad. Theirs is indeed a by hook or by crook system. The scalloped, jointed pod, where the seeds lie concealed, has minute crooked bristles, which catch in the clothing of man or beast, so that every herd of sheep, every dog, every man, woman, or child who passes through a patch of trefoils gives them a lift. After a walk through the woods and lanes of late summer and autumn, one's clothes reveal scores of tramps that have stolen a ride in the hope of being picked off and dropped amid better conditions in which to rear a family.

Only the largest bees can easily "explode" the showy tick-trefoil. A bumblebee alights upon a flower, thrusts his head under the base of the standard petal, and forces apart the wing petals with his legs, in order to dislodge them from the standard. This motion causes the keel, also connected with the standard, to snap down violently, thus releasing the column within and sending upward an explosion of pollen on the under surface of the bee. Here we see the wing petals acting as triggers to discharge the flower. Depress them and up flies the fertilizing dust - once. The little gun will not "go off" twice. No nectar rewards the visitor, which usually is a pollen-collecting bee. The highly intelligent and important bumblebee has the advantage over his smaller kin in being able to discharge the pollen from both large and smaller flowers.

The NAKED-FLOWERED TICK-TREFOIL (M. nudiflora; D. nudiflorum of Gray) lifts narrow, few-flowered panicles of rose-purple blooms during July and August. The flowers are much smaller than those of the showy trefoil; however, when seen in masses, they form conspicuous patches of color in dry woods. Note that there is a flower stalk which is usually leafless and also a leaf-bearing stem rising from the base of the plant, the latter with its leaves all crowded at the top, if you would distinguish this very common species from its multitudinous kin. The trefoliate leaves are pale beneath. The two or three jointed pod rises far above the calyx on its own stalk, as in the next species.

The POINTED-LEAVED TICK-TREFOIL (M. grandifiora; D. acuminatum of Gray) has for its distinguishing feature a cluster of leaves high up on the same stem from which rises a stalk bearing a quantity of purple flowers that are large by comparison only. The leaves have leaflets from two to six inches long, rounded on the sides, but acutely pointed, and with scattered hairs above and below. This trefoil is found blooming in dry or rocky woods, throughout a wide range, from June to September.

Lying outstretched for two to six feet on the dry ground of open woods and copses east of the Mississippi, the PROSTRATE TICK-TREFOIL (M. Michauxii; D. rotundifoliurn of Gray) can certainly be named by its soft hairiness, the almost perfect roundness of its trefoliate leaves, its rather loose racemes of deep purple flowers that spring both from the leaf axils and from the ends of the sometimes branching stem; and by its three to five jointed pod, which is deeply scalloped on its lower edge and somewhat indented above, as well.

BLUE, TUFTED, or COW VETCH or TARE; CAT PEAS; TINEGRASS
(Vicia Cracca) Pea family

Flowers - Blue, later purple; 1/2 in. long, growing downward in 1-sided spike, 15 to 40 flowered; calyx oblique, small, with unequal teeth; corolla butterfly-shaped, consisting of standard, wings, and keel, all oblong; the first clawed, the second oblique, and adhering to the shorter keel; 10 stamens, 1 detached from other 9. Stem: Slender, weak, climbing or trailing, downy, 2 to 4 ft. long. Leaves: Tendril bearing, divided into 18 to 24 thin, narrow, oblong leaflets. Fruit: A smooth pod 1 in. long or less, 5 to 8 seeded. Preferred Habitat - Dry soil, fields, wastelands. Flowering Season - June-August. Distribution - United States from New Jersey, Kentucky, and Iowa northward and northwestward. Europe and Asia.

Dry fields blued with the bright blossoms of the tufted vetch, and roadsides and thickets where the angular vine sends forth vivid patches of color, resound with the music of happy bees. Although the parts of the flower fit closely together, they are elastic, and opening with the energetic visitor's weight and movement give ready access to the nectary. On his departure they resume their original position, to protect both nectar and pollen from rain and pilferers whose bodies are not perfectly adapted to further the flower's cross-fertilization. The common bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) plays a mean trick, all too frequently, when he bites a hole at the base of the blossom, not only gaining easy access to the sweets for himself, but opening the way for others less intelligent than he, but quite ready to profit by his mischief, and so defeat nature's plan. Dr. Ogle observed that the same bee always acts in the same manner, one sucking the nectar legitimately, another always biting a hole to obtain it surreptitiously, the natural inference, of course, being that some bees, like small boys, are naturally depraved.

In cultivated fields and waste places farther south and westward to the Pacific Coast roams the COMMON or PEBBLE VETCH OR TARE (V. saliva), another domesticated weed that has come to us from Europe, where it is extensively grown for fodder. Let no reproach fall on these innocent plants that bear an opprobrious name: the tare of Scripture is altogether different, the bearded darnel of Mediterranean regions, whose leaves deceive one by simulating those of wheat, and whose smaller seeds, instead of nourishing man, poison him. Only one or two light blue-purple flowers grow in the axils of the leaves of our common vetch. The leaf, compounded of from eight to fourteen leaflets, indented at the top, has a long terminal tendril, whose little sharp tip assists the awkward vine, like a grappling hook.

The AMERICAN VETCH or TARE or PEA VINE (V. Americana) boasts slightly larger bluish-purple flowers than the blue vetch, but fewer of them; from three to nine only forming its loose raceme. In moist soil throughout a very broad northerly and westerly range it climbs and trails its graceful way, with the help of the tendrils on the tips of leaves compounded of from eight to fourteen oblong, blunt, and veiny leaflets.

BEACH, SEA, SEASIDE, or EVERLASTING PEA
(Lathyrus maritimus) Pea family

Flowers - Purple, butterfly-shaped, consisting of standard petal, wings, and keel; 1 in. long or less, clustered in short raceme at end of slender footstalk from leaf axils; calyx 5-toothed; stamens 10 (9 and 1); style curved, flattened, bearded on inner side. Stem: to 2 ft. long, stout, reclining, spreading, leafy. Leaves: Compounded of 3 to 6 pairs of oblong leaflets somewhat larger than halberd-shaped stipules at base of leaf; branched tendrils at end of it. Fruit: A flat, 2-valved, veiny pod, continuous between the seeds. Preferred Habitat - Beaches of Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, also of Great Lakes. Flowering Season - May-August. Sometimes blooming again in autumn. Distribution - New Jersey to Arctic Circle; also Northern Europe and Asia.

Sturdy clumps of the beach pea, growing beyond reach of the tide in the dunes and sandy wastelands back of the beach, afford the bee the last restaurant where he may regale himself without fear of drowning. From some members of the pea family, as from the wild lupine, for example, his weight, as he moves about, actually pumps the pollen that has fallen into the forward part of the blossom's keel onto his body, that he may transfer it to another flower. In some other members his weight so depresses the keel that the stamens are forced out to dust him over, the flower resuming its original position to protect its nectar and the remaining pollen just as soon as the pressure is removed. Other peas, again, burst at his pressure, and discharge their pollen on him. Now, in the beach pea, and similarly in the vetches, the style is hairy on its inner side, to brush out the pollen on the visitor who sets the automatic sweeper in motion as he alights and moves about. So perfectly have many members of this interesting family adapted their structure to the requirements of insects, and so implicitly do they rely on their automatic mechanism, that they have actually lost the power to fertilize themselves.

In moist or wet ground throughout a northern range from ocean to ocean, the MARSH VETCHLING (Lathyrus palustris) bears its purple, butterfly-shaped flowers, that are the merest trifle over half the size of those of the beach pea. From two to six of these little blossoms are alternately set along the end of the stalk. The leaflets, which are narrowly oblong, and acute at the apex, stand up opposite each other in pairs (from two to four) along the main leafstalk, that splits at the end to form hooked tendrils.

BUTTERFLY or BLUE PEA
(Clitoria Mariana) Pea family

Flowers - Bright lavender blue, showy, about 2 in. long; from 1 to 3 borne on a short peduncle. Calyx tubular, 5-toothed; corolla butterfly-shaped, consisting of very large, erect standard petal, notched at rounded apex; 2 oblong, curved wings, and shorter, acute keel; 10 stamens; style incurved, and hairy along inner side. Stem: Smooth, ascending or partly twining, 1 to 3 ft. high. Leaves: Compounded of 3 oblong leaflets, paler beneath, each on short stalk. Fruit: A few-seeded, acutely pointed pod about 1 in. long. Preferred Habitat - Dry soil. Flowering Season - June-July. Distribution - New Jersey to Florida, westward to Missouri, Texas, and Mexico.

A beautiful blossom, flaunting a large banner out of all proportion to the size of its other parts, that it may arrest the attention of its benefactors the bees. According to Henderson, the plant, which is found in our Southern States and over the Mexican border, grows also in the Khasia Mountains of India, but in no intervening place. Several members of the tropic-loving genus, that produce large, highly colored flowers, have been introduced to American hothouses; but the blue butterfly pea is our only native representative. The genus is thought to take its name from kleio, to shut up, in reference to the habit these peas have of seeding long before the flower drops off.

WILD or HOG PEANUT
(Falcata comosa; Amphicarpaea monoica of Gray) Pea family

Flowers - Numerous small, showy ones, borne in drooping clusters from axils of upper leaves; lilac, pale purplish, or rarely white, butterfly-shaped, consisting of standard petal partly enfolding wings and keel. Calyx tubular, 4 or 5 toothed; 10 stamens (9 and 1); 1 pistil. (Also solitary fertile flowers, lacking petals, on thread-like, creeping branches from lower axils or underground). Stem: Twining wiry brownish-hairy, to 8 ft. long. Leaves: Compounded of 3 thin leaflets, egg-shaped at base, acutely pointed at tip. Fruit: Hairy pod 1 in. long. Also 1-seeded, pale, rounded, underground peanut. Preferred Habitat - Moist thickets, shady roadsides. Flowering Season - August-September. Distribution - New Brunswick westward to Nebraska, south to Gulf of Mexico.

Amphicarpaea ("seed at both ends"), the Greek name by which this graceful vine was formerly known, emphasizes its most interesting feature, that, nevertheless, seems to many a foolish duplication of energy on Nature's part. Why should the same plant bear two kinds of blossoms and seeds? Among the foliage of low shrubbery and plants in shady lanes and woodside thickets, we see the delicate, drooping clusters of lilac blossoms hanging where bees can readily discover them and, in pilfering their sweets, transfer their pollen from flower to flower. But in case of failure to intercross these blossoms that are dependent upon insect help to set fertile seed, what then? Must the plant run the risk of extinction? Self-fertilization may be an evil, but failure to produce seed at all is surely the greatest one. To guard against such a calamity, insignificant looking flowers that have no petals to open for the enticing of insects, but which fertilize themselves with their own pollen, produce abundant seed close to the ground or under it.Then what need of the showy blossoms hanging in the thicket above? Close inbreeding in the vegetable world, as in the animal, ultimately produces degenerate offspring; and although the showy lilac blossoms of the wild peanut yield comparatively few cross-fertilized seeds, these are quite sufficient to enable the vine to maintain those desired features which are the inheritance from ancestors that struggled in their day and generation after perfection. No plant dares depend upon its cleistogamous or blind flowers alone for offspring; and in the sixty or more genera containing these curious growths, that usually look like buds arrested in development, every plant that bears them bears also showy flowers dependent upon cross-pollination by insect aid.

The boy who

"Drives home the cows from the pasture
Up through the long shady lane"

knows how reluctantly they leave the feast afforded by the wild peanut. Hogs, rooting about in the moist soil where it grows, unearth the hairy pods that should produce next year's vines; hence the poor excuse for branding a charming plant with a repellent folk-name,

VIOLETS
(Viola) Violet family

Lacking perfume only to be a perfectly satisfying flower, the COMMON, PURPLE, MEADOW, or HOODED BLUE VIOLET (V. obliqua; V. cucullata of Gray) has nevertheless established itself in the hearts of the people from the Arctic to the Gulf as no sweet-scented, showy, hothouse exotic has ever done. Royal in color as in lavish profusion, it blossoms everywhere - in woods, waysides, meadows, and marshes, but always in finer form in cool, shady dells; with longer flowering scapes in meadow bogs; and with longer leaves than wide in swampy woodlands. The heart-shaped, saw-edged leaves, folded toward the center when newly put forth, and the five-petalled, bluish-purple, golden-hearted blossom are too familiar for more detailed description. From the three-cornered stars of the elastic capsules, the seeds are scattered abroad.

Beards on the spurred lower petal and the two side petals give the bees a foothold when they turn head downward, as some must, to suck nectar. This attitude enables them to receive the pollen dusted on their abdomens, when they jar the flower, at a point nearest their pollen-collecting hairs. It is also an economical advantage to the flower which can sift the pollen downward on the bee instead of exposing it to the pollen-eating interlopers. Among the latter may be classed the bumblebees and butterflies whose long lips and tongues pilfer ad libitum. "For the proper visitors of the bearded violets," says Professor Robertson, "we must look to the small bees, among which the Osmias are the most important."

When science was younger and hair splitting an uncommon indulgence of botanists, the EARLY BLUE VIOLET (Viola palmata) was thought to be simply a variety of the common purple violet, whose heart-shaped leaves frequently show a tendency to divide into lobes. But the early blue violet, however roundish or heart-shaped its early leaves may be, has the later ones variously divided into from three to thirteen lobes, often almost as much cut on the sides as the leaves of the bird's-foot violet. In dry soil, chiefly in the woods, this violet may be found from Southern Canada westward to Minnesota, and south to northern boundaries of the Gulf States. Only its side petals are bearded to form footrests for the insects that search for the deeply secreted nectar. Many butterflies visit this flower. On entering it a bee must first touch the stigma before any fresh golden pollen is released from the anther cone, and cross-fertilization naturally results.

In shale and sandy soil, even in the gravel of hillsides, one finds the narrowly divided, finely cut leaves and the bicolored beardless blossom of the BIRD'S-FOOT VIOLET (V. pedata), pale bluish purple on the lower petals, dark purple on one or two upper ones, and with a heart of gold. The large, velvety, pansy-like blossom and the unusual foliage which rises in rather dense tufts are sufficient to distinguish the plant from its numerous kin. This species produces no cleistogamous or blind flowers. Frequently the bird's-foot violet blooms a second time, in autumn, a delightful eccentricity of this family. The spur of its lower petal is long and very slender, and, as might be expected, the longest-tongued bees and butterflies are its most frequent visitors. These receive the pollen on the base of the proboscis.

The WOOLLY BLUE VIOLET (V. sororia), whose stems and younger leaves, at least, are covered with hairs, and whose purplish-blue flowers are more or less bearded within, prefers a shady but dry situation; whereas its next of kin, the ARROW-LEAVED VIOLET (V. sagittata), delights in moist but open meadows and marshes. The latter's long, arrow, or halberd-shaped leaves, usually entire above the middle, but slightly lobed below it, may rear themselves nine inches high in favorable soil, or in dry uplands perhaps only two inches. The flowering scapes grow as tall as the leaves. All but the lower petal of the large, deep, dark, purplish-blue flower are bearded. This species produces an abundance of late cleistogamous flowers on erect stems. These peculiar greenish flowers without petals, that are so often mistaken for buds or seed vessels; that never open, but without insect aid ripen quantities of fertile seed, are usually borne, if not actually under ground, then not far above it, on nearly all violet plants. It will be observed that all species which bear blind flowers rely somewhat on showy, cross-fertilized blossoms also to counteract degeneracy from close inbreeding.

The OVATE-LEAVED VIOLET (V. ovata), formerly reckoned as a mere variety of the former species, is now accorded a distinct rank. Not all the blossoms, but an occasional clump, has a faint perfume like sweet clover. The leaf is elongated, but rather too round to be halberd-shaped; the stems are hairy; and the flowers, which closely resemble those of the arrow-leaved violet, are earlier; making these two species, which are popularly mistaken for one, among the earliest and commonest of their clan. The dry soil of upland woods and thickets is the ovate-leaved violet's preferred habitat.

In course of time the lovely ENGLISH, MARCH, or SWEET VIOLET, (V. odorata), which has escaped from gardens, and which is now rapidly increasing with the help of seed and runners on the Atlantic and the Pacific coasts, may be established among our wild flowers. No blossom figures so prominently in European literature. In France, it has even entered the political field since Napoleon's day. Yale University has adopted the violet for its own especial flower, although it is the corn-flower, or bachelor's button (Centaurea cyanus) that is the true Yale blue. Sprengel, who made a most elaborate study of the violet, condensed the result of his research into the following questions and answers, which are given here because much that he says applies to our own native species, which have been too little studied in the modern scientific spirit:

"1. Why is the flower situated on a long stalk which is upright, but curved downwards at the free end? In order that it may hang down; which, firstly, prevents rain from obtaining access to the nectar; and, secondly, places the stamens in such a position that the pollen falls into the open space between the pistil and the free ends of the stamens. If the flower were upright, the pollen would fall into the space between the base of the stamen and the base of the pistil, and would not come in contact with the bee.

"2. Why does the pollen differ from that of most other insect-fertilized flowers? In most of such flowers the insects themselves remove the pollen from the anthers, and it is therefore important that the pollen should not easily be detached and carried away by the wind. In the present case, on the contrary, it is desirable that it should be looser and dryer, so that it may easily fall into the space between the stamens and the pistil. If it remained attached to the anther, it would not be touched by the bee, and the flower would remain unfertilized.

"3. Why is the base of the style so thin? In order that the bee may be more easily able to bend the style.

"4. Why is the base of the style bent? For the same reason. The result of the curvature is that the pistil is much more easily bent than would be the case if the style were straight.

"5. Finally, why does the membranous termination of the upper filament overlap the corresponding portions of the two middle stamens? Because this enables the bee to move the pistil, and thereby to set free the pollen more easily than would be the case under the reverse arrangement."

In high altitudes of New England, Colorado. and northward, where the soil is wet and cold, the pale lilac, slightly bearded petals, streaked with darker veins, of the MARSH VIOLET (V. palustris), with its almost round leaves, may be found from May to June. All through the White Mountains one finds it abundant.

A peculiarity of the DOG or RUNNING VIOLET (V. Labradorica) is that its small, heart-shaped leaves are set along the branching stem, and its pale purple blossoms rise from their angles, pansy fashion. From March to May it blooms throughout its wide range in wet, shady places. Its English prototype, called by the same invidious name, was given the prefix "dog," because the word, which is always intended to express contempt in the British mind, is applied in this case for the flower's lack of fragrance. When a bee visits this violet, his head coming in contact with the stigma jars it, thus opening the little pollen box, whose contents must fall out on his head and be carried away and rubbed off where it will fertilize the next violet visited.

SEA LAVENDER; MARSH ROSEMARY; CANKER-ROOT; INK-ROOT (Limonium Carolinianum; Statice Limonium of Gray) Plumbago family

Flowers - Very tiny, pale, dull lavender, erect, set along upper side of branches. Calyx 5-toothed, tubular, plaited; corolla of 5 petals opposite as many stamens; 1 pistil with 5 thread-like styles. Scape: 1 to 2 ft. high, slender, leafless, much branched above. Leaves: All from thick, fleshy rootstock, narrowly oblong, tapering into margined petioles, thick, the edges slightly waved, not toothed; midrib prominent. Preferred Habitat - Salt meadows and marshes. Flowering Season - July-October. Distribution - Atlantic coast from Labrador to Florida, westward along the Gulf to Texas; also in Europe.

Seen in masses, from a little distance, this tiny flower looks like blue-gray mist blown in over the meadows from the sea, and on closer view each plant suggests sea-spray itself. Thrifty housewives along the coast dry it for winter bouquets, partly for ornament and partly because there is an old wives' tradition that it keeps away moths. Statice, from the Greek verb to stop, hence an astringent, was the generic name formerly applied to the plants, with whose roots these same old women believed they cured canker sores.

FRINGED GENTIAN
(Gentiana crinita) Gentian family

Flowers - Deep, bright blue, rarely white, several or many, about 2 in. high, stiffly erect, and solitary at ends of very long foot-stalk. Calyx of 4 unequal, acutely pointed lobes. Corolla funnel form, its four lobes spreading, rounded, fringed around ends, but scarcely on sides. Four stamens inserted on corolla tube; 1 pistil with 2 stigmas. Stem: 1 to 3 ft. high, usually branched, leafy. Leaves: Opposite, upper ones acute at tip, broadening to heart-shaped base, seated on stem. Fruit: A spindle-shaped, 2-valved capsule, containing numerous scaly, hairy seeds. Preferred Habitat - Low, moist meadows and woods. Flowering Season - September-November. Distribution - Quebec, southward to Georgia, and westward beyond the Mississippi.

"Thou waitest late, and com'st alone
When woods are bare and birds have flown,
And frosts and shortening days portend
The aged year is near his end.

"Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye
Look through its fringes to the sky,
Blue - blue - as if that sky let fail
A flower from its cerulean wall."

When we come upon a bed of gentians on some sparkling October day, we can but repeat Bryant's thoughts and express them prosaically who attempt description. In dark weather this sunshine lover remains shut, to protect its nectar and pollen from possible showers. An elusive plant is this gentian, which by no means always reappears in the same places year after year, for it is an annual whose seeds alone perpetuate it. Seating themselves on the winds when autumn gales shake them from out of the home wall, these little hairy scales ride afar, and those that are so fortunate as to strike into soft, moist soil at the end of the journey, germinate. Because this flower is so rarely beautiful that few can resist the temptation of picking it, it is becoming sadly rare near large settlements.

The special importance of producing a quantity of fertile seed has led the gentians to adopt proterandry - one of the commonest, because most successful, methods of insuring it. The anthers, coming to maturity early, shed their pollen on the bumblebees that have been first attracted by their favorite color and the enticing fringes before they crawl half way down the tube where they can reach the nectar secreted in the walls. After the pollen has been carried from the early flowers, and the stamens begin to wither, up rises the pistil to be fertilized with pollen brought from a newly opened blossom by the bee or butterfly. The late development of the pistil accounts for the error often stated, that some gentians have none. No doubt the fringe, which most scientists regard simply as an additional attraction for winged insects, serves a double purpose in entangling the feet of ants and other crawlers that would climb over the edge to pilfer sweets clearly intended for the bumblebee alone.

Fifteen species of gentian have been gathered during a half-hour walk in Switzerland, where the pastures are spread with sheets of blue. Indeed, one can little realize the beauty of these heavenly flowers who has not seen them among the Alps.

The FIVE-FLOWERED or STIFF GENTIAN, or AGUE-WEED (Gentiana quinquefolia; G. quinqueflora of Gray) has its five-parted, small, picotee-edged blue flowers arranged in clusters, not exceeding seven, at the ends of the branches or seated in the leaf-axils. The slender, branching, ridged stem may rise only two inches in dry soil; or perhaps two feet in rich, moist, rocky ground, where it grows to perfection, especially in mountainous regions. From Canada to Florida and westward to Missouri is its range, and beginning to bloom in August southward, it may not be found until September in the Catskills, and in October it is still in its glory in Ontario. The colorless, bitter juice of many of the gentian tribe has long been valued as a tonic in medicine. Evidently the butterflies that pilfer this "ague-weed," and the bees that are its legitimate feasters, find something more delectable in its blue walls.

A deep, intense blue is the CLOSED, BLIND, or BOTTLE GENTIAN (G. Andrewsii), more truly the color of the "male bluebird's back," to which Thoreau likened the paler fringed gentian. Rarely some degenerate plant bears white flowers. As it is a perennial, we are likely to find it in its old haunts year after year; nevertheless its winged seeds sail far abroad to seek pastures new. This gentian also shows a preference for moist soil. Gray thought that it expanded slightly, and for a short time only in sunshine, but added that, although it is proterandrous, i.e. it matures and sheds its pollen before its stigma is susceptible to any, he believed it finally fertilized itself by the lobes of the stigma curling backward until they touched the anthers. But Gray was doubtless mistaken. Several authorities have recently proved that the flower is adapted to bumblebees. It offers them the last feast of the season, for although it comes into bloom in August southward, farther northward - and it extends from Quebec to the Northwest Territory - it lasts through October.

Now, how can a bumblebee enter this inhospitable-looking flower? If he did but know it, it keeps closed for his special benefit, having no fringes or hairs to entangle the feet of crawling pilferers, and no better way of protecting its nectar from rain and marauding butterflies that are not adapted to its needs. But he is a powerful fellow. Watch him alight on a cluster of blossoms, select the younger, nectar-bearing ones, that are distinctly marked white against a light-blue background at the mouth of the corolla for his special guidance. Old flowers from which the nectar has been removed turn deep reddish purple, and the white pathfinders become indistinct. With some difficulty, it is true, the bumblebee (B. Americanorum) thrusts his tongue through the valve of the chosen flower where the five plaited lobes overlap one another; then he pushes with all his might until his head having passed the entrance most of his body follows, leaving only his hind legs and the tip of his abdomen sticking out as he makes the circuit. He has much sense as well as muscle, and does not risk imprisonment in what must prove a tomb by a total and unnecessary disappearance within the bottle. Presently he backs out, brushes the pollen from his head and thorax into his baskets, and is off to fertilize an older, stigmatic flower with the few grains of quickening dust that must remain on his velvety head.

WILD BLUE PHLOX
(Phlox divaricata) Phlox family

Flowers - Pale lilac blue, slightly fragrant, borne on sticky pedicels, in loose, spreading clusters. Calyx with 5 long, sharp teeth. Corolla of 5 flat lobes, indented like the top of a heart, and united into a slender tube; 5 unequal, straight, short stamens in corolla tube; 1 pistil with 3 stigmas. Stem: to 2 ft. high, finely coated with sticky hairs above, erect or spreading, and producing leafy shoots from base. Leaves: Of flowering stem - opposite, oblong, tapering to a point; of sterile shoots - oblong or egg-shaped, not pointed, 1 to 2 in. long. Preferred habitat - Moist, rocky woods. Flowering Season - April-June. Distribution - Eastern Canada to Florida, Minnesota to Arkansas.

The merest novice can have no difficulty in naming the flower whose wild and cultivated relations abound throughout North America, the almost exclusive home of the genus, although it is to European horticulturists, as usual the first to see the possibilities in our native flowers, that we owe the gay hybrids in our gardens. Mr. Drummond, a collector from the Botanical Society of Glasgow, early in the thirties sent home the seeds of a species from Texas, which became the ancestor of the gorgeous annuals, the Drummond phloxes of commerce today; and although he died of fever in Cuba before the plants became generally known, not even his kinsman, the author of "Natural Law in the Spiritual World," has done more to immortalize the family name.

While the wild blue phlox is sometimes cultivated, it is the GARDEN PHLOX (P. paniculata), common in woods and thickets from Pennsylvania to Illinois and southward, that under a gardener's care bears the large terminal clusters of purple, magenta, crimson, pink, and white flowers abundant in old-fashioned, hardy borders. From these it has escaped so freely in many sections of the North and East as to be counted among the local wildflowers. Unless the young offshoots are separated from the parent and given a nook of their own, the flower quickly reverts to the original type. European cultivators claim that the most brilliant colors are obtained by crossing annual with perennial phloxes.

WILD SWEET WILLIAM (P. maculata), another perennial much sought by cultivators, loves the moisture of low woods and the neighborhood of streams in the Middle and Western States when it is free to choose its habitat; but it, too, has so freely escaped from gardens farther north into dry and dusty roadsides, that anyone who has passed the ruins of Hawthorne's little red cottage at Lenox, for example, and seen the way his wife's clump of white phlox under his study window has spread to cover an acre of hillside, would suppose it to be luxuriating in its favorite locality. This variety of the species (var. Candida) lacks the purplish flecks on stem and lower leaves responsible for the specific name of the type. Pinkish purple or pink blossoms are borne in a rather narrow, elongated panicle on the typical Sweet William.

Most members of the phlox family resort to the trick of coating the upper stem and the peduncles immediately below the flowers with a sticky secretion in which crawling insects, intent on pilfering sweets, meet their death, just as birds are caught on limed twigs. Butterflies, for whom phloxes have narrowed their tubes to the exclusion of most other insects, are their benefactors; but long-tongued bees and flies often seek their nectar. Indeed, the number of strictly butterfly-flowers is surprisingly small.

VIRGINIA COWSLIP; TREE or SMOOTH LUNGWORT; BLUE-BELLS
(Mertensia Virginica) Borage family

Flowers - Pinkish in bud, afterward purplish blue, fading to light blue; about 1 in. long, tubular, funnel form, the tube of corolla not crested; spreading or hanging on slender pedicels in showy, loose clusters at end of smooth stem from 1 to 2 ft. high; stamens 5, inserted on corolla; 1 pistil; ovary of 4 divisions. Leaves: Large, entire, alternate, veiny, oblong or obovate, the upper ones seated on stem; lower very large ones diminishing toward base into long petioles; at first rich, dark purple, afterward pale bluish gray. Fruit: 4 seed-like little nuts, leathery, wrinkled when mature. Preferred Habitat - Alluvial ground, low meadows, and along streams. Flowering Season - March-May. Distribution - Southern Canada to South Carolina and Kansas, west to Nebraska; most abundant in middle West.

Not to be outdone by its cousins the heliotrope and the forget-me-not, this lovely and far more showy spring flower has found its way into the rockwork and sheltered, moist nooks of many gardens, especially in England, where Mr. W. Robinson, who has appealed for its wider cultivation in that perennially charming book, "The English Flower Garden," says of the Mertensias: "There is something about them more beautiful in form of foliage and stem, and in the graceful way in which they rise to panicles of blue, than in almost any other family.... Handsomest of all is the Virginia cowslip." And yet Robinson never saw the alluvial meadows in the Ohio Valley blued with lovely masses of the plant in April.

A great variety of insects visit this blossom, which, being tubular, conducts them straight to the ample feast; but not until they have deposited some pollen brought from another flower on the stigma in their way. The anthers are too widely separated from the stigma to make self-fertilization likely. Occasionally one finds the cowslips perforated by clever bumblebees. As only the females, which are able to sip far deeper cups, are flying when they bloom, they must be either too mischievous or too lazy to drain them in the legitimate manner. Butterflies have only to stand on a flower, not to enter it, in order to sip nectar from the four glands that secrete it abundantly.

FORGET-ME-NOT; MOUSE-EAR; SCORPION GRASS; SNAKE GRASS; LOVE ME
(Myosotis Palustris) Borage family

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 threadlike; 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 association 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 assisted 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 center 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.

The SMALLER FORGET-ME-NOT (M. laxa), formerly accounted a mere variety of palustris, but now defined as a distinct species, is a native, and therefore may serve to show how its European relative here will deteriorate in the dryer atmosphere of the New World. Its tiny turquoise flowers, borne on long stems from a very loose raceme, gleam above wet, muddy places from Newfoundland and Eastern Canada to Virginia and Tennessee.

Even smaller still are the blue or white flowers of the FIELD FORGET-ME-NOT, SCORPION GRASS, or MOUSE-EAR (M. arvenis), whose stems and leaves are covered with bristly hairs. It blooms from August to July in dry places, even on hillsides, an unusual locality in which to find a member of this moisture-loving clan. All the flowers remain long in bloom, continually forming new buds on a lengthening stem, and leaving behind little empty green calices.

VIPER'S BUGLOSS; BLUE-WEED; VIPER'S HERB or GRASS; SNAKE-FLOWER; BLUE-THISTLE (Echium vulgare) Borage family

Flowers - Bright blue, afterward reddish purple, pink in the bud, numerous, clustered 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.

In England, from whose gardens this plant escaped long ago, a war of extermination that has been waged against the vigorous, beautiful weed by the farmers has at last driven it to the extremity of the island, where a few stragglers about Penzance testify to the vanquishing of what must once have been a mighty army. From England a few refugees reached here in i683, no one knows how; but they proved to be the vanguard of an aggressive and victorious host that quickly overran our open, hospitable country, as if to give vent to revenge for long years of persecution at the hands of Europeans. "It is a fact that all our more pernicious weeds, like our vermin, are of Old-World origin," says.John Burroughs. "...Perhaps the most notable thing about them, when compared with our native species, is their persistence, not to say pugnacity. They fight for the soil; they plant colonies here and there, and will not be rooted out. Our native weeds are for the most part shy and harmless, and retreat before civilization.... We have hardly a weed we can call our own."

Years ago, when simple folk believed God had marked plants with some sign to indicate the special use for which each was intended, they regarded the spotted stem of the bugloss, and its seeds shaped like a serpent's head, as certain indications that the herb would cure snake bites. Indeed, the genus takes its name from Echis, the Greek for viper.

Because it is showy and offers accessible nectar, a great variety of insects visit the blue-weed; Muller alone observed sixty-seven species about it. We need no longer wonder at its fertility. Of the five stamens one remains in the tube, while the other four project and form a convenient alighting place for visitors, which necessarily dust their under sides with pollen as they enter; for the red anthers were already ripe when the flower opened. Then, however, the short, immature pistil was kept below. After the stamens have shed their pollen and there can be no longer danger of self-fertilization, it gradually elongates itself beyond the point occupied by them, and divides into two little horns whose stigmatic surfaces an incoming pollen-laden insect cannot well fail to strike against. Cross-pollination is so thoroughly secured in this case that the plant has completely lost the power of fertilizing itself. Unwelcome visitors like ants, which would pilfer nectar without rendering any useful service in return, are warded off by the bristly, hairy foliage. Several kinds of female bees seek the bugloss exclusively for food for their larvae as well as for themselves, sweeping up the abundant pollen with their abdominal brushes as they feast without effort.

BLUE VERVAIN; WILD HYSSOP; SIMPLER'S JOY
(Verbena hastala) Vervain family

Flowers - Very small, purplish blue, in numerous slender, erect, compact spikes. Calyx 5-toothed; corolla tubular, unequally 5-lobed; 2 pairs of stamens; 1 pistil. Stem: 3 to 7 ft. high, rough, branched above, leafy, 4-sided. Leaves: Opposite, stemmed, lance-shaped, saw-edged, rough; lower ones lobed at base. Preferred Habitat - Moist meadows, roadsides, waste places. Flowering Season - June-September. Distribution - United States and Canada in almost every part.

Seeds below, a circle of insignificant purple-blue flowers in the center, and buds at the top of the vervain's slender spires do not produce a striking effect, yet this common plant certainly does not lack beauty. John Burroughs, ever ready to say a kindly, appreciative word for any weed, speaks of its drooping, knotted threads, that "make a pretty etching upon the winter snow." Bees, the vervain's benefactors, are usually seen clinging to the blooming spikes, and apparently sleep on them. Borrowing the name of simpler's joy from its European sister, the flower has also appropriated much of the tradition and folk-lore centered about that plant which herb-gatherers, or simplers, truly delighted to see, since none was once more salable.