Chapter VII: Part 7

There is little use trying to coax this shyest of sylvan flowers into our gardens where other members of its family, rhododendrons, laurels, and azaleas make themselves delightfully at home. It is wild as a hawk, an untamable creature that slowly pines to death when brought into contact with civilization. Greedy street venders, who ruthlessly tear up the plant by the yard, and others without even the excuse of eking out a paltry income by its sale, have already exterminated it within a wide radius of our Eastern cities. How curious that the majority of people show their appreciation of a flower's beauty only by selfishly, ignorantly picking every specimen they can find!

In many localities the arbutus sets no fruit, for it is still undergoing evolutionary changes looking toward the perfecting of an elaborate system to insure cross-fertilization. Already it has attained to perfume, nectar, and color to attract quantities of insects, chiefly flies and small female bees but in some flowers the anthers produce no pollen for them to carry, while others are filled with grains, yet all the stigmas in the neighboring clusters may be defective. The styles and the filaments are of several different lengths, showing a tendency toward trimorphism, perhaps, like the wonderful purple loosestrife; but at present the flower pursues a most wasteful method of distributing pollen, and in different sections of the country acts so differently that its phases are impossible to describe except to the advanced student. They may, however, be best summarized in the words of Professor Asa Gray: "The flowers are of two kinds, each with two modifications; the two main kinds characterized by the nature and perfection of the stigma, along with more or less abortion of the stamens; their modifications by the length of the style."

When our English cousins speak of the arbutus, they have in mind a very different species from ours. Theirs is the late flowering strawberry-tree, an evergreen shrub with clustering white blossoms and beautiful rough, red berries. Indeed, the name arbutus is derived from the Celtic word Arboise, meaning rough fruit.

LARGE or AMERICAN CRANBERRY (Oxycoccus macrocarpus; Vaccinium macrocarpon of Gray) Huckleberry family

Flowers - Light pink, about 1/2 in. across, nodding on slender pedicels from sides and tips of erect branches. Calyx round, 4-or 5-parted; corolla a long cone in bud, its four or five nearly separate, narrow petals turned far backward later; 8 or 10 stamens, the anthers united into a protruding cone, its hollow tubes shedding pollen by a pore at tip. Stem: Creeping or trailing, slender, woody, 1 to 3 ft. long, its leafy branches 8 in. high or less. Leaves: Small, alternate, oblong, evergreen, pale beneath, the edges rolled backward. Fruit: An oblong or ovoid, many seeded, juicy red berry (Oxycoccus = sour berry). Preferred Habitat - Bogs; sandy, swampy meadows. Flowering Season - June-August. Distribution - North Carolina, Michigan, and Minnesota northward and westward.

A hundred thousand people are interested in the berry of this pretty vine to one who has ever seen its flowers. Yet if the blossom were less attractive, to insects at least, and took less pains to shake out its pollen upon them as they cling to the cone to sip its nectar, few berries would accompany the festive Thanksgiving turkey. Cultivators of the cranberry know how important it is to have the flooded bogs well drained before the flowering season. Water (or ice) may cover the plants to the depth of a foot or more all winter and until the 10th of May; and during the late summer it is often advisable to overflow the bogs to prevent injury of the fine, delicate roots from drought, and to destroy the worm that is the plant's worst enemy; but until the flowers have wooed the bees, flies, and other winged benefactors, and fruit is well formed, every cultivator knows enough not to submerge his bog. With flowers under water there are no insect visitors, consequently no berries. Dense mats of the wiry vines should yield about one hundred and fifty bushels of berries to the acre, under skilful cultivation - a most profitable industry, since the cranberry costs less to cultivate, gather, and market than the strawberry or any of the small perishable fruits. Planted in muck and sand in the garden, the vines yield surprisingly good results. The Cape Cod Bell is the best known market berry. One of the interesting sights to the city loiterer about the New England coast in early autumn is the berry picking that is conducted on an immense scale. Men, women, and children drop all other work; whole villages are nearly depopulated while daylight lasts; temporary buildings set up on the edges of the bogs contain throngs of busy people sorting, measuring, and packing fruit; and lonely railroad stations, piled high with crates, give the branch line its heaviest freight business of the year.

SHOOTING STAR; AMERICAN COWSLIP; PRIDE OF OHIO
(Dodecatheon Meadia) Primrose family

Flowers - Purplish pink or yellowish white, the cone tipped with yellow; few or numerous, hanging on slender, recurved pedicels in an umbel at top of a simple scape 6 in. to 2 ft. high. Calyx deeply 5-parted; corolla of 5 narrow lobes bent backward and upward; the tube very short, thickened at throat, and marked with dark reddish-purple dots; 5 stamens united into a protruding cone; 1 pistil, protruding beyond them. Leaves: Oblong or spatulate 3 to 12 in. long, narrowed into petioles, all from fibrous roots. Fruit: A 5-valved capsule on erect pedicels. Preferred Habitat - Prairies, open woods, moist cliffs. Flowering Season - April-May. Distribution - Pennsylvania southward and westward, and from Texas to Manitoba.

Ages ago Theophrastus called an entirely different plant by this same scientific name, derived from dodeka = twelve, and theos = gods; and although our plant is native of a land unknown to the ancients, the fanciful Linnaeus imagined he saw in the flowers of its umbel a little congress of their divinities seated around a miniature Olympus! Who has said science kills imagination? These handsome, interesting flowers so familiar in the Middle West and Southwest, especially, somewhat resemble the cyclamen in oddity of form, indeed, these prairie wildflowers are not unknown in florists' shops in Eastern cities.

Many flowers like the shooting star, cyclamen, and nightshade, with protruding cones made up of united stamens, are so designed that, as the bees must cling to them while sucking nectar, they receive pollen jarred out from the end of the cone on their undersides. The reflexed petals serve three purposes: First, in making the flower more conspicuous; secondly, in facilitating access to nectar and pollen; and, finally, in discouraging crawling intruders. Where the short tube is thickened, the bee finds her foothold while she forces her tongue between the anther tips. The nectar is well concealed and quite deeply seated, thanks to the rigid cone. Few bee workers are flying at the shooting star's early blooming season. Undoubtedly the female bumblebees, which, by striking the protruding stigma before they jar out any pollen, cross-fertilize it, are the flower's benefactors; but one frequently sees the little yellow puddle butterfly clinging to the pretty blossoms.

Very different from the bright yellow cowslip of Europe is our odd, misnamed blossom.

BITTER-BLOOM; ROSE-PINK; SQUARE-STEMMED SABBATIA; ROSY CENTAURY
(Sabbatia angularis) Gentian family

Flowers - Clear rose pink, with greenish star in center, rarely white, fragrant, 1 1/2 in. broad or less, usually solitary on long peduncles at ends of branches. Calyx lobes very narrow; corolla of 5 rounded segments; stamens 5; style 2-cleft. Stem: Sharply 4-angled, 2 to 3 ft. high, with opposite branches, leafy. Leaves: Opposite, 5-nerved, oval, tapering at tip, and clasping stem by broad base. Preferred Habitat - Rich soil, meadows, thickets. Flowering Season - July-August. Distribution - New York to Florida, westward to Ontario, Michigan, and Indian Territory.

During the drought of midsummer the lovely rose-pink blooms inland with cheerful readiness to adapt itself to harder conditions than most of its moisture-loving kin will tolerate; but it may be noticed that although we may oftentimes find it growing in dry soil, it never spreads in such luxuriant clusters as when the roots are struck beside meadow runnels and ditches. Probably the plant would be commoner than it is about populous Eastern districts were it not so much sought after as a tonic medicine.

It was the Centaurea, represented here by the blue ragged sailor of gardens, and not our Centaury, a distinctly American group of plants, which, Ovid tells us, cured a wound in the foot of the Centaur Chiron, made by an arrow hurled by Hercules.

Three exquisite members of the Sabbatia tribe keep close to the Atlantic coast in salt meadows and marshes, along the borders of brackish rivers, and very rarely in the sand at the edges of fresh-water ponds a little way inland. From Maine to Florida they range, and less frequently are met along the shores of the Gulf of Mexico so far as Louisiana. How bright and dainty and are! Whole meadows are radiant with their blushing lovliness. Probably if they consented to live far away from the sea, they would lose some of the deep, clear pink from out their lovely petals, since all flowers show a tendency to brighten their colors as they approach the coast. In England some of the same wildflowers we have here are far deeper-hued, owing, no doubt to the fact that they live on a sea-girt, moisture-laden island, and also that the sun never scorches and blanches at the far north as it does in the United States.

As might be expected, blossoms so bright of hue as the marsh pinks attract many insects. Guided by the yellow eye that serves as a pathfinder to the nectary, they feast on the generour supply of sweets; but all unwittingly they must pay for their entertainment by carrying pollen from early to later flowers. Like so many other blossoms, the sabbatias guard themselves against the evils of self-fertilization by shedding their pollen before they mature and spread their two-cleft style, which is now ready to receive the golden, quickening dust on its stigmatic inner surfaces.

The SEA or MARSH PINK, or ROSE OF PLYMOUTH (S. stellaris), whose graceful alternate branching stem attains a height of two feet only under most favorable conditions, from July to September opens a succession of pink flowers that often fade to white. The yellow eye is bordered with carmine. They measure about one inch across, and are usually solitary at the ends of branches, or else sway on slender peduncles from the axils. The upper leaves are narrow and bract-like; those lower down gradually widen as they approach the root.

Similar to the Rose of Plymouth is the even more graceful SLENDER MARSH PINK (S. Campanulata - the S. gracilis of Gray), whose upper leaves are almost thread-like in their narrowness. Its five calyx lobes, too, are exceedingly slender, and often as long as the corolla lobes. One of our soldiers in Cuba, during the Spanish War, sent home to his sister in Massachusetts some of these same little flowers in a letter. "You would just love to see the marshes here," he wrote. "They are filled with beautiful little pink flowers. I wish I knew their names." That soldier had passed by New England marshes aglow with the blossoms all his life, but he had never noticed them until all his perceptions became quickened by the stimulus of travel and the excitement of war. How blind and deaf we all are in some directions; having eyes we see not, and ears we hear not, in the natural as in the spiritual realm.

No danger of confusing the LARGE MARSH PINK (S. dodecandra - S. chloroides of Gray) with its smaller, more branching relatives. It displays few flowers to a plant, but each measures two and a half inches or less across, and has from nine to twelve pink (or rarely white) petals. This sabbatia often chooses the sandy borders of ponds for its habitat.

SPREADING DOGBANE; FLY-TRAP DOGBANE; HONEY-BLOOM; BITTER-ROOT
(Apocynum androsaemifolium) Dogbane family

Flowers - Delicate pink, veined with a deeper shade, fragrant, bell-shaped, about 1/3 in. across, borne in loose terminal cymes. Calyx 5-parted; corolla of 5 spreading, recurved lobes united into a tube; within the tube 5 tiny, triangular appendages alternate with stamens; the arrow-shaped anthers united around the stigma and slightly adhering to it. Stem: 1 to 4 ft. high, with forking, spreading, leafy branches. Leaves: Opposite, entire-edged, broadly oval, narrow at base, paler, and more or less hairy below. Fruit: Two pods about 4 in. long. Preferred Habitat - Fields, thickets, beside roads, lanes, and walls. Flowering Season - June-July. Distribution - Northern part of British Possessions south to Georgia, westward to Nebraska.

Everywhere at the North we come across this interesting, rather shrubby plant, with its pretty but inconspicuous little rose-veined bells suggesting pink lilies-of-the-valley. Now that we have learned to read the faces of flowers, as it were, we instantly suspect by the color, fragrance, pathfinders, and structure that these are artful wilers, intent on gaining ends of their own through their insect admirers. What are they up to?

Let us watch. Bees, flies, moths, and butterflies, especially the latter, hover near. Alighting, the butterfly visitor unrolls his long tongue and inserts it where the five pink veins tell him to, for five nectar-bearing glands stand in a ring around the base of the pistil. Now, as he withdraws his slender tongue through one of the V-shaped cavities that make a circle of traps, he may count himself lucky to escape with no heavier toll imposed than pollen cemented to it. This granular dust he is required to rub off against the stigma of the next flower entered. Some bees, too, have been taken with the dogbane's pollen cemented to their tongues. But suppose a fly call upon this innocent-looking blossom? His short tongue, as well as the butterfly's, is guided into one of the V-shaped cavities after he has sipped; but, getting wedged between the trap's horny teeth, the poor little victim is held a prisoner there until he slowly dies of starvation in sight of plenty. This is the penalty he must pay for trespassing on the butterfly's preserves! The dogbane, which is perfectly adapted to the butterfly, and dependent upon it for help in producing fertile seed, ruthlessly destroys all poachers that are not big or strong enough to jerk away from its vise-like grasp. One often sees small flies and even moths dead and dangling by the tongue from the wicked little charmers. If the flower assimilated their dead bodies as the pitcher plant, for example, does those of its victims, the fly's fate would seem less cruel. To be killed by slow torture and dangled like a scarecrow simply for pilfering a drop of nectar is surely an execution of justice medieval in its severity.

In July the most splendid of our native beetles, the green dandy (Eumolpus auratus) fastens itself to the dogbane's foliage in numbers until often the leaves appear to be studded with these brilliant little jewels. "It is not easy," says William Hamilton Gibson, "to describe its burnished hue, which is either shimmering green, or peacock blue, or purplish-green, or refulgent ruby, according to the position in which it rests." But it is not golden, as its specific name would imply. It confines itself exclusively to the dogbane. To prevent capture, it has a trick of drawing up its legs and rolling off into the grass its body so cleverly matches.

>From the silky coma on which the small seeds float away from long pods to found new colonies, from the opposite leaves, milky juice, and certain structural resemblances in the flowers, one might guess this plant belonged to the milkweed tribe. Formerly it was so classed; and although the botanists have now removed its family one step away, the milkweed butterflies, especially the Monarch (Anosia plexippus), ignoring the arbitrary dividing line of man, still includes the dogbane on its visiting list. We know that this plant derived its name from the fact that it was considered poisonous to dogs; and we also know that all the tribe of milkweed butterflies are provided with protective secretions which are distasteful to birds and predaceous insects, enjoying their immunity from attack, it is thought, from the acrid, poisonous character of the foliage on which the caterpillars feed.

COMMON MIIKWEED or SILKWEED
(Asclepias Syriaca; A. cornuti of Gray) Milkweed family

Flowers - Dull pale greenish purple pink, or brownish pink, borne on pedicels, in many flowered, broad umbels. Calyx inferior, 5-parted; corolla deeply 5-cleft, the segments turned backward. Above them an erect, 5-parted crown, each part called a hood, containing a nectary, and with a tooth on either side, and an incurved horn projecting from within. Behind the crown the short, stout stamens, united by their filaments in a tube, are inserted on the corolla. Broad anthers united around a thick column of pistils terminating in a large, sticky, 5-angled disk. The anther sacs tipped with a winged membrane; a waxy, pear-shaped pollen-mass in each sac connected with the stigma in pairs or fours by a dark gland, and suspended by a stalk like a pair of saddle-bags. Stem: Stout, leafy, usually unbranched, 3 to 5 ft. high, juice milky. Leaves: Opposite, oblong, entire-edged smooth above, hairy below, 4 to 9 in. long. Fruit: 2 thick, warty pods, usually only one filled with compressed seeds attached to tufts of silky, white, fluffy hairs. Preferred Habitat - Fields and waste places, roadsides. Flowering Season - June-September Distribution - New Brunswick, far westward and southward to North Carolina and Kansas.

After the orchids, no flowers show greater executive ability, none have adopted more ingenious methods of compelling insects to work for them than the milkweeds. Wonderfully have they perfected their mechanism in every part until no member of the family even attempts to fertilize itself; hence their triumphal, vigorous march around the earth, the tribe numbering over nineteen hundred species located chiefly in those tropical and warm, temperate regions that teem with insect life.

Commonest of all with us is this rank weed, which possesses the dignity of a rubber plant. Much more attractive to human eyes, at least, than the dull, pale, brownish-pink umbels of flowers are its exquisite silky seed-tufts. But not so with insects. Knowing that the slightly fragrant blossoms are rich in nectar, bees, wasps, flies, beetles, and butterflies come to feast. Now, the visitor finding his alighting place slippery, his feet claw about in all directions to secure a hold, just as it was planned they should for in his struggles some of his feet must get caught in the fine little clefts at the base of the flower. His efforts to extricate his foot only draw it into a slot at the end of which lies a little dark-brown body. In a newly opened flower five of these little bodies may be seen between the horns of the crown, at equal distances around it. This tiny brown excrescence is hard and horny, with a notch in its face. It is continuous with and forms the end of the slot in which the visitor's foot is caught. Into this he must draw his foot or claw, and finding it rather tightly held, must give a vigorous jerk to get it free. Attached to either side of the little horny piece is a flattened yellow pollen-mass, and so away he flies with a pair of these pollinia, that look like tiny saddle-bags, dangling from his feet. One might think that such rough handling as many insects must submit to from flowers would discourage them from making any more visits; but the desire for food is a mighty passion. While the insect is flying off to another blossom, the stalk to which the saddlebags are attached twists until it brings them together, that, when his feet get caught in other slots, they may be in the position to get broken off in his struggles for freedom precisely where they will fertilize the stigmatic chambers. Now the visitor flies away with the stalks alone sticking to his claws. Bumblebees and hive-bees have been caught with a dozen pollen-masses dangling from a single foot. Outrageous imposition!

Does this wonderful mechanism always work to perfection? Alas! no. It is a common thing to find dead hive-bees and flies hanging from the flowers. While still struggling to escape, the unhappy victims will be attacked by ants, beetles, and spiders, or killed by heavy showers. Larger and stronger insects than honeybees are required to regularly effect pollination and free themselves, especially when they are so unfortunate as to catch several feet in the grooves. Doubtless it is the bumblebee that can transfer pollen with impunity; but very many other insects, not perfectly adapted to the flowers, occasionally benefit them. Among the large butterflies the Papilios, which suck with their wings in motion, are the most useful, because in using their legs to offset the motion of their wings they rapidly repeat those movements which are necessary to draw the pollinia from the anther cells and insert them in the stigmatic chambers of other flowers. "Large butterflies like Danais," says Professor Robertson, "hold their wings still in sucking, spending more time on an umbel, but generally carrying pollinia. Small butterflies are worse than useless. They remain long on the umbels sucking, but resting their feet superficially on the flowers.

Since several moths were found entrapped, pollination must often be brought about by night-flying Lepidoptera. As a rule, Diptera (flies) either do not transfer pollinia at all, or become hopelessly entangled when they do. "Occasionally pollen-masses are found on the tongues of insects, especially on those of bees and wasps, which move about with their unruly member sticking out. Probably no one has ever made the exhaustive and absorbingly interesting study of the milkweeds that Professor Robertson has.

Better than any written description of the milkweed blossom's mechanism is a simple experiment. If you have neither time nor patience to sit in the hot sun, magnifying glass in hand, and watch for an unwary insect to get caught, take an ordinary housefly, and hold it by the wings so that it may claw at one of the newly opened flowers from which no pollinia have been removed. It tries frantically to hold on, and with a little direction it may be led to catch its claws in the slots of the flower. Now pull it gently away, and you will find a pair of saddlebags slung over his foot by a slender curved stalk. If you are rarely skilful, you may induce your fly to withdraw the pollinia from all five slots on as many of his feet. And they are not to be thrown or scraped off, let the fly try as hard as he pleases. You may now invite the fly to take a walk on another flower in which he will probably leave one or more pollinia in its stigmatic cavities.

Dr. Kerner thought the milky juice in milkweed plants, especially abundant in the uppermost leaves and stems, serves to protect the flowers from useless crawling pilferers. He once started a number of ants to climb up a milky stalk. When they neared the summit, he noticed that at each movement the terminal hooks of their feet cut through the tender epiderm, and from the little clefts the milky juice began to flow, bedraggling their feet and the hind part of their bodies. "The ants were much impeded in their movements," he writes, "and in order to rid themselves of the annoyance, drew their feet through their mouths. Their movements however, which accompanied these efforts, simply resulted in making fresh fissures and fresh discharges of milky juice, so that the position of the ants became each moment worse and worse. Many escaped by getting to the edge of a leaf and dropping to the ground. Others tried this method of escape too late, for the air soon hardened the milky juice into a tough brown substance, and after this, all the strugglings of the ants to free themselves from the viscid matter were in vain." Nature's methods of preserving a flower's nectar for the insects that are especially adapted to fertilize it, and of punishing all useless intruders, often shock us yet justice is ever stern, ever kind in the largest sense.

If the asclepias really do kill some insects with their juice, others doubtless owe their lives to it. Among the "protected" insects are the milkweed butterflies and their caterpillars, which are provided with secretions that are distasteful to birds and predaceous insects. "These acrid secretions are probably due to the character of the plants upon which the caterpillars feed," says Dr. Holland, in his beautiful and invaluable "Butterfly Book." "Enjoying on this account immunity from attack, they have all, in the process of time, been mimicked by species in other genera which have not the same immunity." "One cannot stay long around a patch of milkweeds without seeing the monarch butterfly. (Anosia plexippus), that splendid, bright, reddish-brown winged fellow, the borders and veins broadly black, with two rows of white spots on the outer borders and two rows of pale spots across the tip of the fore wings. There is a black scent-pouch on the hind wings. The caterpillar, which is bright yellow or greenish yellow, banded with shining black, is furnished with black fleshy 'horns' fore and aft."

Like the dandelion, thistle, and other triumphant strugglers for survival, the milkweed sends its offspring adrift on the winds to found fresh colonies afar. Children delight in making pompons for their hats by removing the silky seed-tufts from pods before they burst, and winding them, one by one, on slender stems with fine thread. Hung in the sunshine, how charmingly fluffy and soft they dry!

Among the comparatively few butterfly flowers - although, of course, other insects not adapted to them are visitors - is the PURPLE MILKWEED (A. purpurasceus), whose deep magenta umbels are so conspicuous through the summer months. Hummingbirds occasionally seek it too. From Eastern Massachusetts to Virginia, and westward to the Mississippi, or beyond, it is to be found in dry fields, woods, and thickets.

The SWAMP MILKWEED (A. incarnata), on the other hand, rears its intense purplish-red or pinkish hoods in wet places. Its leaves are lance-shaped or oblong-lanceolate, whereas the purple milkweed's leaves are oblong or ovate-oblong. This is a smooth plant; and a similar species once reckoned as a mere variety (A. pulchra) is the HAIRY MILKWEED. It differs chiefly in having some hairs on the under side of its leaves, and a great many hairs on its stem. Both plants bear erect, rather slender, tapering pods.

The POKE or TALL MILKWEED (A. exaltata - A. phytolaecoides of Gray) may attain a height of six feet if the moist soil in which it grows be exactly to its liking. Drooping or spreading umbels of flowers whose corolla segments are pale purplish green, and whose crown is clear ivory white or pink, appear from June to August from Maine to Georgia and far westward. Sometimes the tapering oblong leaves may be nine inches long. The erect seedpods are drawn out to an unusually long point.

One may always distinguish the low-growing FOUR-LEAVED MILKWEED (A. quadrifolia) from its relatives of ranker growth by its general air of refinement, as well as by the two pairs of thin, tapering leaves that grow in an upright whorl near the middle of the slender stem. Usually there are no leaves on the lower part. Small terminal umbels of delicate pink and white fragrant flowers, which appear from May till July, give place to very narrow pointed pods in late summer. From Maine to Ontario southward to North Carolina and Arkansas is its range, in woods and thickets chiefly.

HEDGE or GREAT BINDWEED; WILD MORNING-GLORY; RUTLAND BEAUTY; BELL-BIND; LADY'S NIGHTCAP

(Convolvulus sepium; Calystegia sepium of Gray) Morning-glory
family

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. In Europe the plant's range is supposed to be limited to that of a crepuscular moth (Sphinx convolvuli), and where that benefactor is rare, as in England, the bindweed sets few seeds where it does not occur, as in Scotland, this convolvulus is seldom found wild; whereas in Italy Delpino tells of catching numbers of the moths in hedges overgrown with the common plant, by standing with thumb and forefinger over a flower, ready to close it when the insect has entered. We know that every floral clock is regulated by the hours of flight of its insect friends. When they have retired, the flowers close to protect nectar and pollen from useless pilferers. In this country various species of bees chiefly fertilize the bindweed blossoms. Guided by the white streaks, or pathfinders, they crawl into the deep tube and sip through one of the five narrow passages leading to the nectary. A transverse section of the flower cut to show these five passages standing in a circle around the central ovary looks like the end of a five-barreled revolver. Insects without a suitably long proboscis are, of course, excluded by this arrangement.

>From July until hard frost look for that exquisite little beetle, Cassida 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 space 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 luster. Even on the morning-glory in our gardens we may sometimes find these jeweled 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.

The small FIELD BINDWEED (C. arvensis), a common immigrant from Europe, which has taken up its abode from Nova Scotia and Ontario southward to New Jersey, and westward to Kansas, trails over the ground with a deathless persistency which fills farmers with dismay. It is like a small edition of the hedge bind weed, only its calyx lacks the leaf-like bracts at its base, its slender stem rarely exceeds two feet in length, and the little pink and white flowers often grow in pairs. Their habit of closing both in the evening and in rainy weather indicates that they are adapted for diurnal insects only; but if the bell hang down, or if the corolla drop off, the pollen must fall on the stigma and effect self-fertilization. Many more insects visit this flower than the large bindweed, attracted by the peculiar fragrance, and led by the white streaks to the orange-colored under surface of the ovary, where the nectar lies concealed. Stigmas and anthers mature at the same time; but as the former are slightly the longer, they receive pollen brought from another flower before the visitor gets freshly dusted.

GROUND OR MOSS PINK
(Phlox subulata) Phlox family

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.

Another low ground species is the CRAWLING PHLOX (P. reptans). It rarely exceeds six inches in height; nevertheless its larger pink, purple, or white flowers, clustered after the manner of the tall garden phloxes, are among the most showy to be found in the spring woods. A number of sterile shoots with obovate leaves, tapering toward the base, rise from the runners and set off the brilliant blossoms among their neat foliage. From Pennsylvania southward and westward is its range, especially in mountainous regions; but this plant, too, was long ago transplanted from Nature's gardens into man's.

Large patches of the DOWNY PHLOX (P. pilosa) brighten dry prairie land with its pinkish blossoms in late spring. Britton and Brown's botany gives its range as "Ontario to Manitoba, New Jersey, Florida, Arkansas, and Texas." The plant does its best to attain a height of two feet; usually its flowers are much nearer the ground. Butterflies, the principal visitors of most phloxes, although long-tongued bees and even flies can sip their nectar, are ever seen hovering above them and transferring pollen, although in this species the style is so short pollen must often fall into the tube and self-fertilize the stigma. To protect the flowers from useless crawling visitors, the calices are coated with sticky matter, and the stems are downy.

OBEDIENT PLANT; FALSE DRAGONHEAD; LION'S HEART
(Physostegia Virginiana) Mint family

Flowers - Pale magenta, purplish rose, or flesh-colored, often variegated with white, 1 in. long or over, in dense spikes from 4 to 8 in. long. Calyx a 5-toothed oblong bell, swollen and remaining open in fruit, held up by lance-shaped bracts. Corolla tubular and much enlarged where it divides into 2 lips, the upper lip concave, rounded, entire, the lower lip 3 lobed. Stamens 4, in two pairs under roof of upper lip, the filaments hairy; 1 pistil. Stem: 1 to 4 ft. high, simple or branched above, leafy. Leaves: Opposite, firm, oblong to oblong-lanceolate, narrowing at base, deeply saw-edged. Preferred Habitat - Moist soil. Flowering Season - July-September. Distribution - Quebec to the Northwest Territory, southward to the Gulf of Mexico as far west as Texas.

Bright patches of this curious flower enliven railroad ditches, gutters, moist meadows and brooksides - curious, for it has the peculiarity of remaining in any position in which it is placed. With one puff a child can easily blow the blossoms to the opposite side of the spike, there to stay in meek obedience to his will. "The flowers are made to assume their definite position," says Professor W. W. Bailey in the "Botanical Gazette," "by friction of the pedicels against the subtending bracts. Remove the bracts, and they at once fall limp."

Qf course the plant has some better reason for this peculiar obedience to every breath that blows than to amuse windy-cheeked boys and girls. Is not the ready movement useful during stormy weather in turning the mouth of the flower away from driving rain, and in fair days, when insects are abroad, in presenting its gaping lips where they can best alight? We all know that insects, like birds, make long flights most easily with the wind, but in rising and alighting it is their practice to turn against it. When bees, for example, are out for food on windy days, and must make frequent stops for refreshment among the flowers, they will be found going against the wind, possibly to catch the whiffs of fragrance borne on it that guide them to feast, but more likely that they may rise and alight readily. One always sees bumblebees conspicuous among the obedient plant's visitors. After the anthers have shed their pollen - and tiny teeth at the edges of the outer pair aid its complete removal by insects - the stigma comes up to occupy their place under the roof. Certainly this flower; which is so ill-adapted to fertilize itself, has every reason to court insect messengers in fair and stormy 'weather.

MOTHERWORT
(Leonurus Cardiaca) Mint family.

Flowers - Dull purple pink, pale purple, or white, small, clustered in axils of upper leaves. Calyx tubular, bell-shaped, with 5 rigid awl-like teeth; corolla 2-lipped, upper lip arched, woolly without; lower lip 3-lobed, spreading, mottled; the tube with oblique ring of hairs inside. Four twin-like stamens, anterior pair longer, reaching under upper lip; style 2-cleft at summit. Stem: 2 to 5 ft. tall, straight, branched, leafy, purplish. Leaves: Opposite, on slender petioles; lower ones rounded, 2 to 4 in. broad, palmately cut into 2 to 5 lobes; upper leaves narrower, 3-cleft or 3- toothed. Preferred Habitat - Waste places near dwellings. Flowering Season - June-September. Distribution - Nova Scotia southward to North Carolina, west to Minnesota and Nebraska. Naturalized from Europe and Asia.

"One is tempted to say that the most human plants, after all, are the weeds," says John Burroughs. "How they cling to man and follow him around the world, and spring up wherever he sets foot How they crowd around his barns and dwellings, and throng his garden, and jostle and override each other in their strife to be near him! Some of them are so domestic and familiar, and so harmless withal, that one comes to regard them with positive affection. Motherwort, catnip, plantain, tansy, wild mustard - what a homely, human look they have! They are an integral part of every old homestead. Your smart, new place will wait long before they draw near it."

How the bees love this generous, old-fashioned entertainer! One nearly always sees them clinging to the close whorls of flowers that are strung along the stem, and of course transferring pollen, in recompense, as they journey on. A more credulous generation imported the plant for its alleged healing virtues. What is the significance of its Greek name, meaning a lion's tail? Let no one suggest, by a far-stretched metaphor, that our grandmothers, in Revolutionary days, enjoyed pulling it to vent their animosity against the British.

WILD BERGAMOT
(Monarda fisiulosa) Mint family

Flowers - Extremely variable, purplish, lavender, magenta, rose, pink, yellowish pink, or whitish, dotted; clustered in a solitary, nearly flat terminal head. Calyx tubular, narrow, 5-toothed, very hairy within. Corolla 1 to 1 1/2 in. long, tubular, 2-lipped, upper lip erect, toothed; lower lip spreading, 3-lobed, middle lobe longest; 2 anther-bearing stamens protruding; 1 pistil; the style 2-lobed. Stem: 2 to 3 ft. high, rough, branched. Leaves: Opposite, lance-shaped, saw-edged, on slender petioles, aromatic, bracts and upper leaves whitish or the color of flower. Preferred Habitat - Open woods, thickets, dry rocky hills. Flowering Season - June-September. Distribution - Eastern Canada and Maine, westward to Minnesota, south to Gulf of Mexico.

Half a dozen different shades of bloom worn by this handsome, robust perennial afford an excellent illustration of the trials that beset one who would arbitrarily group flowers according to color. If the capricious blossom shows a decided preference for any shade, it is for magenta, the royal purple of the ancients, scarcely tolerated now except by Hoboken Dutch and the belles of the kitchen, whose Sunday hats are resplendent with intense effects.

Only a few bergamot flowers open at a time; the rest of the slightly rounded head, thickly set with hairy calices, looks as if it might be placed in a glass cup and make an excellent pen wiper. If the cultivated human eye (and stomach) revolt at magenta, It is ever a favorite shade with butterflies. They flutter in ecstasy over the gay flowers; indeed, they are the principal visitors and benefactors, for the erect corollas, exposed organs, and level-topped heads are well adapted to their requirements. That exquisite little feathered jewel, the ruby-throated hummingbird, flashes about the bright patches an instant, and is gone; but he too has paid for his feast in transferring pollen. Insects which land anywhere they please on the flowers, receive pollen on various places, just as in the case of the scarlet Oswego tea, of similar formation. Small bees, which if unable to drain the brimming tubes of nectar, at least sip from them and help themselves to pollen also, without paying the flower's price; and certain mischievous wasps, forever bent on nipping holes in tubes they cannot honestly drain, give a score of other pilferers an opportunity to steal sweets.

SNAKE-HEAD; TURTLE-HEAD; BALMONY; SHELL-FLOWER; COD-HEAD
(Chelone glabra) Figwort family

Flowers - White tinged with pink, or all white, about 1 in. long, growing in a dense terminal cluster. Calyx 5-parted, bracted at base; corolla irregular, broadly tubular, 2-lipped; upper lip arched, swollen, slightly notched; lower lip 3-lobed, spreading, woolly within; 5 stamens, sterile, 4 in pairs, anther-bearing, woolly; 1 pistil. Stem: 1 to 3 ft. high, erect, smooth, simple, leafy. Leaves: Opposite, lance-shaped, saw-edged. Preferred Habitat - Ditches, beside streams, swamps. Flowering Season - July-September. Distribution - Newfoundland to Florida, and half way across the continent.

It requires something of a struggle for even so strong and vigorous an insect as the bumblebee to gain admission to this inhospitable-looking flower before maturity; and even he abandons the attempt over and over again in its earliest stage before the little heart-shaped anthers are prepared to dust him over. As they mature, it opens slightly, but his weight alone is insufficient to bend down the stiff, yet elastic, lower lip. Energetic prying admits first his head, then he squeezes his body through, brushing past the stamens as he finally disappears inside. At the moment when he is forcing his way in, causing the lower lip to spring up and down, the eyeless turtle seems to chew and chew until the most sedate beholder must smile at the paradoxical show. Of course it is the bee that is feeding, though the flower would seem to be masticating the bee with the keenest relish The counterfeit tortoise soon disgorges its lively mouthful, however, and away flies the bee, carrying pollen on his velvety back to rub on the stigma of an older flower. After the anthers have shed their pollen and become effete, the stigma matures, and occupies their place. By this time the flower presents a wider entrance, and as the moisture-loving plant keeps the nectaries abundantly filled, what is to prevent insects too small to come in contact with anthers and stigma in the roof from pilfering to their heart's content? The woolly throat discourages many, to be sure; but the turtle-head, like its cousins the beard-tongues, has a sterile fifth stamen, whose greatest use is to act as a drop-bar across the base of the flower. The long-tongued bumblebee can get his drink over the bar, but smaller, unwelcome visitors are literally barred out.

If bees are the preferred visitors of the turtle-head, why do we find the Baltimore butterfly, that very beautiful, but freaky, creature (Melitaea phaeton) hovering near? - that is, when we find it at all; for where it is present, it swarms, and keeps away from other localities altogether. On the under side of the leaves we shall often see patches of its crimson eggs. Later the caterpillars use the plant as their main, if not exclusive, food store. They are the innocent culprits which nine times out of ten mutilate the foliage.

LARGE PURPLE GERARDIA
(Gerardia purpurea) Figwort family

Flowers - Bright purplish pink, deep magenta, or pale to whitish, about 1 in. long and broad, growing along the rigid, spreading branches. Calyx 5-toothed; corolla funnel-form, the tube much inflated above and spreading into 5 unequal, rounded lobes, spotted within, or sometimes downy; 4 stamens in pairs, the filaments hairy; 1 pistil. Stem: 1 to 2 1/2 ft. high, slender, branches erect or spreading. Leaves: Opposite, very narrow, 1 to 1 1/2 in. long. Preferred Habitat - Low fields and meadows; moist, sandy soil. Flowering Season - August-October. Distribution - Northern United States to Florida, chiefly along Atlantic coast.

Low-lying meadows gay with gerardias were never seen by that quaint old botanist and surgeon, John Gerarde, author of the famous "Herball or General Historie of Plants," a folio of nearly fourteen hundred pages, published in London toward the close of Queen Elizabeth's reign. He died without knowing how much he was to be honored by Linnaeus in giving his name to this charming American genus.

Large patches of the lavender-pink gerardia, peeping above the grass, make the wayfarer pause to feast his eyes, while the practical bee, meanwhile, takes a more substantial meal within the spreading funnels. It is his practice to hang upside down while sucking, using the hairs on the filaments as footholds. Naturally he receives the pollen on his underside - just where it will be rubbed off against the stigma impeding his entrance to the next funnel visited. Any of the very dry pollen that may have fallen on the hairy filaments drops upon him.

"And 'tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes,"

chanted Wordsworth. It is a special pity to gather the gerardias, which, as they grow, seem to enjoy life to the full, and when picked, to be so miserable they turn black as they dry. Like their relatives the foxgloves, they are difficult to transplant, because it is said they are more or less parasitic, fastening their roots on those of other plants. When robbery becomes flagrant, Nature brands sinners in the vegetable kingdom by taking away their color, and perhaps their leaves, as in the case of the broom-rape and Indian pipe; but the fair faces of the gerardias and foxgloves give no hint of the petty thefts committed under cover of darkness in the soil below.

The SMALL-FLOWERED GERARDIA (G. Paupercula) so like the preceding species it was once thought to be a mere variety, ranges westward as far as Wisconsin, especially about the Great Lakes. But it is a lower plant, with more erect branches, smaller flowers, quite woolly within, and with a decided preference for bogs as well as low meadows.

In salt marshes along the Atlantic Coast and the Gulf of Mexico, from Maine to Louisiana, the SEA-SIDE GERARDIA (G. maritima) flowers in midsummer, or a few weeks ahead of the autumnal, upland species. The plant, which rarely exceeds a foot in height, is sometimes only four inches above ground; and although at the North the paler magenta blossoms are only about half the length of the purple gerardias, in the South they are sometimes quite as long.

In dry woods and thickets, on banks and hills from Quebec to Georgia, and westward to the Mississippi we find the SLENDER GERARDIA (G. tenuifolia), its pale magenta, spotted, compressed corolla about half an inch long; its very slender, low stem set with exceedingly narrow leaves.

TWIN-FLOWER; GROUND VINE
(Linnaea borealis) Honeysuckle family

Flowers - Delicate pink or white tinged with rose, bell-shaped, about 1/2 in. long, fragrant, nodding in pairs on slender, curved pedicels from an erect peduncle, 2-bracted where they join. Calyx 5-toothed, sticky; corolla 5-lobed, bell-shaped, hairy within; 4 stamens in pairs inserted near base of tube; 1 pistil. Stem: Trailing, 6 in. to 2 ft. long; the branches erect. Leaves: Opposite, rounded, petioled, evergreen. Preferred Habitat - Deep, cool, mossy woods. Flowering Season - May-July. Distribution - Northern parts of America, Europe, and Asia. In the United States southward as far as the mountains of Maryland, and the Sierra Nevadas in California.

With the consent of modest Linnaeus himself, Dr. Gronovius selected this typical woodland blossom to transmit the great master's flame to posterity -

"Monument of the man of flowers."

But small and shy as it is, does Nature's garden contain a lovelier sight than scores of these deliciously fragrant pink bells swaying above a carpet of the little evergreen leaves in the dim aisle of some deep, cool, lonely forest? Trailing over prostrate logs and mossy rocks, racing with the partridge vine among the ferns and dwarf cornels, the plant sends up "twin-born heads" that seem more fair and sweet than the most showy pampered darlings of the millionaire's conservatory. Little wonder that Linnaeus loved these little twin sisters, or that Emerson enshrined them in his verse.

Contrary to popular impression, this vine, that suggests the dim old forest and exhales the very breath of the spring woods, will consent to run about our rock gardens, although it seems almost a sacrilege to move it from natural surroundings so impressively beautiful. Unlike the arbutus, which remains ever a wildling, pining slowly to death on close contact with civilization, the twin-flower thrives in light, moist garden soil where the sun peeps for a little while only in the morning. By nodding its head the flower protects its precious contents from rain, the hairs inside exclude small pilferers; but bees, attracted by the fragrance and color, are guided to the nectary by five dark lines and a patch of orange color near it.

JOE-PYE WEED; TRUMPET WEED; PURPLE THOROUGHWORT; GRAVEL or KIDNEY-ROOT; TALL or PURPLE BONESET (Eupatorium purpureum) Thistle family

Flower-heads - Pale or dull magenta or lavender pink, slightly fragrant, of tubular florets only, very numerous, in large, terminal, loose, compound clusters, generally elongated. Several series of pink overlapping bracts form the oblong involucre from which the tubular floret and its protruding fringe of style-branches arise. Stem: 3 to 10 ft. high, green or purplish, leafy, usually branching toward top. Leaves: In whorls of 3 to 6 (usually 4), oval to lance-shaped, saw-edged, petioled, thin, rough. Preferred Habitat - Moist soil, meadows, woods, low ground. Flowering Season - August-September. Distribution - New Brunswick to the Gulf of Mexico, westward to Manitoba and Texas.

Towering above the surrounding vegetation of low-lying meadows, this vigorous composite spreads clusters of soft, fringy bloom that, however deep or pale of tint, are ever conspicuous advertisements, even when the goldenrods, sunflowers, and asters enter into close competition for insect trade. Slight fragrance, which to the delicate perception of butterflies is doubtless heavy enough, the florets' color and slender tubular form indicate an adaptation to them, and they are by far the most abundant visitors, which is not to say that long-tongued bees and flies never reach the nectar and transfer pollen, for they do. But an excellent place for the butterfly collector to carry his net is to a patch of Joe-Pye weed in September. As the spreading style-branches that fringe each tiny floret are furnished with hairs for three-quarters of their length, the pollen caught in them comes in contact with the alighting visitor. Later, the lower portion of the style-branches, that is covered with stigmatic papillae along the edge, emerges from the tube to receive pollen carried from younger flowers when the visitor sips his reward. If the hairs still contain pollen when the stigmatic part of the style is exposed, insects self-fertilize the flower; and if in stormy, weather no insects are flying, the flower is nevertheless able to fertilize itself, because the hairy fringe must often come in contact with the stigmas of neighboring florets. It is only when we study flowers with reference to their motives and methods that we understand why one is abundant and another rare. Composites long ago utilized many principles of success in life that the triumphant Anglo-Saxon carries into larger affairs today.

Joe-Pye, an Indian medicine-man of New England, earned fame and fortune by curing typhus fever and other horrors with decoctions made from this plant.

COMMON BURDOCK; COCKLE-BUR; BEGGARS BUTTONS; CLOT-BUR; CUCKOO BUTTON (Arctium minus; Lappa officinalis: var. minor of Gray) Thistle family

Flower-heads - Composite of tubular florets only, about 1/2 in. broad; magenta varying to purplish or white; the prominent round involucre of many overlapping leathery bracts, tipped with hooked bristles. Stem: 2 to 5 ft. high, simple or branching, coarse. Leaves: Large, the lower ones often 1 ft. long, broadly ovate, entire edged, pale or loosely cottony beneath, on hollow petioles. Preferred Habitat - Waste ground, waysides, fields, barnyards. Flowering Season - July-October. Distribution - Common throughout our area. Naturalized from Europe.