Wild Flowers Part 14

Yet no plant, however economically inclined, can afford to deteriorate its species through self-fertilization; therefore, to overcome the evils of in-breeding, the wood-sorrel, like other plants that bear cleistogamous flowers, takes special pains to produce showy blossoms to attract insects, on which they absolutely depend to transfer their pollen from flower to flower.

These have their organs so arranged as to make self-fertilization impossible.

Every child knows how the wood-sorrel "goes to sleep" by drooping its three leaflets until they touch back to back at evening, regaining the horizontal at sunrise - a performance most scientists now agree protects the peculiarly sensitive leaf from cold by radiation. During the day, as well, seedling, scape, and leaves go through some interesting movements, closely followed by Darwin in his "Power of Movement in Plants," which should be read by all interested.

Oxalis, the Greek for sour, applies to all sorrels because of their acid juice; but acetosella = vinegar salt, the specific name of this plant, indicates that from it druggists obtain salt of lemons. Twenty pounds of leaves yield between two and three ounces of oxalic acid by crystallization. Names locally given the plant in the Old World are wood sour or sower, cuckoo's meat, sour trefoil, and shamrock - for this is St. Patrick's own flower, the true shamrock of the ancient Irish, some claim.

Alleluia, another folk-name, refers to the joyousness of the Easter season, when the plant comes into bloom in England.

VIOLET WOOD-SORREL (Oxalis violacea) Wood-sorrel family

Flowers - Pinkish purple, lavender, or pale magenta; less than 1 in. long; borne on slender stems in umbels or forking cl.u.s.ters, each containing from 3 to 12 flowers. Calyx of 5 obtuse sepals; 5 petals; 10 (5 longer, 5 shorter) stamens; 5 styles persistent above 5-celled ovary. Stem: From brownish, scaly bulb 4 to 9 in.

high. Leaves: About 1 in. wide, compounded of 3 rounded, clover-like leaflets with prominent midrib, borne at end of slender petioles, springing from root.

Preferred Habitat - Rocky and sandy woods.

Flowering Season - May-June.

Distribution - Northern United States to Rocky Mountains, south to Florida and New Mexico; more abundant southward.

Beauty of Leaf and blossom is not the only attraction possessed by this charming little plant. As a family the wood-sorrels have great interest for botanists since Darwin devoted such exhaustive study to their power of movement, and many other scientists have described the several forms a.s.sumed by perfect flowers of the same species to secure cross-fertilization. Some members of the clan also bear blind flowers, which have been described in the account of the white wood-sorrel given above. Even the rudimentary leaves of the seedlings "go to sleep" at evening, and during the day are in constant movement up and down. The stems, too, are restless; and as for the mature leaves, every child knows how they droop their three leaflets back to back against the stem at evening, elevating them to the perfect horizontal again by day. Extreme sensitiveness to light has been thought to be the true explanation of so much activity, and yet this is not a satisfactory theory in many cases. It is certain that drooping leaves suffer far less from frost than those whose upper surfaces are flatly exposed to the zenith. This view that the sleep of leaves saves them from being chilled at night by radiation is Darwin's own, supported by innumerable experiments; and probably it would have been advanced by Linnaeus, too, since so many of his observations in "Somnus Plantarum" verify the theory, had the principle of radiation been discovered in his day.

The violet wood-sorrel produces two sorts of perfect flowers reciprocally adapted to each other, but on different plants in the same neighborhood. The two are essentially alike, except in arrangement of stamens and pistil; one flower having high anthers and low stigmas, the other having lower anthers and higher stigmas; and as the high stigmas are fertile only when pollenized with grains from a flower having high anthers, it is evident insect aid to transfer pollen is indispensable here. Small bees, which visit these blossoms abundantly, are their benefactors; although there is nothing to prevent pollen from falling on the stigmas of the short-styled form. Hildebrand proved that productiveness is greatest, or exists only, after legitimate fertilization. To accomplish cross-pollination, many plants bear flowers of opposite s.e.xes on different individuals; but the violet wood-sorrel's plan, utilized by the bluet and partridge-vine also, has the advantage in that both kinds of its flowers are fruitful.

COMMON, FIELD, or PURPLE MILKWORT; PURPLE POLYGALA (Polygala viridescens; P. sanguinca of Gray) Milkwort family

Flowers - Numerous, very small, variable; bright magenta, pink, or almost red, or pale to whiteness, or greenish, cl.u.s.tered in a globular clover-like head, gradually lengthening to a cylindric spike. Stem: 6 to 15 in. high, smooth, branched above, leafy.

Leaves: Alternate, narrowly oblong, entire.

Preferred Habitat - Fields and meadows, moist or sandy.

Flowering Season - June-September.

Distribution - Southern Canada to North Carolina, westward to the Mississippi.

When these bright clover-like heads and the inconspicuous greenish ones grow together, the difference between them is so striking it is no wonder Linnaeus thought they were borne by two distinct species, sanguinea and viridescens, whereas they are now known to be merely two forms of the same flower. At first glance one might mistake the irregular little blossom for a member of the pea family; two of the five very unequal sepals - not petals - are colored wings. These bright-hued calyx-parts overlap around the flower-head like tiles on a roof. Within each pair of wings are three petals united into a tube, split on the back, to expose the vital organs to contact with the bee, the milkwort's best friend.

Plants of this genus were named polygala, the Greek for much milk, not because they have milky juice - for it is bitter and clear - but because feeding on them is supposed to increase the flow of cattle's milk.

In sandy swamps, especially near the coast from Maine to the Gulf, and westward to the Mississippi, grows the MARSH or CROSS-LEAVED MILKWORT (P. cruciata). Most of its leaves, especially the lower ones, are in whorls of four, and from July to September its dense, bright purple-pink, white, or greenish flower-heads, the wings awn-pointed, are seated on the ends of the square branching stem of this low, mossy little plant.

FRINGED MILKWORT or POLYGALA; FLOWERING WINTERGREEN; GAY WINGS (Polygala paucifolia) Milkwort family

Flowers - Purplish rose, rarely white, showy, over 1/2 in. long, from 1 to 4 on short, slender peduncles from among upper leaves.

Calyx of 5 unequal sepals, of which 2 are wing-like and highly colored like petals. Corolla irregular, its crest finely fringed; 6 stamens; pistil. Also pale, pouch-like, cleistogamous flowers underground. Stem: Prostrate, 6 to 15 in. long, slender, from creeping rootstock, sending up flowering shoots 4 to 7 in. high.

Leaves: Cl.u.s.tered at summit, oblong, or pointed egg-shaped, 1 1/2 in. long or less; those on lower part of shoots scale-like.

Preferred habitat - Moist, rich woods, pine lands, light soil.

Flowering Season - May-July.

Distribution - Northern Canada, southward and westward to Georgia and Illinois.

Gay companies of these charming, bright little blossoms hidden away in the woods suggest a swarm of tiny mauve b.u.t.terflies that have settled among the wintergreen leaves. Unlike the common milkwort and many of its kin that grow in clover-like heads, each one of the gay wings has beauty enough to stand alone, Its oddity of structure, its lovely color and enticing fringe, lead one to suspect it of extraordinary desire to woo some insect that will carry its pollen from blossom to blossom and so enable the plant to produce cross-fertilized seed to counteract the evil tendencies resulting from the more prolific self-fertilized cleistogamous flowers buried in the ground below. It has been said that the fringed polygala keeps "one flower for beauty and one for use"; "one playful flower for the world, another for serious use and posterity"; but surely the showy flowers, the "giddy sisters," borne by all cleistogamous species to save them from degenerating through close inbreeding, are no idle, irresponsible beauties. Let us watch a b.u.mblebee as she alights on the convenient fringe which edges the lower petal of this milkwort. Now the weight of her body so depresses the keel, or tubular petals, wherein the stamens and pistil lie protected from the rain and useless insects, that as soon as it is pressed downward a spoon-tipped pistil pushes out the pollen through the slit on the top on the bee's abdomen. The stigmatic surface of the pistil is on the opposite side of the spoon, nearest the base of the flower, to guard against self-pollination. After the pollen has been removed, a b.u.mblebee, already dusted from other blossoms, must leave some on the stigma as she sucks the nectar.

Indeed, every feature possessed by this pretty flower has been developed for the most serious purpose of life - the salvation of the species.

Only locally common throughout a wide area, embracing the eastern half of the United States and Canada, is the RACEMED MILKWORT (P.

polygama), whose small, purple-pink, but showy flowers, cl.u.s.tered along the upper part of numerous leafy stems, are found in dry soil during June and July. Like the fringed milkwort, this one bears many cleistogamous, or blind flowers, on underground branches, flowers that always set an abundance of fertile self-planted seed in case of failure to form any on the part of their showy sisters, which are utterly dependent upon the bee's ministrations. During prolonged stormy weather few insects are abroad.

SWAMP ROSE-MALLOW; MALLOW ROSE (Hibiscus Moscheutos) Mallow family

Flowers - Very large, clear rose pink, sometimes white, often with crimson center, 4 to 7 in. across, solitary, or cl.u.s.tered on peduncles at summit of stems. Calyx 5-cleft, subtended by numerous narrow bractlets; 5 large, veined petals; stamens united into a valvular column bearing anthers on the outside for much of its length; 1 pistil partly enclosed in the column, and with five b.u.t.ton-tipped stigmatic branches above. Stem: 4 to 7 ft. tall, stout, from perennial root. Leaves: 3 to 7 in. long, tapering, pointed, egg-shaped, densely white, downy beneath lower leaves, or sometimes all, lobed at middle.

Preferred Habitat - Brackish marshes, riversides, lake sh.o.r.es, saline situations.

Flowering Season - August-September.

Distribution - Ma.s.sachusetts to the Gulf of Mexico, westward to Louisiana; found locally in the interior, but chiefly along Atlantic seaboard.

Stately ranks of these magnificent flowers, growing among the tall sedges and "cat-tails" of the marshes, make the most insensate traveler exclaim at their amazing loveliness. To reach them one must don rubber boots and risk sudden seats in the slippery ooze; nevertheless, with spade in hand to give one support, it is well worthwhile to seek them out and dig up some roots to transplant to the garden. Here, strange to say, without salt soil or more water than the average garden receives from showers and hose, this handsomest of our wild flowers soon makes itself delightfully at home under cultivation. Such good, deep earth, well enriched and moistened, as the hollyhock thrives in, suits it perfectly. Now we have a better opportunity to note how the bees suck the five nectaries at the base of the petals and collect the abundant pollen of the newly opened flowers, which they perforce transfer to the five b.u.t.ton-shaped stigmas intentionally impeding the entrance to older blossoms. Only its cousin the hollyhock, a native of China, can vie with the rose-mallow's decorative splendor among the shrubbery; and the ROSE OF CHINA (Hibiscus Rosa-Sinensis), cultivated in greenhouses here, eclipse it in the beauty of the individual blossom. This latter flower, whose superb scarlet corolla stains black, is employed by the Chinese married women, it is said, to discolor their teeth; but in the West Indies it sinks to even greater ignominy as a dauber for blacking shoes!

MARSH MALLOW (Althaea officinalis), a name frequently misapplied to the swamp rose-mallow, is properly given to a much smaller pink flower, measuring only an inch and a half across at the most, and a far rarer one, being a naturalized immigrant from Europe found only in the salt marshes from the Ma.s.sachusetts coast to New York. It is also known as WYMOTE. This is a bushy, leafy plant, two to four feet high, and covered with velvety down as a protection against the clogging of its pores by the moisture arising from its wet retreats. Plants that live in swamps must "perspire" freely and keep their pores open. From the marsh mallow's thick roots the mucilage used in confectionery is obtained, a soothing demulcent long esteemed in medicine. Another relative, the OKRA or GUMBO PLANT of vegetable gardens (Hibiscus esculentus), has mucilage enough in its narrow pods to thicken a potful of soup. Its pale yellow, crimson-centered flowers are quite as beautiful as any hollyhock, but not nearly so conspicuous, because of the plant's bushy habit of growth. In spite of its name, the ALTHAEA of our gardens, or ROSE OF SHARON (Hibiscus Syriacus), is not so closely allied to Althaea officinalis as to the swamp rose-mallow.

Another immigrant from Europe and Asia sparingly naturalized in waste places and roadsides in Canada, the United States, and Mexico is the COMMON HIGH MALLOW, CHEESEFLOWER, or ROUND DOCK (Malva sylvestris). Its purplish-rose flowers, from which the French have derived their word mauve, first applied to this plant, appear in small cl.u.s.ters on slender pedicels from the leaf axils along a leafy, rather weak, but ascending stem, maybe only a foot high, or perhaps a yard, throughout the summer months. The leaf, borne on a petiole two to six inches long, is divided into from five to nine shallow, angular, or rounded saw-edged lobes.

Country children eat unlimited quant.i.ties of the harmless little circular, flattened "cheeses" or seed vessels, a characteristic of the genus Malva. Since the flower invites a great number of insects to feast on its nectar, secreted in five little pits (protected for them from the rain by hairs at the base of the petals), and compels its visitors to wipe off pollen brought from the pyramidal group of anthers in a newly opened blossom to the exserted, radiating stigmas of older ones, the mallow produces more cheeses than all the dairies of the world. So rich is its store of nectar that the hive-bee, shut out from a legitimate entrance to the flower when it closes in the late afternoon, climbs up the outside of the calyx, and inserting his tongue between the five petals, empties the nectaries one after another - intelligent rogue that he is!

The LOW, DWARF, or RUNNING MALLOW (M. rotundifolia), a very common little weed throughout our territory, Europe, and Asia, depends scarcely at all upon insects to transfer its pollen, as might be inferred from its unattractive pale blue to white flowers, that measure only about half an inch across. In default of visitors, its pollen-laden anthers, instead of drooping to get out of the way of the stigmas, as in the showy high mallow, remain extended so as to come in contact with the rough, sticky sides of the long curling stigmas. The leaves of this spreading plant, which are nearly round, with five to nine shallow, saw-edged lobes, are thin, and furnished with long petioles; whereas the flowers which spring from their axils keep close to the main stem. Usually there are about fifteen rounded carpels that go to make up the Dutch, doll, or fairy cheeses, as the seed vessels are called by children. Only once is the mallow mentioned in the Bible, and then as food for the most abject and despised poor (Job 30: 4); but as eighteen species of mallow grow in Palestine, who is the higher critic to name the species eaten?

Occasionally we meet by the roadside in Canada, the Eastern, Middle, and Southern States pink, sometimes white, flowers, about two inches across, growing in small cl.u.s.ters at the top of a stem a foot or two high, the whole plant emitting a faint odor of musk. If the stem leaves are deeply divided into several narrow, much-cleft segments, and the little cheeses are densely hairy, we may safely call the plant MUSK MALLOW (M. moschata), and expect to find it blooming throughout the summer.

MARSH ST.-JOHN'S-WORT (Triadenum Virginic.u.m; Elodea Virginica of Gray) St.-John's-wort family

Flowers - Pale magenta, pink, or flesh color, about 1/2 in.

across, in terminal cl.u.s.ters, or from leaf axils. Calyx of 5 equal sepals, persistent on fruit; 5 petals; 9 or more stamens united in 3 sets; pistil of 3 distinct styles. Stem: to 1 1/2 ft.

high, simple, leafy. Leaves: Opposite, pale, with black, glandular dots, broadly oblong, entire edged, seated on stem or clasping by heart-shaped base. Fruit: An oblong, acute, deep red capsule.

Preferred Habitat - Swamps and cranberry bogs.

Flowering Season - July-September.

Distribution - Labrador to the Gulf, and westward to Nebraska.

Late in the summer, after the rather insignificant pink flowers have withered, this low plant, which almost never lacks some color in its green parts, greatly increases its beauty by tinting stems, leaves, and seed vessels with red. Like other members of the family, the flower arranges its stamens in little bundles of three, and when an insect comes to feast on the abundant pollen - no nectar being secreted - he cannot avoid rubbing some off on the stigmas that are on a level with the anthers. He may sometimes carry pollen from blossom to blossom, it is true, but certainly the St.-John's-wort takes no adequate precautions against self-fertilization at any time. Toward the close of its existence the flower draws its petals together toward the axils, thus bringing anthers and stigmas in contact.

SPIKED WILLOW-HERB; LONG PURPLES; SPIKED or PURPLE LOOSESTRIFE (Lythrum Salicaria) Loosestrife family

Flowers - Bright magenta (royal purple) or pinkish purple, about 1/2 in. broad, crowded in whorls around long bracted spikes.

Calyx tubular, ribbed, 5 to 7 toothed, with small projections between. Corolla of 5 or 6 slightly wrinkled or twisted petals.

Stamens, in 2 whorls of 5 or 6 each, and 1 pistil, occurring in three different lengths. Stem: 2 to 3 ft. high, leafy, branched.

Leaves: Opposite, or sometimes in whorls of 3; lance-shaped, with heart-shaped base clasping stem.

Preferred Habitat - Wet meadows, watery places, ditches, and banks of streams.

Flowering Season - June-August.

Distribution - Eastern Canada to Delaware, and westward through Middle States; also in Europe.

Through Darwin's patient study of this trimorphic flower, it has a.s.sumed so important a place in his theory of the origin of species that its fertilization by insects deserves special attention. On page 5, the method by which the pickerel weed, another flower whose stamens and pistil occur in three different lengths, should be read to avoid much repet.i.tion. Now the loosestrife produces six different kinds of yellow and green pollen on its two sets of three stamens; and when this pollen is applied by insects to the stigmatic surface of three different lengths of pistil, it follows that there are eighteen ways in which it may be transferred. But Darwin proved that only pollen brought from the shortest stamens to the shortest pistil, from the middle-length stamens to the middle-length pistil, and from the long stamens to the long pistil effectually fertilizes the flower. And as all the flowers on any one plant are of the same kind, we have here a marvelous mechanism to secure cross-fertilization. His experiments with this loosestrife also demonstrated that "reproductive organs, when of different length, behave to one another like different species of the same genus in regard both to direct productiveness and the character of the offspring; and that consequently mutual barrenness, which was once thought conclusive proof of difference of species, is worthless as such, and the last barrier that was raised between species and varieties is broken down." (Muller.)

Naturally the bright-hued, hospitable flower, which secretes abundant nectar at the base of its tube, attracts many insects, among others, bees of larger and middle size, and the b.u.t.terflies for which it is especially adapted. They alight on the stamens and pistil on the upper side of the flower. Those with the longest tongues stand on one blossom to sip from the next one: this is the b.u.t.terfly's customary att.i.tude. But nearly every visitor comes in contact with at least one set of organs. When Darwin first interpreted the trimorphism of the loosestrife, we can realize something of the enthusiasm such a man must have felt in writing to Gray: "I am almost stark, staring mad over lythrum.... For the love of Heaven have a look at some of your species, and if you can get me some seed, do!"

Long ago this beautiful plant reached our sh.o.r.es from Europe, and year by year is extending its triumphal march westward, brightening its course of empire through low meadows and marshes with torches that lengthen even as they glow. It is not a spring flower, even in England; and so when Shakespeare, whose knowledge of floral nature was second only to that of human nature, wrote of Ophelia,