Wild Flowers Part 2

Preferred Habitat - Escaped from gardens to woods and fields in Eastern and Middle States. Native of Europe.

Flowering Season - May-July.

A heavier, less graceful flower than either the wild red and yellow columbine or the exquisite, long-spurred, blue and white species (A. coerulea) of the Rocky Mountain region; nevertheless this European immigrant, now making itself at home here, is a charming addition to our flora. How are insects to reach the well of nectar secreted in the tip of its incurved, hooked spur?

Certain of the long-lipped bees, large b.u.mblebees, whose tongues have developed as rapidly as the flower, are able to drain it.

Hummingbirds, partial to red flowers, fertilize the wild columbine, but let this one alone. Muller watched a female b.u.mblebee making several vain attempts to sip this blue one. Soon the brilliant idea of biting a hole through each spur flashed through her little brain, and the first experiment proving delightfully successful, she proceeded to bite holes through other flowers without first trying to suck them. Apparently she satisfied her feminine conscience with the reflection that the flower which made dining so difficult for its benefactors deserved no better treatment.

FIELD or BRANCHED LARKSPUR; KNIGHT'S-SPUR; LARK-HEEL (Delphinium Consoilda) Crowfoot family

Flowers - Blue to pinkish and whitish, 1 to 1 1/2 in. long, hung on slender stems and scattered along spreading branches; 5 petal-like sepals, the rear one prolonged into long, slender, curving spur; 2 petals, united. Stem: 1 to 2 1/2 ft. high.

Leaves: Divided into very finely cut linear segments. Fruit: Erect, smooth pod tipped with a short beak; open on one side.

Preferred Habitat - Roadsides and fields.

Flowering Season - June-August.

Distribution - Naturalized from Europe; from New Jersey southward, occasionally escaped from gardens farther north.

Keats should certainly have extolled the larkspurs in his sonnet on blue. No more beautiful group of plants contributes to the charm of gardens, woods, and roadsides, where some have escaped cultivation and become naturalized, than the delphinium, that take their name from a fancied resemblance to a dolphin (delphin), given them by Linnaeus in one of his wild flights of imagination. Having lost the power to fertilize themselves, according to Muller, they are pollenized by both bees and b.u.t.terflies, insects whose tongues have kept pace with the development of certain flowers, such as the larkspur, columbine, and violet, that they may reach into the deep recesses of the spurs where the nectar is hidden from all but benefactors.

The TALL WILD LARKSPUR (D. urceolatum; D. exaltatum of Gray) waves long, crowded, downy wands of intense purplish blue in the rich woods of Western Pennsylvania, southward to the Carolinas and Alabama, and westward to Nebraska. Its spur is nearly straight, not to increase the difficulty a bee must have in pressing his lips through the upper and lower petals to reach the nectar at the end of it. First, the stamens successively raise themselves in the pa.s.sage back of the petals to dust his head; then, when each has shed its pollen and bent down again, the pistil takes its turn in occupying the place, so that a pollen-laden bee, coming to visit the blossom from an earlier flower; can scarcely help fertilizing it. It is said there are but two insects in Europe with lips long enough to reach the bottom of the long horn of plenty hung by the BEE LARKSPUR (D.

elatum), that we know only in gardens here. Its yellowish bearded lower petals readily deceive one into thinking a bee has just alighted there.

>From April to June the DWARF LARKSPUR or STAGGER-WEED (D.

tricorne), which, however, may sometimes grow three feet high, lifts a loose raceme of blue, rarely white, flowers an inch or more long, at the end of a stout stem rising from a tuberous root. Its slightly ascending spur, its three widely spreading seed vessels, and the deeply cut leaf of from five to seven divisions are distinguis.h.i.+ng characteristics. From Western Pennsylvania and Georgia to Arkansas and Minnesota it is found in rather stiff soil. b.u.t.terflies, which prefer erect flowers, have some difficulty to cling while they drain the almost upright spurs, especially the Papilios, which usually suck with their wings in motion. But the bees, to which the delphinium are best adapted, although b.u.t.terflies visit them quite as frequently, find a convenient landing place prepared for them, and fertilize the flower while they sip with ease.

More slender, downy, and dwarf of stem than the preceding is the CAROLINA LARKSPUR (D. Carolinianum), whose blue flowers, varying to white, and its very finely cleft leaves, may be found in the South, on prairies in the North and West, and in the Rocky Mountain region.

LIVER-LEAF; HEPATICA; LIVERWORT; ROUND-LOBED or KIDNEY LIVER-LEAF; n.o.bLE LIVER-WORT; SQUIRREL CUP (Hepalica Hepatica; H. triloba of Gray) Crowfoot family

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

Preferred Habitat - Woods; light soil on hillsides.

Flowering Season - December-May.

Distribution - Canada to Northern Florida, Manitoba to Iowa and Missouri. Most common East.

Even under the snow itself bravely blooms the delicate hepatica, wrapped in fuzzy furs as if to protect its stems and nodding buds from cold. After the plebeian skunk cabbage, that ought scarcely to be reckoned among true flowers - and William Hamilton Gibson claimed even before it - it is the first blossom to appear.

Winter suns.h.i.+ne, warming the hillsides and edges of woods, opens its eyes,

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

"There are many things left for May," says John Burroughs, "but nothing fairer, if as fair, as the first flower, the hepatica. I find I have never admired this little firstling half enough. When at the maturity of its charms, it is certainly the gem of the woods. What an individuality it has! No two cl.u.s.ters alike; all shades and sizes.... A solitary blue-purple one, fully expanded and rising over the brown leaves or the green moss, its cl.u.s.ter of minute anthers showing like a group of pale stars on its little firmament, is enough to arrest and hold the dullest eye.

Then,...there are individual hepaticas, or individual families among them, that are sweet scented. The gift seems as capricious as the gift of genius in families. You cannot tell which the fragrant ones are till you try them. Sometimes it is the large white ones, sometimes the large purple ones, sometimes the small pink ones. The odor is faint and recalls that of the sweet violets. A correspondent, who seems to have carefully observed these fragrant hepaticas, writes me that this gift of odor is constant in the same plant; that the plant which bears sweet-scented flowers this year will bear them next."

It is not evident that insect aid is necessary to transfer the tiny, hairy spiral ejected from each cell of the antherid, after it has burst from ripeness, to the ca.n.a.l of the flask-shaped organ at whose base the germ-cell is located. Perfect flowers can fertilize themselves. But pollen-feeding flies, and female hive bees which collect it, and the earliest b.u.t.terflies trifle about the blossoms when the first warm days come. Whether they are rewarded by finding nectar or not is still a mooted question.

Possibly the papillae which cover the receptacle secrete nectar, for almost without exception the insect visitors thrust their proboscides down between the spreading filaments as if certain of a sip. None merely feed on the pollen except the flies and the hive bee.

The SHARP-LOBED LIVER-LEAF (Hepatica acuta) differs chiefly from the preceding in having the ends of the lobes of its leaves and the tips of the three leaflets that form its involucre quite sharply pointed. Its range, while perhaps not actually more westerly, appears so, since it is rare in the East, where its cousin is so abundant; and common in the West, where the round-lobed liver-leaf is scarce. It blooms in March and April.

Professor Halsted has noted that this species bears staminate flowers on one plant and pistillate flowers on another; whereas the Hepatica Hepatica usually bears flowers of both s.e.xes above the same root. The blossoms, which close at night to keep warm, and open in the morning, remain on the beautiful plant for a long time to accommodate the bees and flies that, in this case, are essential to the perpetuation of the species.

PURPLE VIRGIN'S BOWER (Atragene Americana) Crowfoot family

Flowers - Showy, purplish blue, about 3 in. across; 4 sepals, broadly expanded, thin, translucent, strongly veined, very large, simulating petals; petals small, spoon-shaped; stamens very numerous ; styles long, persistent, plumed throughout. Stem: Trailing or partly climbing with the help of leafstalks and leaflets. Leaves: Opposite, compounded of 3 egg-shaped, pointed leaflets on slender petioles.

Preferred Habitat - - Rocky woodlands.

Flowering Season - May-June.

Distribution - Hudson Bay westward, south to Minnesota and Virginia.

The day on which one finds this rare and beautiful flower in some rocky ravine high among the hills or mountains becomes memorable to the budding botanist. At an elevation of three thousand feet in the Catskills it trails its way over the rocks, fallen trees, and undergrowth of the forest, suggesting some of the handsome j.a.panese species introduced by Sieboldt and Fortune to Occidental gardens. No one who sees this broadly expanded blossom could confuse it either with the thick and bell-shaped purple LEATHER-FLOWER (C. Viorna), so exquisitely feathery in fruit, that grows in rich, moist soil from Pennsylvania southward and westward; or with the far more graceful and deliciously fragrant purple MARSH CLEMATIS (C. crispa) of our Southern States. The latter, though bell-shaped also, has thin, recurved sepals, and its persistent styles are silky, not feathery at seed-time.

ORPINE; LIVE-FOREVER; MIDSUMMER-MEN; LIVE-LONG; PUDDING-BAG PLANT; GARDEN STONECROP; WITCHES' MONEY (Sedum Telephium) Orpine family

Flowers - Dull purplish, very pale or bright reddish purple in close, round, terminal cl.u.s.ters, 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 n.i.g.g.ardly 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 cl.u.s.ters 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 t.i.tle 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 t.i.tle to the most l.u.s.ty 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 b.u.mblebees, 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, b.u.t.terfly-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 suns.h.i.+ne 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 Th.o.r.eau 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 advertis.e.m.e.nt; 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 fas.h.i.+on, 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