Wild Flowers Part 22

Curiously enough, these flowers, which by day we should certainly say were not fragrant, give forth a strong perfume at evening the better to guide moths to their feast. From eight in the evening until three in the morning the fragrance is especially strong.

The white blossoms, so conspicuous at night, have little attraction for color-loving b.u.t.terflies and bees by day; then, as there is no pollen to be carried from the shriveled anther sacs, no visitor is welcome, and the petals close to protect the nectar for the flower's true benefactors. Indeed, few flowers show more thorough adaptation to the night-flying moths than these Silene.

POKEWEED; Sc.o.kE; PIGEON-BERRY; INK-BERRY; GARGET (Phytolacca decandra) Pokeweed family

Flowers - White, with a green centre, pink-tinted outside, about 1/4 in. across, in bracted racemes 2 to 8 in. long. Calyx of 4 or 5 rounded persistent sepals, simulating petals; no corolla; 10 short stamens; 10-celled ovary, green, conspicuous; styles curved. Stem: Stout, pithy, erect, branching, reddening toward the end of summer, 4 to 10 ft. tall, from a large, perennial, poisonous root. Leaves: Alternate, petioled, oblong to lance-shaped, tapering at both ends, 8 to 12 in. long. Fruit: Very juicy, dark purplish berries, hanging in long cl.u.s.ters from reddened footstalks; ripe, August-October.

Preferred Habitat - Roadsides, thickets, field borders, and waste soil, especially in burnt-over districts.

Flowering Season - June-October.

Distribution - Maine and Ontario to Florida and Texas.

When the pokeweed is "all on fire with ripeness," as Th.o.r.eau said; when the stout, vigorous stem (which he coveted for a cane), the large leaves, and even the footstalks, take on splendid tints of crimson lake, and the dark berries hang heavy with juice in the thickets, then the birds, with increased, hungry families, gather in flocks as a preliminary step to traveling southward. Has the brilliant, strong-scented plant no ulterior motive in thus attracting their attention at this particular time? Surely! Robins, flickers, and downy woodp.e.c.k.e.rs, chewinks and rose-breasted grosbeaks, among other feathered agents, may be detected in the act of gormandizing on the fruit, whose undigested seeds they will disperse far and wide. Their droppings form the best of fertilizers for young seedlings; therefore the plants which depend on birds to distribute seeds, as most berry bearers do, send their children abroad to found new colonies, well equipped for a vigorous start in life. What a hideous mockery to continue to call this fruit the pigeon-berry, when the exquisite bird whose favorite food it once was, has been annihilated from this land of liberty by the fowler's net! And yet flocks of wild pigeons, containing not thousands but millions of birds, nested here even thirty years ago. When the market became glutted with them, they were fed to hogs in the West!

Children, and some grown-ups, find the deep magenta juice of the ink-berry useful. Notwithstanding the poisonous properties of the root, in some sections the young shoots are boiled and eaten like asparagus, evidently with no disastrous consequences. For any service this plant may render to man and bird, they are under special obligation to the little Halictus bees, but to other short-tongued bees and flies as well. These small visitors, flying from such of the flowers as mature their anthers first, carry pollen to those in the female, or pistillate, stage.

Exposed nectar rewards their involuntary kindness. In stormy weather, when no benefactors can fly, the flowers are adapted to fertilize themselves through the curving of the styles.

COMMON CHICKWEED (Aisine media; Stellaria media of Gray) Pink family

Flowers - Small, white, on slender pedicels from leaf axils, also in terminal cl.u.s.ters. Calyx (usually) of 5 sepals, much longer than the 5 (usually) 2-parted petals; 2-10 stamens; 3 or 4 styles. Stem: Weak, branched, tufted, leafy, 4 to 6 in long, a hairy fringe on one side. Leaves: Opposite, acutely oval, lower ones petioled, upper ones seated on stem.

Preferred Habitat - Moist, shady soil; woods; meadows.

Flowering Season - Throughout the year.

Distribution - Almost universal.

The sole use man has discovered for this often pestiferous weed with which nature carpets moist soil the world around is to feed caged song-birds. What is the secret of the insignificant little plant's triumphal progress? Like most immigrants that have undergone ages of selective struggle in the Old World, it successfully competes with our native blossoms by readily adjusting itself to new conditions, filling places unoccupied, and chiefly by prolonging its season of bloom beyond theirs, to get relief from the pressure of compet.i.tion for insect trade in the busy season. Except during the most cruel frosts, there is scarcely a day in the year when we may not find the little star-like chickweed flowers. Contrast this season with that of a native chickweed, the LONG-LEAVED St.i.tCHWORT [LONG-LEAVED CHICKWEED] (A. longifolia [S. longifolia]), blooming only from May till July, when compet.i.tion is fiercest! Also, the common chickweed has its parts so arranged that it can fertilize itself when it is too cold for insect pollen-carriers to fly; then, especially, are many of its stamens abortive, not to waste the precious dust. Yet even in winter it produces abundant seed. In sunny, fine spring weather, however, when so much nectar is secreted the fine little drops may be easily seen by the naked eye, small bees, flies, and even thrips visit the blossoms whose anthers shed pollen one by one before the three stigmatic surfaces are ready to receive any from younger flowers.

SWEET-SCENTED WHITE WATER LILY; POND LILY; WATER NYMPH; WATER CABBAGE [FRAGRANT WATER-LILY]

(Castalia odorata; Nymphaea odorata of Gray) Water-lily family

Flowers - Pure white or pink tinged, rarely deep pink, solitary, 3 to 8 in. across, deliciously fragrant, floating. Calyx of 4 sepals, green outside; petals of indefinite number, overlapping in many rows, and gradually pa.s.sing into an indefinite number of stamens; outer row of stamens with petaloid filaments and short anthers, the inner yellow stamens with slender filaments and elongated anthers; carpels of indefinite number, united into a compound pistil, with spreading and projecting stigmas. Leaves: Floating, nearly round, slit at bottom, s.h.i.+ning green above, reddish and more or less hairy below, 4 to 12 in. across, attached to petiole at center of lower surface. Petioles and peduncles round and rubber-like, with 4 main air-channels.

Rootstock: (Not true stem), thick, simple or with few branches, very long.

Preferred Habitat - Still water, ponds, lakes, slow streams.

Flowering Season - June-September.

Distribution - Nova Scotia to Gulf of Mexico, and westward to the Mississippi.

Sumptuous queen of our native aquatic plants, of the royal family to which the gigantic Victoria regia of Brazil belongs, and all the lovely rose, lavender, blue, and golden exotic water lilies in the fountains of our city parks, to her man, beast, and insect pay grateful homage. In Egypt, India, China, j.a.pan, Persia, and Asiatic Russia, how many millions have bent their heads in adoration of her relative the sacred lotus! From its center Brahma came forth; Buddha, too, whose symbol is the lotus, first appeared floating on the mystic flower (Nelumbo nelumbo, formerly Nelumbium speciosum). Happily the lovely pink or white "sacred bean" or "rose-lily" of the Nile, often cultivated here, has been successfully naturalized in ponds about Bordentown, New Jersey, and maybe elsewhere. If he who planteth a tree is greater than he who taketh a city, that man should be canonized who introduces the magnificent wild flowers of foreign lands to our area of Nature's garden.

Now, cultivation of our native water lilies and all their hardy kin, like charity, begins at home. Their culture in tubs, casks, or fountains on the lawn, is so very simple a matter, and the flowers bloom so freely, every garden should have a corner for aquatic plants. Secure the water-lily roots as early in the spring as possible, and barely cover them with good rich loam or muck spread over the bottom of the sunken tub to a depth of six or eight inches. After it has been filled with water, and replenished from time to time to make good the loss by evaporation, the water garden needs no attention until autumn.

Then the tub should be drained, and removed to a cellar, or it may be covered over with a thick mattress of dry leaves to protect from hard freezing. In their natural haunts, water lilies sink to the bottom, where the water is warmest in winter.

Possibly the seed is ripened below the surface for the same reason. At no time should the crown of the cultivated plant be lower than two feet below the water. If a number of species are grown, it is best to plant each kind in a separate basket, sunk in the shallow tub, to prevent the roots from growing together, as well as to obtain more effective decoration. Charming results may be obtained with small outlay of either money or time.

Nothing brings more birds about the house than one of these water gardens; that serves at once as drinking fountain and bath to our not over-squeamish feathered neighbors. The number of insects these destroy, not to mention the joy of their presence, would alone compensate the householder of economic bent for the cost of a shallow concrete tank.

Opening some time after six o'clock in the morning, the white water lily spreads its many-petalled, deliciously fragrant, golden-centered chalice to welcome the late-flying bees and flower flies, the chief pollinators. Beetles, "skippers," and many other creatures on wings alight too. "I have named two species of bees (Halictus nelumbonis and Prosopis nelumbonis) on account of their close economic relation to these flowers," says Professor Robertson, who has captured over two hundred and fifty species of bees near his home in Carlinville, Illinois, and described nearly a third of them as new. Linnaeus, no doubt the first to conceive the pretty idea of making a floral clock, drew up a list of blossoms whose times of opening and closing marked the hours on its face; but even Linnaeus failed to understand that the flight of insects is the mainspring on which flowers depend to set the mechanism going. In spite of its whiteness and fragrance, the water lily requires no help from night-flying insects in getting its pollen transferred; therefore, when the bees and flies rest from their labors at sundown, it may close the blinds of its shop, business being ended for the day.

"When doctors disagree, who shall decide?" It is contended by one group of scientists that the water lily, which shows the plainest metamorphosis of some sort, has developed its stamens from petals - just the reverse of Nature's method, other botanists claim. A perfect flower, we know, may consist of only a stamen and a pistil, the essential organs, all other parts being desirable, but of only secondary importance. Gardeners, taking advantage of a wild flower's natural tendency to develop petals from stamens and to become "double," are able to produce the magnificent roses and chrysanthemums of today; and so it would seem that the water lily, which may be either self-fertilized or cross-fertilized by pollen-carriers in its present state of development, is looking to a more ideal condition by increasing its attractiveness to insects as it increases the number of its petals, and by economizing pollen in transforming some of the superfluous stamens into petals.

Scientific speculation, incited by the very fumes of the student lamp, may weary us in winter, but just as surely is it dispelled by the fragrance of the lilies in June. Then, floating about in a birch canoe among the lily-pads, while one envies the very moose and deer that may feed on fare so dainty and spend their lives amid scenes of such exquisite beauty, one lets thought also float as idly as the little clouds high overhead.

LAUREL or SMALL MAGNOLIA; SWEET or WHITE BAY; SWAMP LAUREL or Sa.s.sAFRAS; BEAVER-TREE [SWEETBAY MAGNOLIA]

(Magnolia Virginiana; M. glauca of Gray) Magnolia family

Flowers - White, 2 to 3 in. across, globular, depressed, deliciously fragrant, solitary at ends of branches. Calyx of 3 petal-like, spreading sepals. Corolla of 6 to 12 concave rounded petals in rows; stamens very numerous, short, with long anthers; carpels also numerous, and borne on the thick, green, elongated receptacle. Trunk: 4 to 70 ft. high. Leaves: Enfolded in the bud by stipules that fall later and leave rings around gradually lengthening branch; the leaves 3 to 6 in. long in maturity, broadly oblong, thick, almost evergreen, dark above, pale beneath, on short petioles. Fruit: An oblong, reddish pink cone, fleshy, from which the scarlet seeds hang by slender threads.

Preferred Habitat - Swampy woods and open swamps.

Flowering Season - May-June.

Distribution - Atlantic States from Ma.s.sachusetts southward, and Gulf States from Florida to Texas.

"Every flower its own bo-quet!" shouted by a New York street vender of the lovely magnolia blossoms he had just gathered from the Jersey swamps, emphasized only one of the many claims they have upon popular attention. Far and wide the handsome shrub, which frequently attains a tree's height, is exported from its native hiding-places to adorn men's gardens, and there, where a better opportunity to know it at all seasons is granted, one cannot tell which to admire most, the dark, bluish-green leathery leaves, silvery beneath; the cream-white, deliciously fragrant blossoms that turn pale apricot with age; or the brilliant fruiting cone with the scarlet seeds a-dangling. At all seasons it is a delight. When most members of this lovely tribe confine themselves to warm lat.i.tudes, we especially prize the species that naturally endures the rigorous climate of the "stern New England coast."

Beavers (when they used to be common in the East) so often made use of the laurel magnolia, not only of the roots for food, but of the trunk, whose bitter bark, white sapwood, and soft, reddish-brown heartwood were gnawed in constructing their huts, that in some sections it is still known as the beaver-tree.

According to Delpino, the conspicuous, pollen-laden magnolia flowers, with their easily accessible nectar, attract beetles chiefly. These winged messengers, entering the heart of a newly opened blossom, find shelter beneath the inner petals that form a vault above their heads, and warmth that may be felt by the finger, and abundant food; consequently they remain long in an asylum so delightful, or until the expanding petals turn them out to carry the pollen, with which they have been thoroughly dusted during their hospitable entertainment, to younger flowers. As the blossoms mature their stigmas in the first stage and the anthers in the second, it follows the beetles must regularly cross-fertilize them as they fly from one shelter to another.

GOLD-THREAD; CANKER-ROOT [GOLDTHREAD]

(Coptis trifolia) Crowfoot family [b.u.t.tercup family]

Flowers - Small white, solitary, on a slender scape 3 to 6 in.

high. Sepals 5 to 7, petal-like, falling early; petals 5 or 6, inconspicuous, like club-shaped columns; stamens numerous carpels few, the stigmatic surfaces curved. Leaves: From the base, long petioled, divided into 3 somewhat fan-shaped, s.h.i.+ning, evergreen, sharply toothed leaflets. Rootstock: Thread-like, long, bright yellow, wiry, bitter.

Preferred Habitat - Cool mossy bogs, damp woods.

Flowering Season - May-August Distribution - Maryland and Minnesota northward to circ.u.mpolar regions.

The s.h.i.+ning, evergreen, thrice-parted leaves with which this charming little plant carpets its retreats form the best of backgrounds to set off the fragile, tiny white flowers that look like small wood anemones. Why does the gold-thread choose to dwell where bees and b.u.t.terflies, most flowers' best friends, rarely penetrate? Doubtless because the cool, damp habitat that develops abundant fungi also perfectly suits the fungus gnats and certain fungus-feeding beetles that are its princ.i.p.al benefactors. "The entire flower is constructed with reference to their visits," says Mr. Clarence Moores Weed; "the showy sepals attract their attention; the abnormal petals furnish them food; the many small stamens with white anthers and white pollen furnish a surface to walk upon, and a foreground in which the yellow nectar-cups are distinctly visible; the long-spreading recurved stigmas cover so large a portion of the blossom that it would be difficult even for one of the tiny visitors to take many steps without contact with one of them." On a sunny June day the lens usually reveals at least one tiny gnat making his way from one club-shaped petal to another - for the insignificant petals are mere nectaries - and transferring pollen from flower to flower.

Dig up a plant, and the fine tangled, yellow roots tell why it was given its name. In the good old days when decoctions of any herb that was particularly nauseous were swallowed in the simple faith that virtue resided in them in proportion to their revolting taste, the gold-thread's bitter roots furnished a tea much valued as a spring tonic and as a cure for ulcerated throats and canker-sore mouths of helpless children.

WHITE BANEBERRY (Actaea alba) Crowfoot family

Flowers - Small, white, in a terminal oblong raceme. Calyx of 3 to 5 petal-like, early-falling sepals; petals very small, 4 to 10, spatulate, clawed; stamens white, numerous, longer than petals; 1 pistil with a broad stigma. Stem: Erect, bushy, to 2 ft. high. Leaves: Twice or thrice compounded of sharply toothed and pointed, sometimes lobed, leaflets, petioled. Fruit: Cl.u.s.ters of poisonous oval white berries with dark purple spot on end, formed from the pistils. Both pedicels and peduncles much thickened and often red after fruiting.

Preferred Habitat - Cool, shady, moist woods.

Flowering Season - April-June.

Distribution - Nova Scotia to Georgia and far West.

However insignificant the short fuzzy cl.u.s.ters of flowers lifted by this bushy little plant, we cannot fail to name it after it has set those curious white berries with a dark spot on the end, which Mrs. Starr Dana graphically compares to "the china eyes that small children occasionally manage to gouge from their dolls' heads." For generations they have been called "doll's eyes" in Ma.s.sachusetts. Especially after these poisonous berries fully ripen and the rigid stems which bear them thicken and redden, we cannot fail to notice them. As the sepals fall early, the white stamens and stigmas are the most conspicuous parts of the flowers. A cl.u.s.ter opening its blossoms almost simultaneously, the plant's only hope of cross-fertilization lies in the expectation that the small female bees (Halictus) which come for pollen - no nectar being secreted - will leave some brought from another flower on the stigma as they enter, and before collecting a fresh supply. The time elapsing between the maturity of the stigmas and the anthers is barely perceptible; nevertheless there is a tendency toward the former maturing first.

The RED BANEBERRY, COHOSH, or HERB-CHRISTOPHER (A. rubra; A.

spicata, var. rubra of Gray) - a more common species northward, although with a range, habit, and aspect similar to the preceding, may be known by its more ovoid raceme of feathery white flowers, its less sharply pointed leaves, and, above all, by its rigid cl.u.s.ters of oval red berries on slender pedicels, so conspicuous in the woods of late summer.

BLACK COHOSH; BLACK SNAKEROOT; TALL BUGBANE (Cimicifuga racemosa) Crowfoot family [b.u.t.tercup family]

Flowers - Fetid, feathery, white, in an elongated wand-like raceme, 6 in. to 2 ft. long, at the end of a stem 3 to 8 ft.

high. Sepals petal-like, falling early; 4 to 8 small stamen-like petals 2-cleft; stamens very numerous, with long filaments; 1 or 2 sessile pistils with broad stigmas. Leaves: Alternate, on long petioles, thrice compounded of oblong, deeply toothed or cleft leaflets, the end leaflet often again compound. Fruit: Dry oval pods, their seeds in 2 rows.

Preferred Habitat - Rich woods and woodland borders, hillsides.

Flowering Season - June-August.

Distribution - Maine to Georgia, and westward from Ontario to Missouri.

Tall white rockets, shooting upward from a ma.s.s of large handsome leaves in some heavily shaded midsummer woodland border, cannot fail to impress themselves through more than one sense, for their odor is as disagreeable as the fleecy white blossoms are striking. Obviously such flowers would be most attractive to the carrion and meat flies. Cimicifuga, meaning to drive away bugs, and the old folk-name of bugbane testify to a degree of offensiveness to other insects, where the flies' enjoyment begins. As these are the only insects one is likely to see about the fleecy wands, doubtless they are their benefactors. The countless stamens which feed them generously with pollen willingly left for them alone must also dust them well as they crawl about before flying to another fetid lunch.