Part 15

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!