Part 23

Flowers - White or pale greenish yellow, about 1/2 in. across, loosely scattered in small clusters on slender peduncles. Calyx persistent, 5-cleft, with little bracts between the reflexed divisions; 5 petals, equaling or shorter than the sepals; stamens and carpels numerous, the latter collected on a short, bristly-hairy receptacle; styles smooth below, hairy above, jointed. Stem: 2 1/2 ft. high or less, slender, branching above. Leaves: Seated on stem or short petioled, of 3 to 5 divisions, or lobed, toothed small stipules; also irregularly divided large root-leaves on long petioles, 3-foliate, usually the terminal leaflet large, broadly ovate side leaflets much smaller, all more or less lobed and toothed. Fruit: A ball of achenes, each ending in an elongated, hooked style. Preferred Habitat - Woodland borders, shady thickets and roadsides. Flowering Season - June-September. Distribution - Nova Scotia to Georgia, west to the Mississippi or beyond.

Small bees and flies attracted to sheltered, shady places by these loosely scattered flowers at the ends of zig-zagged stems, pay for the nectar they sip from the disk where the stamens are inserted, by carrying some of the pollen lunch on their heads from the older to the younger flowers, which mature stigmas first. But saucy bumblebees, undutiful pilferers from the purple avens, rarely visit blossoms so inconspicuous. Insects failing these, they are well adapted to pollenize themselves. Most of us are all too familiar with the seeds, clinging by barbed styles to any garment passing their way, in the hope that their stolen ride will eventually land them in good colonizing ground. Whoever spends an hour patiently picking off the various seed tramps from his clothes after a walk through the woods and fields in autumn, realizes that the by hook or by crook method of scattering offspring is one of Nature's favorites. Simpler plants than those with hooked achenia produce enormous numbers of spores so light and tiny that the wind and rain distribute them wholesale.

RED CHOKE-BERRY; DOGBERRY TREE (Aronia arbutifolia; Pyrus arbutifolia of Gray) Apple family

Flowers - White or magenta tinged, 1/2 in. across or less, in terminal, compound cymes, finally overtopped by young sterile shoots. Calyx 5-lobed, hairy; 5 concave, spreading petals; stamens numerous; 3 to 5 styles united at base; ovary woolly. Stem: Shrubby, branching, usually low, rarely 12 ft. high. Leaves: Alternate, petioled, oval to oblong, finely cut-edged, smooth above, matted with woolly hairs underneath. Fruit: Small, round or top-shaped, bright red berries. Preferred Habitat - Swamps, low ground, wet thickets. Flowering Season - March-May. Distribution - Nova Scotia to Gulf of Mexico, westward to the Mississippi.

Another common species often found in the same haunts, the BLACK CHOKE-BERRY (A. nigra), with similar flowers, the berries very dark purple, was formerly confounded with the red choke-berry. But because it sometimes elects to live in dry ground its leaves require no woolly mat on the underside to absorb vapors arising from wet retreats. No wonder that the insipid little berries. related to apples, pears, and other luscious fruits, should share with a cousin, the mountain ash, or rowan, the reproachful name of dogberry.

JUNEBERRY; SERVICEBERRY; MAY-CHERRY (Amelanchier Canadensis) Apple family

Flowers - Pure white, over 1 in. across, on long, slender pedicels, in spreading or drooping racemes, with silky, reddish bracts, early falling, among them. Calyx persistent, 5-parted; 5 long, narrow, tapering petals, 3 or 4 times the length of calyx; numerous stamens inserted on calyx throat; 2 to 5 styles, hairy at base. Stem: A large shrub or tree, usually much less than 25 ft. high, rarely twice that height, wood very hard and heavy. Leaves: Alternate, oval, tapering at tip, finely saw-edged, smooth (like the pear tree's), often hairy when young. Fruit. Round, crimson, sweet, edible, seedy berries, ripe in June and July. Preferred Habitat - Woodland borders, pasture thickets, dry soil. Flowering Season - March-May. Distribution - Newfoundland to the Gulf of Mexico, westward over a thousand miles.

Silvery-white chandeliers, hanging from the edges of the woods, light Flora's path in earliest spring, before the trees and shrubbery about them have begun to put forth foliage, much less flowers. Little plants that hug the earth for protection while rude winds rush through the forest and across the hillsides, are already starring her way with fragile, dainty blossoms; but what other shrub, except the serviceberry's twin sister the shadbush, or perhaps the spicebush, has the temerity to burst into bloom while March gusts howl through the naked forests? Little female bees of the Andrena tribe, already at work collecting pollen and nectar for generations yet unborn, buzz their gratitude about the beautiful feathery clusters that lean away from the crowded thicket with a wild, irregular grace. Nesting birds have abundant cause for gratitude also, for the attractive, sweet berries, that ripen providentially early; but, of course, the bees which transfer pollen from flower to flower, and the birds which drop the seeds far and wide, are not the receivers of wholly disinterested favors.

The SHADBUSH or SWAMP SUGAR-PEAR (A. Botryapium), because it was formerly accounted a mere variety (oblongifolia) of the preceding species, still shares with it its popular names; but swamps, river banks, brook sides, and moist thickets are its habitat. Consequently both its inflorescence and pale green, glossy foliage are covered with a sort of whitish cotton, absorbent when young, to prevent the pores from clogging with vapors arising from its damp retreats. Late in the season, when streams narrow or dry up altogether, and the air becomes drier, as the sun rises higher in the heavens, the foliage is usually quite smooth. It will be noticed that, lovely as the shadbush is, its smaller flowers have shorter pedicels than the serviceberry's; consequently its feathery sprays, which are flung outward to the sunshine in April and May, lack something of the grace for which its sister stands preeminent. Under cultivation both species assume conventional form, and lose the wild irregularities of growth that charm us in Nature's garden. Indians believed, what is an obvious fact, that when this bush whitens the swampy river banks, shad are swimming up the stream from the sea to spawn. Then, too, the nighthawk, returning from its winter visit south, booms forth its curious whirring, vibrating, jarring sound as it drops through the air at unseen heights, a dismal, weird noise which the red man thought proceeded from the shad spirits come to warn the schools of fish of their impending fate.

COMMON HAWTHORN: WHITE THORN; SCARLET-FRUITED THORN; RED HAW; MAYFLOWERS (Cratoegus coccinea) Apple family

Flowers - White, rarely pinkish, usually less than 1 in. across, numerous, in terminal corymbs. Calyx 5-lobed; 5 spreading petals inserted in its throat numerous stamens; styles 3 to 5. Stem: A shrub or small tree, rarely attaining 30 ft. in height (Kratos = strength, in reference to hardness and toughness of the wood); branches spreading, and beset with stout spines (thorns) nearly 2 in. long. Leaves: Alternate, petioled, 2 to 3 in. long, ovate, very sharply cut or lobed, the teeth glandular-tipped. Fruit: Coral red, round or oval; not edible. Preferred Habitat - Thickets, fence-rows, woodland borders. Flowering Season - May. Distribution - Newfoundland and Manitoba southward to the Gulf of Mexico.

"The fair maid who, the first of May, Goes to the fields at break of day And washes in dew from the hawthorn tree Will ever after handsome be."

Here is a popular recipe omitted from that volume of heart-to-heart talks entitled "How to Be Pretty though Plain"!

The sombre-thoughted Scotchman, looking for trouble, tersely observes:

"Mony haws, Mony snaws."

But in delicious, blossoming May, when the joy of living fairly intoxicates one, and every bird's throat is swelling with happy music, who but a Calvinist would croak dismal prophecies? In Ireland, old crones tell marvelous tales about the hawthorns, and the banshees which have a predilection for them. So much for folklore.

As one might suspect from the rather disagreeable odor of these blossoms, they are most attractive to flies and beetles, which, carrying pollen from older flowers, leave some on the stigmas that are already mature in newly-opened ones. A concave nectar-secreting disk, not concealed by the filaments in this case, is eagerly pilfered by numerous little short-lipped insects which render no benefit in return; but many others assist in self-pollination after the anthers ripen. The splendid monarch butterfly (Anosia plexippus), the banded purple (Basilarchia arthemis), whose caterpillar feeds on hawthorn foliage, and the light brown hunter's butterfly [American painted lady] (Pyrameis huntera [Vanessa virginiensis]) are, among the visitors seen flitting about this exquisite little tree in early May, when it is fairly white with bloom.

The RED-FRUITED THORN (C. mollis), more hairy on its twigs, petioles, calices, and fruit than the preceding, but so like it in most respects it was formerly accounted a mere variety, is an earlier and even more prolific bloomer, the generous, large clusters of malodorous flowers coming with the leaves in April, and lasting until the common hawthorn starts into lively competition with it for insect trade.

Numerous long, slender thorns, often measuring a finger-length, distinguish the COCKSPUR or NEWCASTLE THORN (C. Crus-Galli), whose abundant small flowers and shining, leathery leaves, dull underneath, are conspicuous in thickets from Quebec to the Gulf. Immense numbers of little bees, among many other visitors, may be noted on a fine day in May and early June about this showy shrub or tree. Because it blooms later than its rival sisters, it has the insect wooers then abroad all to itself.

While most of our beautiful native hawthorns have been introduced to European gardens, it is the WHITE THORN or MAY (C. Oxyacantha) of Europe and Asia which is most commonly cultivated here. Truly a shrub, like a prophet, is not without honor save in its own country.

WHITE SWEET CLOVER; BOKHARA or TREE CLOVER; WHITE MELILOT; HONEY LOTUS (Melilotus alba) Pea family

Flowers - Small, white, fragrant, papilionaceous, the standard petal a trifle longer than the wings; borne in slender racemes. Stem: 3 to 10 ft. tall, branching. Leaves: Rather distant, petioled, compounded of 3 oblong, saw-edged leaflets; fragrant, especially when dry. Preferred Habitat - Wastelands, roadsides. Flowering Season - June-November. Distribution - United States, Europe, Asia.

Happy must the honeybees have been to find that the sweet clover, one of their dearest delights in the Old World, had preceded them in immigrating to the New. Immense numbers of insects - bees in great variety, wasps, flies, moths, and beetles - visit the little blossoms that provide entertainment so generous and accessible; but honey-bees are ever especially abundant. Slight weight depresses the keel, releasing the stigma and anthers therefore, so soon as a bee alights and opens the flower, he is hit below the belt by the projecting stigma. Pollen carried by him there from other clovers comes off on its sticky surface before his abdomen gets freshly dusted from the anthers, which are necessarily rubbed against while he sips nectar. On the removal of his pressure, the floret springs back to its closed condition, to protect the precious nectar and pollen from rain and pilferers. As the stigma projects too far beyond the anthers to be likely to receive any of the flower's own pollen, good reason is there for the blossoms guarding their attractions for the benefit of their friends, which transfer the vitalizing dust from one floret to another. By clustering its small flowers in spikes, to make them conspicuous, as well as to facilitate dining for its benefactors; by prolonging its season of bloom, to get relief from the fiercest competition for insect trade, and so to insure an abundance of vigorous cross-fertilized seed, this plant reveals at a glance some of the reasons why it has been able to establish itself so quickly throughout our vast area.

Both the white and the yellow sweet clover put their leaves to sleep at night in a remarkable manner: the three leaflets of each leaf twist through an angle of 90 degrees, until one edge of each vertical blade is uppermost. The two side leaflets, Darwin found, always tend to face the north with their upper surface, one facing north-northwest and the other north-northeast, while the terminal leaflet escapes the chilling of its sensitive upper surface through radiation by twisting to a vertical also, but bending to either east or west, until it comes in contact with the vertical upper surface of either of the side leaflets. Thus the upper surface of the terminal and of at least one of the side leaflets is sure to be well protected through the night; one is "left out in the cold."

The dried branches of sweet clover will fill a room with delightful fragrance; but they will not drive away flies, nor protect woolens from the ravages of moths, as old women once taught us to believe.

The ubiquitous WHITE or DUTCH CLOVER (Trifolium repens), whose creeping branches send up solitary round heads of white or pinkish flowers on erect, leafless stems, from May to December, in fields, open waste land, and cultivated places throughout our area, Europe, and Asia, devotes itself to wooing bees, since these are the only insects that effect cross-fertilization regularly, other visitors aiding it only occasionally. When nets are stretched over these flowers to exclude insects, only one-tenth the normal quantity of fertile seed is set. Therefore, for the bee's benefit, does each little floret conceal nectar in a tube so deep that small pilferers cannot reach it; but when a honeybee, for example, depresses the keel of the papilionaceous blossom, abundant reward awaits him in consideration of his services in transferring pollen. After the floret which he has been the means of fertilizing closes over its seed-vessel on his departure, it gradually withers, grows brown, and hangs downward, partly to indicate to the next bee that comes along which fords in the head still contain nectar, and which are done for; partly to hide the precious little vigorous green seed-pod in the center of each withered, papery corolla from the visitation of certain insects whose minute grubs destroy countless millions of the progeny of less careful plants. Thus the erect florets in a head stand awaiting their benefactors; those drooping around the outer edge are engaged in the most serious business of life. Sometimes a solitary old maid remains standing, looking anxiously for a lover, at the end of the season. Usually all the florets are then bent down around the stem in a brown and crumpled mass. But however successfully the clover guards its seeds from annihilation, its foliage is the favorite food of very many species of caterpillars and of all grazing cattle the world around. This is still another plant frequently miscalled shamrock. Good luck or bad attends the finding of the leaves, when compounded of an even or an odd number of leaflets more than the normal count, according to the saying of many simple-minded folk.

The little RABBIT'S-FOOT, PUSSY, OLD-FIELD, or STONE CLOVER (T. arvense) has silky plumed calices to hold its minute whitish florets, giving the dense, oblong heads a charming softness and dove color after it has gone to seed. Like most other clovers, it has come to us from the Old World.

FLOWERING SPURGE (Euphorbia corollata) Spurge family

Flowers - (Apparently) white, small, borne in forked, long-stalked umbels, subtended by green bracts; but the true flowers are minute, and situated within the white cup-shaped involucre, usually mistaken for a corolla. Staminate flowers scattered over inner surface of involucre, each composed of a single stamen on a thread-like pedicel with a rudimentary calyx or tiny bract below it. A solitary pistillate flower at bottom of involucre, consisting of 3-celled ovary; 3 styles, 2-cleft, at length forming an erect 3-lobed capsule separating into 3 2-valved carpels. Stem: 1 to 3 ft. high, often brightly spotted, simple below, umbellately 5-branched above (usually). Leaves: Linear, lance-shaped or oblong, entire; lower ones alternate, upper ones whorled. Preferred Habitat - Dry soil, gravelly or sandy. Flowering Season - April-October. Distribution - From Kansas and Ontario to the Atlantic.

A very commonplace and uninteresting looking weed is this spurge, which no one but a botanist would suspect of kinship with the brilliant vermilion poinsettia, so commonly grown in American greenhouses. Examination shows that these little bright white cups of the flowering spurge, simulating a five-cleft corolla, are no more the true flowers in the one case than the large red bracts around the poinsettia's globular greenish blossom involucres are in the other. From the milky juice alone one might guess the spurge to be related to the rubber plant. Still another familiar cousin is the stately castor-oil plant; and while the common dull purplish IPECAC SPURGE (E. Ipecacuanhae) also suggests unpleasant doses, it is really a member of quite another family that furnishes the old-fashioned emetic. The flowering spurge, having its staminate and pistillate flowers distinct, depends upon flies, its truest benefactors, to transfer pollen from the former to the latter.

STAGHORN SUMAC; VINEGAR TREE (Rhus hirta; R. typhina of Gray) Sumac family

Flowers - Greenish or yellowish white, very small, usually 5-parted, and borne in dense upright, terminal, pyramidal clusters. Stem: A shrub or small tree, 6 to 40 ft. high, the ends of branches forked somewhat like a stag's horns. Leaves. Compounded of 11 to 31 lance-shaped, saw-edged leaflets, dark green above, pale below; the petioles and twigs often velvety-hairy. Fruit: Small globules, very thickly covered with crimson hairs. Preferred Habitat - Dry, rough or rocky places, banks, roadsides. Flowering Season - June. Distribution - Nova Scotia to Georgia, and westward 1500 miles.

Painted with glorious scarlet, crimson, and gold, the autumnal foliage of the sumacs, and even the fruit, so far eclipse their inconspicuous flowers in attractiveness that one quite ignores them. Not so the small, short-tongued bees (chiefly Andrenidae) and flies (Dipteria) seeking the freely exposed nectar secreted in five orange-colored glands in the shallow little cups. As some of the flowers are staminate and some pistillate, although others show a tendency to revert to the perfect condition of their ancestors, it behooves them to entertain their little pollen-carrying visitors generously, otherwise no seed can possibly be set. And how the autumnal landscape would suffer from the loss of the decorative, dark-red, velvety panicles! Beware only of the poison sumac's deadly, round grayish-white berries.

Most sumacs contain more or less tannin in their bark and leaves, that are therefore eagerly sought by agents for the leather merchants. The beautiful SMOKE or MIST TREE (R. cotinus), commonly imported from southern Europe to adorn our lawns (although a similar species grows wild in the Southwest), serves a more utilitarian purpose in supplying commerce with a rich orange-yellow dye-wood known as young fustic. All this tribe of shrubs and trees contain resinous, milky juice, drying dark like varnish, which in a Japanese species is transformed by the clever native artisans into their famous lacquer. With a commercial instinct worthy of the Hebrew, they guard this process as a national secret.

The SMOOTH, UPLAND, or SCARLET SUMAC (R. glabra), similar to the staghorn, but lacking its velvety down, and usually of much lower growth, is the very common and widely distributed shrub of dry roadsides, railroad banks, and barren fields. Another low-growing, but more or less downy upland sumac, the DWARF, BLACK, or MOUNTAIN SUMAC (R. copallina), may be known by its dark, glossy green foliage, pale on the underside, and by the broadening of the stem into wings between the leaflets. Hungry migrating birds alight to feast on the harmless acid red fruit when the gorgeous autumnal foliage illuminates their route southward. But while they are, of course, the natural agents for distributing the plants over the country, men find that by cutting bits of any sumac root and planting them in good garden soil, strong specimens are secured within a year. An exquisite cut-leaved variety of the smooth sumac adorns many fine lawns.

Everyone should know the POISON SUMAC (R. Vernix - R. venenata of Gray) as the shrub above all others to avoid. Like its cousin, the POISON or THREE-LEAVED IVY (R. radicans), which once had the specific name Toxicodendron, although Linnaeus applied that title to a hairy shrub of the Southern States, the poison sumac causes most painful swelling and irritation to the skin of some people, though they do nothing more than pass it by when the wind is blowing over it. Others may handle both these plants with impunity. In spring they are especially noisome; but when the pores of the skin are opened by perspiration, people who are at all sensitive should give them a wide berth at any season. Usually the poison sumac grows in wet or swampy ground; its bark is gray, its leaf-stalks are red; the leaves are compounded, of fewer leaflets than those of the innocent sumacs - that is, of from seven to thirteen - which are green on both sides; the flowers, which are dull whitish-green, grow in loose panicles from the axils of the leaves, and naturally the berries follow them in the same unusual situation. "By their fruits ye shall know them:" all the harmless sumacs have red fruit clusters at the ends of the branches, whereas both the poison sumac's and the poison ivy's axillary clusters are dull grayish-white.

AMERICAN HOLLY (Ilex opaca) Holly family

Flowers - Very small, greenish or yellowish white, from 3 to 10 staminate ones in a short cyme; fertile flowers usually solitary, scattered. Stem: A small tree of very slow growth, rarely attaining any great height. Leaves: Evergreen, thick, rigid, glossy, elliptical, scalloped edged, spiny-tipped. Fruit: Round, red berries. Preferred Habitat - Moist woods and thickets. Flowering Season - April-June. Distribution - Maine to the Gulf of Mexico, west to Texas, chiefly near the coast and south of New York.

Happily we continue to borrow all the beautiful Old World associations, poetical and legendary, that cluster about the holly at Christmas time, although our native tree furnishes most of our holiday decorations. So far back as Pliny's day, the European holly had all manner of supernatural qualities attributed to it: its insignificant little flowers caused water to freeze, he tells us; because it was believed to repel lightning, the Romans planted it near their houses; and a branch of it thrown after any refractory animal, even if it did not hit him, would subdue him instantly, and cause him to lie down meekly beside the stick! Can it be that the Italian peasants, who still believe cattle kneel in their stalls at midnight on the anniversary of Jesus' birth, decorate the mangers on Christmas eve with holly, among other plants, because of a survival of this old pagan notion about its subduing effect on animals?