Part 41

In May, when the pipe-vine blooms, gauzy-winged small flies and gnats gladly seek food and shelter from the wind within so attractive an asylum as the curving tube offers. They enter easily enough through the narrow throat, around which fine hairs point downward - an entrance resembling an eel trap's. Any pollen they may bring in on their bodies now rubs off on the sticky stigma lobes, already matured at the bottom of a newly opened flower, in which they buzz, crawl, slide, and slip, seeking an avenue of escape. None presents itself: they are imprisoned. The hairs at the entrance, approached from within, form an impenetrable stockade. Must the poor little creatures perish? Is the flower heartless enough to murder its benefactors, on which the continuance of its species depends? By no means is it so shortsighted! A few tiny drops of nectar exuding from the center table prevent the visitors from starving. Presently the fertilized stigmas wither, and when they have safely escaped the danger of self-fertilization, the pollen hidden under their lobes ripens and dusts afresh the little flies so impatiently awaiting the feast. Now, and not till now, it is to the advantage of the species that the prisoners be released, that they may carry the vitalizing dust to stigmas waiting for it in younger flowers. Accordingly, the slippery pipe begins to shrivel, thus offering a foothold; the once stiff hairs that guarded its exit grow limp, and the happy gnats, after a generous entertainment and snug protection, escape uninjured, and by no means unwilling to repeat the experience. Evidently the wild ginger, belonging to a genus next of kin, is striving to perfect a similar prison. In the language of the street, the ginger flower does not yet "work" its.visitors "for all they are worth."

Later, when we see the exquisite dark, velvety, blue-green, pipe-vine, swallow-tail butterfly (Papilio philenor) hovering about verandas or woodland bowers that are shaded with the pipe-vine's large leaves, we may know she is there only to lay eggs that her caterpillar descendants may find themselves on their favorite food store.

The VIRGINIA SNAKEROOT or SERPENTARY (A. serpentaria), found in dry woods, chiefly in the Middle States and South, although its range extends northward to Connecticut, New York, and Michigan, is the species whose aromatic root is used in medicine. It is a low-growing herb, not a vine; its heart-shaped leaves, which are narrow and tapering to a point, are green on both sides, and the curious, greenish, S-shaped flower, which grows alone at the tip of a scaly footstalk from the root, appears in June or July. Sometimes the flowers are cleistogamous (see violet wood-sorrel).

FIRE PINK; VIRGINIA CATCHFLY (Silene Virginica) Pink family

Flowers - Scarlet or crimson, 1 1/2 in. broad or less, a few on slender pedicels from the upper leaf-axils. Calyx sticky, tubular, bell-shaped, 5-cleft, enlarged in fruit; corolla of 5 wide-spread, narrow, notched petals, sometimes deeply 2-cleft; 10 stamens; 3 styles. Stem: 1 to 2 ft. high; erect, slender, sticky. Leaves: Thin, spatulate, 3 to 5 in. long; or upper ones oblong to lance-shaped. Preferred Habitat - Dry, open woodland. Flowering Season - May-September. Distribution - Southern New Jersey to Minnesota, south to Georgia and Missouri.

The rich, glowing scarlet of these pinks that fleck the Southern woodland as with fire, will light up our Northern rock gardens too, if we but sow the seed under glass in earliest spring, and set out the young plants in well-drained, open ground in May. Division of old perennial roots causes the plants to sulk; dampness destroys them.

To the brilliant blossoms butterflies chiefly come to sip (see wild pink), and an occasional hummingbird, fascinated by the color that seems ever irresistible to him, hovers above them on whirring wings. Hapless ants, starting to crawl up the stem, become more and more discouraged by its stickiness, and if they persevere in their attempts to steal from the butterfly's legitimate preserves, death overtakes their erring feet as speedily as if they ventured on sticky fly paper. How humane is the way to protect flowers from crawling thieves that has been adopted by the high-bush cranberry and the partridge pea (q.v.), among other plants! These provide a free lunch of sweets in the glands of their leaves to satisfy pilferers, which then seek no farther, leaving the flowers to winged insects that are at once despoilers and benefactors.

WILD COLUMBINE (Aquilegia Canadensis) Crowfoot family

Flower - Red outside, yellow within, irregular, 1 to 2 in. long, solitary, nodding from a curved footstalk from the upper leaf-axils. Petals 5, funnel-shaped, but quickly narrowing into long, erect, very slender hollow spurs, rounded at the tip and united below by the 5 spreading red sepals, between which the straight spurs ascend; numerous stamens and 5 pistils projecting. Stem: 1 to 2 ft. high; branching, soft-hairy or smooth. Leaves: More or less divided, the lobes with rounded teeth; large lower compound leaves on long petioles. Fruit: An erect pod, each of the 5 divisions tipped with a long, sharp beak. Preferred Habitat - Rocky places, rich woodland. Flowering Season - April-July. Distribution - Nova Scotia to the Northwest Territory; southward to the Gulf States. Rocky Mountains.

Although under cultivation the columbine nearly doubles its size, it never has the elfin charm in a conventional garden that it possesses wild in Nature's. Dancing in red and yellow petticoats to the rhythm of the breeze, along the ledge of overhanging rocks, it coquettes with some Punchinello as if daring him to reach her at his peril. Who is he? Let us sit a while on the rocky ledge and watch for her lovers.

Presently a big muscular bumblebee booms along. Owing to his great strength, an inverted, pendent blossom, from which he must cling upside down, has no more terrors for him than a trapeze for the trained acrobat. His long tongue - if he is one of the largest of our sixty-two species of Bombus - can suck almost any flower unless it is especially adapted to night-flying sphinx moths, but can he drain this? He is the truest benefactor of the European columbine (q.v.), whose spurs suggested the talons of an eagle (aquila) to imaginative Linnaeus when he gave this group of plants its generic name. Smaller bumblebees, unable through the shortness of their tongues to feast in a legitimate manner, may be detected nipping holes in the tips of all columbines, where the nectar is secreted, just as they do in larkspurs, Dutchman's breeches, squirrel corn, butter and eggs, and other flowers whose deeply hidden nectaries make dining too difficult for the little rogues. Fragile butterflies, absolutely dependent on nectar, hover near our showy wild columbine with its five tempting horns of plenty, but sail away again, knowing as they do that their weak legs are not calculated to stand the strain of an inverted position from a pendent flower, nor are their tongues adapted to slender tubes unless these may be entered from above. The tongues of both butterflies and moths bend readily only when directed beneath their bodies. It will be noticed that our columbine's funnel-shaped tubes contract just below the point where the nectar is secreted - doubtless to protect it from small bees. When we see the honeybee or the little wild bees - Haliclus chiefly - on the flower, we may know they get pollen only.

Finally a ruby-throated hummingbird whirs into sight. Poising before a columbine, and moving around it to drain one spur after another until the five are emptied, he flashes like thought to another group of inverted red cornucopias, visits in turn every flower in the colony, then whirs away quite as suddenly as he came. Probably to him, and no longer to the outgrown bumblebee, has the flower adapted itself. The European species wears blue, the bee's favorite color according to Sir John Lubbock; the nectar hidden in its spurs, which are shorter, stouter, and curved, is accessible only to the largest humblebees. There are no hummingbirds in Europe. (See jewel-weed.) Our native columbine, on the contrary, has longer, contracted, straight, erect spurs, most easily drained by the ruby-throat which, like Eugene Field, ever delights in "any color at all so long as it's red."

To help make the columbine conspicuous, even the sepals become red; but the flower is yellow within, it is thought to guide visitors to the nectaries. The stamens protrude like a golden tassel. After the anthers pass the still immature stigmas, the pollen of the outer row ripens, ready for removal, while the inner row of undeveloped stamens still acts as a sheath for the stigmas. Owing to the pendent position of the flower, no pollen could fall on the latter in any case. The columbine is too highly organized to tolerate self-fertilization. When all the stamens have discharged their pollen, the styles then elongate; and the feathery stigmas, opening and curving sidewise, bring themselves at the entrance of each of the five cornucopias, just the position the anthers previously occupied. Probably even the small bees, collecting pollen only, help carry some from flower to flower but perhaps the largest bumblebees, and certainly the hummingbird, must be regarded as the columbine's legitimate benefactors. Caterpillars of one of the dusky wings (Papilio lucilius) feed on the leaves.

Very rarely is the columbine white, and then its name, derived from words meaning two doves, does not seem wholly misapplied.

"O Columbine, open your folded wrapper Where two twin turtle-doves dwell,"

lisp thousands of children speaking the "Songs of Seven" as a first "piece" at school. How Emerson loved the columbine! Dr. Prior says the flower was given its name because "of the resemblance of the nectaries to the heads of pigeons in a ring around a dish - a favorite device of ancient artists."

This exquisite plant was forwarded from the Virginia colony to England for the gardens of Hampton Court by a young kinsman of Tradescant, gardener and herbalist to Charles I.

PITCHER-PLANT; SIDE-SADDLE FLOWER; HUNTSMAN'S CUP; INDIAN DIPPER (Sarracenea purpurea) Pitcher-plant family

Flower - Deep reddish purple, sometimes partly greenish, pink, or red, 2 in. or more across, globose; solitary, nodding from scape 1 to 2 ft. tall. Calyx of 5 sepals, with 3 or 4 bracts at base; 5 overlapping petals, enclosing a yellowish, umbrella-shaped dilation of the style, with 5 rays terminating in 5-hooked stigmas; stamens indefinite. Leaves: Hollow, pitcher-shaped through the folding together of their margins, leaving a broad wing; much inflated, hooded, yellowish green with dark maroon or purple lines and veinings, 4 to 12 in. long, curved, in a tuft from the root. Preferred Habitat - Peat bogs; spongy, mossy swamps. Flowering Season - May-June. Distribution - Labrador to the Rocky Mountains, south to Florida, Kentucky, and Minnesota.

"What's this I hear About the new carnivora? Can little piants Eat bugs and ants And gnats and flies? - A sort of retrograding: Surely the fare Of flowers is air Or sunshine sweet They shouldn't eat Or do aught so degrading!"

There must always be something shocking in the sacrifice of the higher life to the lower, of the sensate to what we are pleased to call the insensate, although no one who has studied the marvelously intelligent motives that impel a plant's activities can any longer consider the vegetable creation as lacking sensibility. Science is at length giving us a glimmering of the meaning of the word universe, teaching, as it does, that all creatures in sharing the One Life share in many of its powers, and differ from one another only in degree of possession, not in kind. The transition from one so-called kingdom into another presumably higher one is a purely arbitrary line marked by man, and often impossible to define. The animalcule and the insectivorous plant know no boundaries between the animal and the vegetable. And who shall say that the sun-dew or the bladderwort is not a higher organism than the amoeba? Animated plants, and vegetating. animals parallel each other. Several hundred carnivorous plants in all parts of the world have now been named by scientists.

It is well worth a journey to some spongy, sphagnum bog to gather clumps of pitcher-plants which will furnish an interesting study to an entire household throughout the summer while they pursue their nefarious business in a shallow bowl on the veranda. A modification of the petiole forms a deep hollow pitcher having for its spout a modification of the blade of the leaf. Usually the pitchers are half filled with water and tiny drowned victims when we gather them. Some of this fluid must be rain, but the open pitcher secretes much juice too. Certain relatives, whose pitchers have hooded lids that keep out rain, are nevertheless filled with fluid. On the Pacific Coast the golden jars of Darlingtonia Californica, with their overarching hoods, are often so large and watery as to drown small birds and field mice. Note in passing that these otherwise dark prisons have translucent spots at the top, whereas our pitcher-plant is lighted through its open transom.

A sweet secretion within the pitcher's rim, which some say is intoxicating, others, that it is an anaesthetic, invites insects to a fatal feast. It is a simple enough matter for them to walk into the pitcher over the band of stiff hairs, pointing downward like the withes of a lobster pot, that form an inner covering, or to slip into the well if they attempt crawling over its polished upper surface. To fly upward in a perpendicular line once their wings are wet is additionally hopeless, because of the hairs that guard the mouth of the trap; and so, after vain attempts to fly or crawl out of the prison, they usually sink exhausted into a watery grave.

When certain plants live in soil that is so poor in nitrogen compounds that protein formation is interfered with, they have come to depend more or less on a carnivorous diet. The sundew (q.v.) actually digests its prey with the help of a gastric juice similar to what is found in the stomach of animals; but the bladderwort (q.v.) and pitcher-plants can only absorb in the form of soup the products of their victims' decay. Flies and gnats drowned in these pitchers quickly yield their poor little bodies; but owing to the beetle's hard-shell covering, many a rare specimen may be rescued intact to add to a collection.

A similar ogre plant is the YELLOW-FLOWERED TRUMPET-LEAF (S. flava) found in bogs in the Southern States.

GROUND-NUT (Apios Apios; A. tuberosa of Gray) Pea family

Flowers - Fragrant, chocolate brown and reddish purple, numerous, about 1/2 in. long, clustered in racemes from the leaf-axils. Calyx 2-lipped, corolla papilionaceous, the broad standard petal turned backward, the keel sickle-shaped; stamens within it 9 and 1. Stem: From tuberous, edible rootstock; climbing, slender, several feet long, the juice milky. Leaves: Compounded of 5 to 7 ovate leaflets. Fruit: A leathery, slightly curved pod, 2 to 4 in. long. Preferred Habitat - Twining about undergrowth and thickets in moist or wet ground. Flowering Season - July-September. Distribution - New Brunswick to Ontario, south to the Gulf States and Kansas.

No one knows better than the omnivorous "barefoot boy" that

"where the ground-nut trails its vine"

there is hidden something really good to eat under the soft, moist soil where legions of royal fern, usually standing guard above it, must be crushed before he digs up the coveted tubers. He would be the last to confuse it with the WILD KIDNEY BEAN or BEAN VINE (Phaseolus polystachyus; P. perennis of Gray). The latter has loose racemes of smaller purple flowers and leaflets in threes; nevertheless it is often confounded with the ground-nut vine by older naturalists whose knowledge was "learned of schools."

Usually a bee, simply by alighting on the wings of a blossom belonging to the pea family, releases the stamens and pistil from the keel; not so here. The sickle-shaped keel of the ground-nut's flower rests its tip firmly in a notch of the standard petal, nor will any jar or pressure from outside release it. A bee, guided to the nectary by the darker color of the underside of the curved keel which spans the open cavity of the flower, enters, at least partially, and so releases by his pressure, applied from underneath, the tip of the sickle from its notch in the standard. Now the released keel curves all the more, and splits open to release the stigmatic tip of the style that touches any pollen the bee may have brought from another blossom. Continuing to curve and coil while the bee sucks, it presently dusts him afresh with pollen from the now released anthers. A mass of pulp between anthers and stigma prevents any of the flower's own pollen from self-fertilizing it. These little blossoms, barely half an inch long, with their ingenious mechanism to compel cross-fertilization, repay the closest study.

At midnight the leaves of the ground-nut.and wild bean "are hardly to be recognized in their queer antics," says William Hamilton Gibson. "The garden beans too play similar pranks. Those lima bean poles of the garden hold a sleepy crowd."

PINE SAP; FALSE BEECH-DROPS; YELLOW BIRD'S-NEST (Hypopitis Hypopitis; Monolropa Hypopitis of Gray) Indian-pipe family

Flowers - Tawny, yellow,ecru, brownish pink, reddish, or bright crimson, fragrant, about 1/2 in. long; oblong bell-shaped; borne in a one-sided, terminal, slightly drooping raceme, becoming erect after maturity. Scapes: Clustered from a dense mass of fleshy, fibrous roots; 4 to 12 in. tall, scaly bracted, the bractlets resembling the sepals. Leaves: None. Preferred Habitat - Dry woods, especially under fir, beech, and oak trees. Flowering Season - June-October. Distribution - Florida and Arizona, far northward into British Possessions. Europe and Asia.

Branded a sinner, through its loss of leaves and honest green coloring matter (chlorophyll), the pine sap stands among the disreputable 'gang' of thieves that includes its next of kin the Indian-pipe, the broom-rape, dodder, coral-root, and beech-drops (q.v.). Degenerates like these, although members of highly respectable, industrious, virtuous families, would appear to be as low in the vegetable kingdom as any fungus, were it not for the flowers they still bear. Petty larceny, no greater than the foxglove's at first, then greater and greater thefts, finally lead to ruin, until the pine-sap parasite either sucks its food from the roots of the trees under which it takes up its abode, or absorbs, like a ghoulish saprophyte, the products of vegetable decay. A plant that does not manufacture its own dinner has no need of chlorophyll and leaves, for assimilation of crude food can take place only in those cells which contain the vital green. This substance, universally found in plants that grub in the soil and literally sweat for their daily bread, acts also as a moderator of respiration by its absorptive influence on light, and hence allows the elimination of carbon dioxide to go on in the cells which contain it. Fungi and these degenerates which lack chlorophyll usually grow in dark, shady woods.

Within each little fragrant pine-sap blossom a fringe of hairs, radiating from the style, forms a stockade against short-tongued insects that fain would pilfer from the bees. As the plant grows old, whatever charm it had in youth disappears, when an unwholesome mold overspreads its features.

SCARLET PIMPERNEL; POOR MAN'S or SHEPHERD'S WEATHER-GLASS; RED CHICKWEED; BURNET ROSE; SHEPHERD'S CLOCK (Anagallis arvensis) Primrose family

Flower - Variable, scarlet, deep salmon, copper red, flesh colored, or rarely white; usually darker in the center; about 1/4 in. across; wheel-shaped; 5-parted; solitary, on thread-like peduncles from the leaf-axils. Stem: Delicate; 4-sided, 4 to 12 in. long, much branched, the sprays weak and long. Leaves: Oval, opposite, sessile, black dotted beneath. Preferred Habitat - Waste places, dry fields and roadsides, sandy soil. Flowering Season - May-August. Distribution - Newfoundland to Florida, westward to Minnesota and Mexico.

Tiny pimpernel flowers of a reddish copper or terra cotta color have only to be seen to be named, for no other blossoms on our continent are of the same peculiar shade. Thrifty patches of the delicate little annuals have spread themselves around the civilized globe; dying down every autumn, and depending on seeds alone to keep the foothold once gained here, in Mexico and South America, Europe, Egypt, Abyssinia, Cape of Good Hope, Mauritius, New Holland, Nepal, Persia, and China. What amazing travelers plants are! The blue-flowered plants are now believed to be a distinct species (A. coerulea).

Notwithstanding the fact that many birds delight to feast on the seeds, or perhaps because of it, for many must be dropped undigested, the scarlet pimpernel is one of the most widely distributed species known.

Before a storm, when the sun goes under a cloud, or on a dull day, each little weather prophet closes. A score of pretty folk names given it in every land it adopts testifies to its sensitiveness as a barometer. Under bright skies the flower may be said to open out flat at about nine in the morning and to begin to close at three in the afternoon. No nectar is secreted unless there may be some in the colored hairs which clothe the filaments. As if it knew perfectly well that however.desirable insect visitors are - and it has an excellent device for compelling them to transfer pollen - it is likewise independent of them, it takes no risk in exposing the precious vitalizing dust to wind and rain, but closes up tight, thereby bringing its pollen-laden stamens in contact with its stigma. Manifestly, it is better for a plant having aspirations to colonize the globe to set even self-fertilized seed than none at all.

HOUND'S TONGUE; GYPSY FLOWER (Cynoglossum officinale) Borage family

Flowers - Dull purplish red, about 1/3 in. across, borne in a curved raceme or panicle that straightens as the bloom advances upward. Calyx 5-parted; corolla salverform, its 5 lobes spreading; 5 stamens; 1 pistil. Stem: Erect, stout, hairy, leafy, usually branched, 1 1/2 to 3 ft. high. Leaves: Rather pale, lower ones large, oblong, slender petioled; upper ones lance-shaped, sessile, or clasping. (Thought to resemble a dog's tongue.) Preferred Habitat - Dry fields, waste places. Flowering Season - May-September. Distribution - Quebec to Minnesota, south to the Carolinas and. Kansas.