Chapter 27

Curiously enough, this creeping, tufted, mat-like little plant is botanically known as a shrub, yet it is lower than many mosses, and would seem to the untrained eye to be certainly of their kin. In earliest spring, when Lenten penitents, jaded with the winter's frivolities in the large cities, seek the salubrious pine lands of southern New Jersey and beyond, they are amazed and delighted to find the abundant little evergreen mounds of pyxie already starred with blossoms. The dense mossy cushions, plentifully sprinkled with pink buds and white flowers, are so beautiful, one cannot resist taking a few tuffets home to naturalize in the rock garden. Planted in a mixture of clear sand and leaf-mould, with exposure to the morning sun, pyxie will smile up at us from under our very windows, spring after spring, with increased charms; whereas the arbutus, that untamable wildling, carried home from the pinewoods at the same time, soon sulks itself to death.

STARFLOWER; CHICKWEED-WINTERGREEN; STAR ANEMONE (Trientalis Americana) Primrose family

Flowers - White, solitary, or a few rising on slender, wiry foot-stalks above a whorl of leaves. Calyx of 5 to 9 (usually 7) narrow sepals. Corolla wheel-shaped, 1/2 in. across or less, deeply cut into (usually) 7 tapering, spreading, petal-like segments. Stem: A long horizontal rootstock, sending up smooth stem-like branches 3 to 9 in. high, usually with a scale or two below. (Trientalis = one-third of a foot, the usual height of a plant.) Leaves: 5 to 10, in a whorl at summit; thin, tapering at both ends, of unequal size, 1 1/2 to 4 in. long. Preferred Habitat - Moist shade of woods and thickets. Flowering Season - May-June. Distribution - From Virginia and Illinois far north.

Is any other blossom poised quite so airily above its whorl of leaves as the delicate, frosty-white little starflower? It is none of the anemone kin, of course, in spite of one of its misleading folk names; but only the wind-flower has a similar lightness and grace. No nectar rewards the small bee and fly visitors; they get pollen only. Those coming from older blossoms to a newly opened one leave some of the vitalizing dust clinging to them on the moist and sticky stigma, which will wither to prevent self-fertilization before the flower's own curved anthers mature and shed their grains. Sometimes, when the blossoms do not run on schedule time, or the insects are not flying in stormy weather, this well laid plan may gang a-gley. An occasional lapse matters little; it is perpetual self-fertilization that Nature abhors.

INDIAN HEMP: AMY-ROOT (Apocynum cannabinum) Dogbane family

Flowers - Greenish white, about 1/4 in. across, on short pedicels, in dense clusters at ends of branches and from the axils. Calyx of 5 segments; corolla nearly erect, bell-shaped, 5-lobed, with 5 small triangular appendages alternating with the stamens within its tube. Stem: 1 to 4 ft. high, branching, smooth, often dull reddish, from a deep, vertical root. Leaves: Opposite, entire, 2 to 6 in. long, mostly oblong, abruptly pointed, variable. Fruit: A pair of slender pods, the numerous seeds tipped with tufts of hairs. Preferred Habitat - Gravelly soil, banks of streams, low fields. Flowering Season - June-August. Distribution - Almost throughout the United States and British Possessions.

Instead of setting a trap to catch flies and hold them by the tongue in a vise-like grip until death alone releases them, as its heartless sister the spreading dogbane does (q.v.), this awkward, rank herb lifts clusters of smaller, less conspicuous, but innocent, flowers, with nectar secreted in rather shallow receptacles, that even short-tongued insects may feast without harm. Honey and mining bees, among others; wasps and flies in variety, and great numbers of the spangled fritillary (Argynnis cybele) and the banded hair-streak (Thecla calanus) among the butterfly tribe; destructive bugs and beetles attracted by the white color, a faint odor, and liberal entertainment, may be seen about the clusters. Many visitors are useless pilferers, no doubt; but certainly the bees which depart with pollen masses cemented to their lips or tongues, to leave them in the stigmatic cavities of the next blossoms their heads enter, pay a fair price for all they get.

>From the fact that Indians used to substitute this very common plant's tough fiber for hemp in making their fishnets, mats, baskets, and clothing, came its popular name; and from their use of the juices to poison mangy old dogs about their camps, its scientific one.

WHORLED or GREEN-FLOWERED MILKWEED (Asclepias verticillata) Milkweed family

Flowers - White or greenish, on short pedicels, in several small terminal clusters. Calyx inferior; corolla deeply 5-parted, the oblong segments turned back; a 5-parted, erect crown of hooded nectaries between them and the stamens, each shorter than the incurved horn within. Stem: 1 to 2 1/2 ft. tall, simple or sparingly branched, hairy, leafy to summit, containing milky juice. Leaves: In upright groups, very narrow, almost thread-like, from 3 to 7 in each whorl. Fruit: 2 smooth, narrow, spindle-shaped, upright pods, the seeds attached to silky fluff; 1 pod usually abortive. Preferred Habitat - Dry fields, hills, uplands. Flowering Season - July-September. Distribution - Maine and far westward, south to Florida and Mexico.

In describing the common milkweed (q.v.), so many statements were made that apply quite as truly to this far daintier and more ethereal species, the reader is referred back to the pink and magenta section. Compared with some of its rank-growing, heavy relatives, how exquisite is this little denizen of the uplands, with its whorls of needle-like leaves set at intervals along a slender swaying stem! The entire plant, with its delicate foliage and greenish-white umbels of flowers, rather suggests a member of the carrot tribe; and much the same class of small-sized, short-tongued visitors come to seek its accessible nectar as we find about the parsnips, for example. When little bees alight - and these are the truest benefactors, however frequently larger bees, wasps, flies, and even the almost useless butterflies come around - their feet slip about within the low crown to find a secure lodging. As they rise to fly away after sucking, the pollen masses which have attached themselves to the hairs on the lower part of their legs are drawn out, to be transferred to other blossoms, perhaps today, perhaps not for a fortnight. Annoying as they may be, it is very rarely, indeed, that an insect can rid itself of the pollen masses carried from either orchids or milkweeds, except by the method Nature intended; and it is not until the long-suffering bee is outrageously loaded that he attains his greatest usefulness to milkweed blossoms. "Of ninety-two specimens bearing corpuscula of Asclepias verticillata," says Professor Robertson, "eighty-eight have them on hairs alone, and four on the hairs and claws." And again: "As far as the mere application of pollen to an insect is concerned, a flower with loose pollen has the advantage. But the advantage is on the side of Asclepias after the insect is loaded with it. It is only a general rule that insects keep to flowers of a particular species on their honey and pollen gathering expeditions. If a bee dusted with loose pollen visits flowers of another species, it will not long retain pollen in sufficient quantity to effectually fertilize flowers of the original species. On the other hand, if an insect returns at any time during the day, or even after a few days, to the species of Asclepias from which it got a load of pollinia, it may bring with it all or most of the pollinia which it has carried from the first plants visited. The firmness with which the pollinia keep their hold on the insect is one of the best adaptations for cross-fertilization."

Ants, the worst pilferers of nectar extant, find the hairy stem of the whorled milkweed, as well as its sticky juice, most discouraging, if not fatal, obstacles to climbing. How daintily the goldfinch picks at the milkweed pods and sets adrift the seeds attached to silky aeronautic fluff!

WILD POTATO-VINE; MAN-OF-THE-EARTH; MECHA-MECK (Ipomoea pandurata) Morning-glory family

Flowers - Funnel form, wide-spread, 2 to 3 in. long, pure white or pinkish purple inside the throat; the peduncles 1 to 5 flowered. Stem: Trailing over the ground or weakly twining, 2 to 12 ft. long. Leaves: Heart, fiddle, or halbert shaped (rarely 3-lobed), on slender petioles. Root: Enormous, fleshy. Preferred Habitat - Dry soil, sandy or gravelly fields or hills. Flowering Season - May-September. Distribution - Ontario, Michigan, and Texas, east to the Atlantic Ocean.

No one need be told that this flaring, trumpet-shaped flower is next of kin to the morning-glory that clambers over the trellises of countless kitchen porches, and escapes back to Nature's garden whenever it can. When the ancestors of these blossoms welded their five petals into a solid deep bell, which still shows on its edges the trace of five once separate parts, they did much to protect their precious contents from rain; but some additional protection was surely needed against the little interlopers not adapted to fertilize the flower, which could so easily crawl down its tube. Doubtless the hairs on the base of the filaments, between which certain bumblebees and other long-tongued benefactors can easily penetrate to suck the nectar secreted in a fleshy disk below, act as a stockade to little would-be pilferers. The color in the throat serves as a pathfinder to the deep-hidden sweets. How pleasant the way is made for such insects as a flower must needs encourage! For these the perennial wild potato vine keeps open house far later in the day than its annual relatives. Professor Robertson says it is dependent mainly upon two bees, Entechnia taurea and Xenoglossa ipomoeae, the latter its namesake.

One has to dig deep to find the huge, fleshy, potato-like root from which the vine derived its name of man-of-the-earth. Such a storehouse of juices is surely necessary in the dry soil where the wild potato lives.

Happily, the COMMON MORNING-GLORY (I. purpurea) - the Convolvulus major of seedsmen's catalogues - has so commonly escaped from cultivation in the eastern half of the United States and Canada as now to deserve counting among our wild flowers, albeit South America is its true home. Surely no description of this commonest of all garden climbers is needed; everyone has an opportunity to watch how the bees cross-fertilize it.

The vine has a special interest because of Darwin's illuminating experiments upon it when he planted six self-fertilized seeds and six seeds fertilized with the pollen brought from flowers on a different vine, on opposite sides of the same pot. Vines produced by the former reached an average height of five feet four inches, whereas the cross-pollenized seed sent its stems up two feet higher, and produced very many more flowers. If so marked a benefit from imported pollen may be observed in a single generation, is it any wonder that ambitious plants employ every sort of ingenious device to compel insects to bring them pollen from distant flowers of the same species? How punctually the MOON-FLOWER (I. grandiflora), next of kin to the morning-glory, opens its immense, pure white, sweet-scented flowers at night to attract night-flying moths, because their long tongues, which only can drain the nectar, may not be withdrawn until they are dusted with vitalizing powder for export to some waiting sister.

GRONOVIUS' or COMMON DODDER; STRANGLE-WEED; LOVE VINE; ANGEL'S HAIR (Cuscuta gronovii) Dodder family

Flowers - Dull white, minute, numerous, in dense clusters. Calyx inferior, greenish white, 5-parted; corolla bell-shaped, the 5 lobes spreading, 5 fringed scales within; 5 stamens, each inserted on corolla throat above a scale; 2 slender styles. Stem: Bright orange yellow, thread-like, twining high, leafless. Preferred Habitat - Moist soil, meadows, ditches, beside streams. Flowering Season - July-September. Distribution - Nova Scotia and Manitoba, south to the Gulf States.

Like tangled yellow yarn wound spirally about the herbage and shrubbery in moist thickets, the dodder grows, its beautiful bright threads plentifully studded with small flowers tightly bunched. Try to loosen its hold on the support it is climbing up, and the secret of its guilt is out at once; for no honest vine is this, but a parasite, a degenerate of the lowest type, with numerous sharp suckers (haustoria) penetrating the bark of its victim, and spreading in the softer tissues beneath to steal all their nourishment. So firmly are these suckers attached, that the golden thread-like stem will break before they can be torn from their hold.

Not a leaf now remains on the vine to tell of virtue in its remote ancestors; the absence of green matter (chlorophyll) testifies to dishonest methods of gaining a living (see Indian pipe); not even a root is left after the seedling is old enough to twine about its hard-working, respectable neighbors. Starting out in life with apparently the best intentions, suddenly the tender young twiner develops an appetite for strong drink and murder combined, such as would terrify any budding criminal in Five Points or Seven Dials! No sooner has it laid hold of its victim and tapped it, than the now useless root and lower portion wither away, leaving the dodder in mid-air, without any connection with the soil below, but abundantly nourished with juices already stored up, and even assimilated, at its host's expense. By rapidly lengthening the cells on the outer side of its stem more than on the inner side, the former becomes convex, the latter concave; that is to say, a section of spiral is formed by the new shoot, which, twining upward, devitalizes its benefactor as it goes. Abundant, globular seed vessels, which develop rapidly, while the blossoming continues unabated, soon sink into the soft soil to begin their piratical careers close beside the criminals which bore them; or better still, from their point of view, float downstream to found new colonies afar. When the beautiful jewelweed - a conspicuous sufferer - is hung about with dodder, one must be grateful for at least such symphony of yellows.

VIRGINIA WATERLEAF (Hydrophyllum Virginicum) Waterleaf family

Flowers - White or purplish tinged, in a single or forking cluster on a long peduncle. Calyx deeply 5-parted, the spreading segments very narrow, bristly hairy. Corolla erect, bell-shaped, deeply 5-lobed; 5 protruding stamens, with soft hairs about their middle; 2 styles united to almost the summit. Stem: Slender, rather weak, to 3 ft. long, leafy, sparingly branched, from a scaly rootstock. Leaves: Alternate, lower ones on long petioles, 6 to 10 in. long, pinnately divided into 5 to 7 oblong, sharply toothed, acute leaflets or segments; upper leaves similar, but smaller, and with fewer divisions. Preferred Habitat - Rich, moist woods. Flowering season - May-August. Distribution - Quebec to South Carolina, west to Kansas and Washington.

So very many flowers especially adapted to the bumblebee are in bloom when the cymes of the waterleaf uncoil, like the borages, from their immature roll, that some special inducement to attract this benefactor were surely needed. In high altitudes the clusters became deeper hued; but much as the more specialized bees love color, food appeals to them far more. Accordingly the five lobes of each little flower stand erect to increase the difficulty a short-tongued insect would have to drain its precious stores; the stamens are provided with hairs for the same reason; and even the calyx is bristly, to discourage crawling ants, the worst pilferers out. By these precautions against theft, plenty of nectar remains for the large bees. To prevent self-fertilization, pollen is shed on visitors, which remove it from a newly opened flower before the stigmas become receptive to any; but in any case these are elevated in maturity above the anthers, well out of harm's way.

Early in spring the large lower leaves are calculated to hold the drip from the trees overhead, hence the plant's scientific and popular names.

JIMSONWEED; JAMESTOWN WEED; THORN APPLE; STRAMONIUM; DEVIL'S TRUMPET (Datura stramonium) Potato family

Flowers - Showy, large, about 4 in. high, solitary, erect, growing from the forks of branches. Calyx tubular, nearly half as long as the corolla, 5-toothed, prismatic; corolla funnel-form, deep-throated, the spreading limb 2 in. across or less, plaited, 5-pointed; stamens 5; 1 pistil. Stem: Stout, branching, smooth, 1 to 5 ft. high. Leaves: Alternate, large, rather thin, petioled, egg-shaped in outline, the edges irregularly wavy-toothed or angled, rank-scented. Fruit: A densely prickly, egg-shaped capsule, the lower prickles smallest. The seeds and stems contain a powerful narcotic poison. Preferred Habitat - Light soil, fields, waste land near dwellings, rubbish heaps. Flowering Season - June-September. Distribution - Nova Scotia to the Gulf of Mexico, westward beyond the Mississippi.

When we consider that there are over five million Gypsies wandering about the globe, and that the narcotic seeds of the thorn apple, which apparently heal, as well as poison, have been a favorite medicine of theirs for ages, we can understand at least one means of the weed reaching these shores from tropical Asia. (Hindoo, dhatura). Our Indians, who call it "white man's plant," associate it with the Jamestown settlement - a plausible connection, for Raleigh's colonists would have been likely to carry with them to the New World the seeds of an herb yielding an alkaloid more esteemed in the England of their day than the alkaloid of opium known as morphine. Daturina, the narcotic, and another product, known in medicine as stramonium, smoked by asthmatics, are by no means despised by up-to-date practitioners. Were it not for the rank odor of its leaves, the vigorous weed, coarse as it is, would be welcome in men's gardens. Indeed, many of its similar relatives adorn them. The fragrant petunia and tobacco plants of the flower beds, the potato, tomato, and egg-plant in the kitchen garden, call it cousin.

Late in the afternoon the plaited corolla of this long trumpet-shaped flower expands to welcome the sphinx moths. So deep a tube implies their tongues; not that these are the benefactors to which the blossom originally adapted itself - they were doubtless left behind in Asia - but apparently our moths make excellent substitutes, for there is no abatement of the weed's vigor here, as there surely would be did it habitually fertilize itself. Any time after four o'clock in the afternoon, according to the light, the sphinx moth, a creature of the gloaming, begins its rounds, to be mistaken for a hummingbird seven times out of ten. Hovering about its chosen white or yellow flowers, that open for it at the approach of twilight, it remains poised above one a second, as if motionless - although the faint hum of its wings, while sucking, indicates that no magic suspends it - then darts swift as thought to another deep tube to feast again, of course transferring pollen as it goes. But what if the Jamestown weed miscalculate the hour of her lover's call and open too soon? Mischievous bees, quick to seize so golden an opportunity, squeeze into the flower when it begins to unfold (flies and beetles following them), to steal pollen, which will sometimes be entirely removed before the moth's arrival.

The THORN-APPLE [now PURPLE THORN-APPLE, considered a variant of JIMSONWEED]; PURPLE STRAMONIUM (D. tatula), a similar species, usually with darker leaves, and pale lavender or violet flowers, or with its long, slender tube white, has become at home in so many fields and waste lands east of Minnesota and Texas that no one thinks of it as belonging to tropical America.

Only sphinx moths can reach its deep well of nectar, from which bees are literally barred out by an inward turn of the stamens toward the center of the tube. Caterpillars of our commonest member of the sphinx tribe conceal themselves on the tomato vine by a mimicry of its color so faultless that a bright eye only may detect their presence. In the South the caterpillar of another of these moths (Sphinx Carolina) does fearful havoc under its appropriate alias of "tobacco worm."

CULVER'S-ROOT; CULVER'S PHYSIC (Leptandra Virginica; Veronica Virginica of Gray) Figwort family

Flowers - Small, white or rarely bluish, crowded in dense spike-like racemes 3 to 9 in. long, usually several spikes at top of stem or from upper axils. Calyx 4-parted, very small; corolla tubular, 4-lobed; 2 stamens protruding; pistil. Stem: Straight, erect, usually unbranched, 2 to 7 ft. tall. Leaves: Whorled, from 3 to 9 in a cluster, lance-shaped or oblong, and long-tapering, sharply saw-edged. Preferred Habitat - Rich, moist woods, thickets, meadows. Flowering Season - June-September. Distribution - Nova Scotia to Alabama, west to Nebraska.

Slender, erect white wands make conspicuous advertisements in shady retreats at midsummer, when insect life is at its height and floral competition for insect favors at its fiercest. Next of kin to the tiny blue speedwell, these minute, pallid blossoms could have little hope of winning wooers were they not living examples of the adage, "In union there is strength.' Great numbers crowded together on a single spike, and several spikes in a cluster that towers above the woodland undergrowth, cannot well be overlooked by the dullest insects, especially as nectar rewards the search of those having midlength or long tongues. Simply by crawling over the spikes, of which the terminal one usually matures first, they fertilize the little flowers. The pollen thrust far out of each tube in the early stage of bloom, has usually all been brushed off on the underside of bees, wasps, butterflies, flies, and beetles before the stigma matures; nevertheless, when it becomes susceptible, the anthers spread apart to keep out of its way lest any leftover pollen should touch it.

"The leaves of the herbage at our feet," says Ruskin, "take all kinds of strange shapes, as if to invite us to examine them. Star-shaped. heart-shaped, spear-shaped, arrow-shaped, fretted, fringed, cleft, furrowed, serrated, in whorls, in tufts, in wreaths, in spires, endlessly expressive, deceptive, fantastic, never the same from footstalks to blossom, they seem perpetually to tempt our watchfulness, and take delight in outstripping our wonder." Doubtless light is the factor with the greatest effect in determining the position of the leaves on the stem, if not their shape. After plenty of light has been secured, any aid they may render the flowers in increasing their attractiveness is gladly rendered. Who shall deny that the brilliant foliage of the sumacs, the dogwood, and the pokeweed in autumn does not greatly help them in attracting the attention of migrating birds to their fruit, whose seeds they wish distributed? Or that the clustered leaves of the dwarf cornel and Culver's-root, among others, do not set off to great advantage their white flowers which, when seen by an insect flying overhead, are made doubly conspicuous by the leafy background formed by the whorl?

BUTTONBUSH; HONEY-BALLS; GLOBE-FLOWER; BUTTON-BALL SHRUB; RIVER-BUSH (Cephalanthus occidentalis) Madder family