Chapter 36

Now that we have come to read the faces of flowers much as their insect friends must have done for countless ages, we suspect at a glance that the strong-scented horse-balm, with its profusion of lemon-colored, irregular little blossoms, is up to some ingenious trick. The lower lip, out of all proportion to the rest of the corolla, flaunting its enticing fringes; the long stamens protruding from some flowers, and only the long style from others on the same plant, excite our curiosity. Where many fragrant clumps grow in cool, shady woods at midsummer, is an excellent place to rest a while and satisfy it. Presently a bumblebee, attracted by the odor from afar, alights on the fringed platform too weak to hold him. Dropping downward, he snatches the filaments of the two long stamens to save himself; and, as he does so, pollen jarred out of their anther sacs falls on his thorax at the juncture of his wings. Hanging beneath the flower a second, he sips its nectar and is off. Many bees, large and small, go through a similar performance. Now the young, newly opened flowers have the forked stigmas of the long style only protruding at this stage, the miniature stamens being still curled within the tube. Obviously a pollen-dusted bee coming to one of these young flowers must rub off some of the vitalizing dust on the sticky fork that purposely impedes his entrance at the precise spot necessary. Notice that after a flower's stamens protrude in the second stage of its development the fork is turned far to one side to get out of harm's way - self-fertilization being an abomination. It was the lamented William Hamilton Gibson who first called attention to the horse-balm's ingenious scheme to prevent it.

VIRGINIA GROUND CHERRY (Physalis Virginiana; P. Pennsylvanica of Gray) Potato family

Flowers - Sulphur or greenish yellow, with 5 dark purplish dots, 1 in. across or less, solitary from the leaf axils. Calyx 5-toothed, much inflated in fruit; corolla open bell-shaped, the edge 5-cleft; 5 stamens, the anthers yellow, style slender, 2-cleft. Stem: l 1/2 to 3 ft. tall, erect, more or less hairy or glandular, branched, from a thick rootstock. Leaves: Ovate to lanceolate, tapering at both ends or wedge-shaped, often yellowish green, entire or sparingly wavy-toothed. Fruit: An inflated, 5-angled capsule, sunken at the base, loosely surrounding the edible reddish berry. Preferred Habitat - Open ground; rich, dry pastures; hillsides. Flowering Season - July-September Distribution - New York to Manitoba, south to the Gulf States.

A common plant, so variable, however, that the earlier botanists thought it must be several distinct species, lanceolata among others. A glance within shows that the open flower is not so generous as its spreading form would seem to indicate, for tufts of dense hairs at each side of grooves where nectar is secreted, conceal it from the mob, and, with the thickened filaments, almost close the throat. Doubtless these hairs also serve as footholds for the welcome bee clinging to its pendent host. The dark spots are pathfinders. One anther maturing after another, a visitor must make several trips to secure all the pollen, and if she is already dusted from another blossom, nine chances out of ten she will first leave some of the vitalizing dust on the stigma poked forward to receive it before collecting more. Professor Robertson says that all the ground cherries near his home in Illinois are remarkable for their close mutual relation with two bees of the genus Colletes. So far as is known, the insignificant little greenish or purplish bell-shaped flowers of the Alum-root (Heuchera Americana), with protruding orange anthers, are the only other ones to furnish these females with pollen for their babies' bread. Slender racemes of this species are found blooming in dry or rocky woods from the Mississippi eastward, from May to July, by which time the ground cherry is ready to provide for the bee's wants. The similar Philadelphia species was formerly cultivated for its "strawberry tomato." Many birds which feast on all this highly attractive fruit disperse the numerous kidney-shaped seeds.

GREAT MULLEIN; VELVET or FLANNEL PLANT; MULLEIN DOCK; AARON'S ROD (Verbascum Thapsus) Figwort family

Flowers - Yellow, 1 in. across or less, seated around a thick, dense, elongated spike. Calyx 5-parted; corolla of 5 rounded lobes; 5 anther-bearing stamens, the 3 upper ones short, woolly; 1 pistil. Stem: Stout, 2 to 7 ft. tall, densely woolly, with branched hairs. Leaves: Thick, pale green, velvety-hairy, oblong, in a rosette on the ground; others alternate, strongly clasping the stem. Preferred Habitat - Dry fields, banks, stony waste land. Flowering Season - June-September. Distribution - Minnesota and Kansas, eastward to Nova Scotia and Florida. Europe.

Leaving the fluffy thistle-down he has been kindly scattering to the four winds, the goldfinch spreads his wings for a brief undulating flight, singing in waves also as he goes to where tall, thick-set mullein stalks stand like sentinels above the stony pasture. Here companies of the exquisite little black and yellow minstrels delight to congregate with their somber families and feast on the seeds that rapidly follow the erratic flowers up the gradually lengthening spikes.

Delpino long ago pointed out that the blossom is best adapted to pollen-collecting bees, which, alighting on the two long, protruding stamens, rub off pollen on their undersides while clinging for support to the wool on the three shorter stamens, whose anthers supply their needs. As a bee settles on another flower, the stigma is calculated to touch the pollen on his under side before he gets dusted with more; thus cross-pollination is effected. Three stamens furnish a visitor with food, two others clap pollen on him. Numerous flies assist in removing the pollen, too.

"I have come three thousand miles to see the mullein cultivated in a garden, and christened the velvet plant," says John Burroughs in "An October Abroad." But even in England it grows wild, and much more abundantly in Southern Europe, while its specific name is said to have been given it because it was so common in the neighborhood of Thapsus; but whether the place of that name in Africa, or the Sicilian town mentioned by Ovid and Virgil, is not certain. Strange that Europeans should labor under the erroneous impression that this mullein is native to America, whereas here it is only an immigrant from their own land. Rapidly taking its course of empire westward from our seaports into which the seeds smuggled their passage among the ballast, it is now more common in the Eastern States, perhaps, than any native. Forty or more folk-names have been applied to it, mostly in allusion to its alleged curative powers, its use for candlewick and funeral torches in the Middle Ages. The generic title, first used by Pliny, is thought to be a corruption of Barbascum = with beards, in allusion to the hairy filaments, or, as some think, to the leaves.

Of what use is this felt-like covering to the plant? The importance of protecting the delicate, sensitive, active cells from intense light, draught, or cold, have led various plants to various practices; none more common, however, than to develop hairs on the epidermis of their leaves, sometimes only enough to give it a downy appearance, sometimes to coat it with felt, as in this case, where the hairs branch and interlace. Fierce sunlight in the exposed, dry situations where the mullein grows; prolonged drought, which often occurs at flowering season, when the perpetuation of the species is at stake; and the intense cold which the exquisite rosettes formed by year-old plants must endure through a winter before they can send up a flower-stalk the second spring - these trials the well-screened, juicy, warm plant has successfully surmounted through its coat of felt. Hummingbirds have been detected gathering the hairs to line their tiny nests. The light, strong stalk makes almost as good a cane as bamboo, especially when the root end, in running under a stone, forms a crooked handle. Pale country beauties rub their cheeks with the velvety leaves to make them rosy.

MOTH MULLEIN (Verbascum Blattaria) Figwort family

Flowers - Yellow, or frequently white, 5-parted, about 1 in. broad, marked with brown; borne on spreading pedicles in a long, loose raceme; all the filaments with violet hairs; 1 protruding pistil. Stem: Erect, slender, simple, about 2 ft. high, sometimes less, or much taller. Leaves: Seldom present at flowering time; oblong to ovate, toothed, mostly sessile, smooth. Preferred Habitat - Dry, open wasteland; roadsides, fields. Flowering Season - June-November. Distribution - Naturalized from Europe and Asia, more or less common throughout the United States and Canada.

Quite different from its heavy and sluggish looking sister is this sprightly, slender, fragile-flowered mullein. "Said to repel the cockroach (Blatta). hence the name Blattaria; frequented by moths, hence moth mullein." (Britton and Brown's "Flora.") Are the latter frequent visitors? Surely there is nothing here to a moth's liking. New England women used to pack this plant among woolen garments in summer to keep out the tiny clothes moths. The flower, whose two long stamens and pistil protrude as from the great mullein's blossom, and whose filaments are tufted with violet wool footholds - unnecessary provisions for moths, which rarely alight on any flower, but suck with their wings in motion - are cross-fertilized by pollen-collecting bees and flies as described in the account of the great mullein.

"Of beautiful weeds quite a long list might be made without including any of the so-called wild flowers," says John Burroughs. "A favorite of mine is the little moth mullein that blooms along the highway, and about the fields, and maybe upon the edge of the lawn." Even in winter, when the slender stem, set with round brown seed-vessels, rises above the snow, the plant is pleasing to the human eye, as it is to that of hungry birds.

BUTTER-AND-EGGS; YELLOW TOAD-FLAX; EGGS-AND-BACON; FLAXWEED; BRIDEWEED (Linaria Linaria; L. vulgaris of Gray) Figwort family

Flowers - Light canary yellow and orange, 1 in. long or over, irregular, borne in terminal, leafy-bracted spikes. Corolla spurred at the base, 2-lipped, the upper lip erect, 2-lobed; the lower lip spreading, 3-lobed, its base an orange-colored palate closing the throat; 4 stamens in pairs within; 1 pistil. Stem: 1 to 3 ft. tall, slender, leafy. Leaves: Pale, grass-like. Preferred Habitat - Wasteland, roadsides, banks, fields. Flowering Season - June-October. Distribution - Nebraska and Manitoba, eastward to Virginia and Nova Scotia. Europe and Asia.

An immigrant from Europe, this plebeian perennial, meekly content with waste places, is rapidly inheriting the earth. Its beautiful spikes of butter-colored cornucopias, apparently holding the yolk of a diminutive Spanish egg, emit a cheesy odor, suggesting a close dairy. Perhaps half the charm of the plant consists in the pale bluish-green grass-like leaves with a bloom on the surface, which are put forth so abundantly from the sterile shoots. (See blue toad-flax.)

Guided by the orange palate pathfinder to where the curious, puzzling flower opens, the big velvety bumblebee alights, his weight depressing the lower lip until a comfortable entrance through the gaping mouth is offered him. In he goes, and his long tongue readily reaches the nectar in the deep spur, while his back brushes off pollen from the stamens in his way overhead. Then he backs out, and the gaping mouth springs shut after him - for the linaria is akin to the snapdragon in the garden. As its stamens are of two lengths, the flower is able to fertilize itself in stormy weather, insects failing to transfer its pollen. To drain ten of these spurs a minute is no difficult task for the bumblebee. But how slowly, painfully, the little lightweight hive-bees and leaf-cutters squeeze in between the tight lips. An occasional butterfly inserts its long, thin tongue, and, without transferring a grain of pollen for the flower, robs it of sweets clearly intended for the bumblebee alone. Even when ants - the worst pilferers extant - succeed in entering, they cannot reach the nectar, owing to the hairy stockade bordering the groove where it runs. Beetles, out for pollen, also occasionally steal an entrance, if nothing more. Grazing cattle let the plant alone to ripen seed in peace, for it secretes disagreeable juices in its cells - juices that were once mixed with milk by farmers' wives to poison flies.

DOWNY FALSE FOXGLOVE (Dasystoma flava; Gerardia flava of Gray) Figwort family

Flowers - Pale yellow, 1 1/2 to 2 in. long; in showy, terminal, leafy-bracted racemes. Calyx bell-shaped, 5-toothed; corolla funnel form, the 5 lobes spreading, smooth outside, woolly within; 4 stamens in pairs, woolly; 1 pistil. Stem: Grayish, downy, erect, usually simple, 2 to 4 ft. tall. Leaves: Opposite, lower ones oblong in outline, more or less irregularly lobed and toothed; upper ones small, entire. Preferred Habitat - Gravelly or sandy soil, dry thickets, open woods. Flowering Season - July-August Distribution - "Eastern Massachusetts to Ontario and Wisconsin, south to southern New York, Georgia, and Mississippi." (Britton and Brown.)

In the vegetable kingdom, as in the spiritual, all degrees of backsliding sinners may be found, each branded with a mark of infamy according to its deserts. We have seen how the dodder vine lost both leaf and roots after it consented to live wholly by theft of its hardworking host's juices through suckers that penetrate to the vitals; how the Indian pipe's blanched face tells the story of guilt perpetrated under cover of darkness, in the soil below; how the broom-rape and beech-drops lost their honest green color; and, finally, the foxgloves show us plants with their faces so newly turned toward the path of perdition, their larceny so petty, that only the expert in criminal botany cases condemns them. Like its cousins the gerardias (q.v.), the downy false foxglove is only a partial parasite, attaching its roots by disks or suckers to the roots of white oak or witch hazel (q.v.); not only that, but, quite as frequently, groping blindly in the dark, it fastens suckers on its own roots, actually thieving from itself! It is this piratical tendency which makes transplanting of foxgloves into our gardens so very difficult; even when lifted with plenty of their beloved vegetable mould. The term false foxglove, it should be explained, is by no means one of reproach for dishonesty; it was applied simply to distinguish this group of plants from the true foxgloves cultivated, not wild, here, which yield digitalis to the doctors.

But if these foxgloves live at others' expense, there are creatures which in turn prey upon them. Caterpillars of a peacock butterfly, known as the buckeye (Junonia coenia), with eye-like spots on its tawny, reddish-gray wings, divide their unwelcome attentions between various species of plantain, the snapdragon in the garden, gerardias, and foxgloves.

The SMOOTH FALSE FOXGLOVE (D. Virginica; G. quercifolia of Gray) - which delights in rich woods, moist or dry, bears similar, but slightly larger, blossoms on a smooth, usually branched, and taller stem, whose lower leaves especially are much cleft (pinnatifid). This species is commoner South and West, blooming from July to September. All the foxgloves elevate their sticky stigmas to the mouth of their tubes, that the pollen-dusted bumblebee may leave some of the vitalizing dust brought from another flower on its surface before she turns upside down and enters in this unusual fashion to receive a fresh supply on her way to the nectar in the base of the tube. Her pressure against the pointed anther-tips causes the light, dry pollen to sift out; on the removal of her pressure the gaping chinks close to save it from small bees and flies. It falls out, therefore, only when the bee is in the right position to receive it for export to another foxglove's stigma. Hairy footholds on anthers and filaments are provided lest the bee fall while reversed and sifting out the pollen.

The FERN-LEAVED or LOUSEWORT FALSE FOXGLOVE (D. pedicularia; G. pedicularia of Gray) - a very leafy species found in dry woods and thickets from the Mississippi and Ontario eastward to the Atlantic, north and south, has all its leaves once or twice pinnatifid, the lobes much cut and toothed. It is a rather sticky, hairy, slender, and much branched plant, growing from one to four feet tall; the broad, trumpet-shaped, yellow flower, which is sticky outside, measures an inch or an inch and a half long, and is sometimes almost as wide across. "The most abundant visitor, and the one for which the flower is most perfectly adapted," says Professor Robertson, "is Bombus Americanorum. This bee always turns head downwards on entering the flower. When it enters, or backs out, the basal joints of its legs strike the tips of the anther-cells, when the pollen falls out. I had often wondered why this bee turned upside down to enter the flower.... I discovered that the form of the flower requires it. The modification which requires the bees to reverse is associated with the peculiar mode of pollen discharge. Smaller bumblebees and some other bees which never or rarely try to suck hang under the anthers and work out the pollen by striking the trigger-like awns. They reverse of their own accord, since they are so small they are not compelled to do so on account of the form of the flower. The tube is large...so that most bumblebee workers could easily reach the nectar if the tube were not curved in the opposite direction from that of most flowers, and if the anthers did not obstruct the entrance." Sometimes small bees, despairing of getting into the tube through the mouth, suck at holes in the flower's sides, because legitimate feasting was made too difficult for the poor little things. The ruby-throated hummingbird, hovering a second above the tube, drains it with none of the clown-like performances exacted from the bumblebee. Pilfering ants find death as speedy on the sticky surfaces here as on any catchfly.

GREATER BLADDERWORT; HOODED WATER-MILFOIL; POP-WEED (Utricularia vulgaris) Bladderwort family

Flowers - Yellow, about 1/2 in. across, 3 to 20 on short pedicels in a raceme at the top of a stout, naked scape 3 to 14 in. high. Calyx deeply 2-lobed; corolla 2-lipped, the upper lip erect, the lower lip larger, its palate prominent, the lip slightly 3-lobed, and spurred at the base; 2 stamens; 1 pistil; the stigma 2-lipped. Leaves: Very finely divided into threadlike segments, bearing little air bladders. Preferred Habitat - Floating free in ponds and slow streams, or rooting in mud. Flowering Season - June-August. Distribution - Throughout nearly the whole of North America, Cuba, and Mexico. Europe and Asia.

Here is an extraordinary little plant indeed, which, by its amazing cleverness, now overruns the globe - one of the higher order of intelligence so closely akin to the animals that the gulf which separates such from them seems not very wide after all. In studying the water-crowfoots (q.v.) and other aquatic plants, we learned why submerged leaves must be so finely cut; but what mean the little bladders tipped with bristles among the pop-weed's threadlike foliage? Formerly these were regarded as mere floats - a thoughtless theory, for branches without bladders might have been observed floating perfectly. It is now known they are traps for capturing tiny aquatic creatures: nearly every bladder you examine under a microscope contains either minute crustaceans or larvae, worms, or lower organisms, some perhaps still alive, but most of them more or less advanced toward putrefaction - a stage hastened, it is thought, by a secretion within the bladders; for the plant cannot digest fresh food; it can only absorb, through certain processes within the bladder's walls, the fluid products of decay. The little insectivorous sundew (q.v.), on the contrary, not only digests, but afterward absorbs, animal matter. Tiny aquatic creatures, ever seeking shelter from larger ones ready to devour them, enter the pop-weed bladders by bending inward the free edge of the valve, which, being strongly elastic, snaps shut again behind them instantly. "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here," might be written above the entrance. No victim ever escapes from that prison. Scientists are not agreed that the bristles draw creatures into the bladder. Whatever touches the sensitive valves is at once drawn in. "To show how closely the edge fits," says Charles Darwin, "I may mention that my son found a daphnia which had inserted one of its antennae into the slit, and it was thus held fast during a whole day. On three or four occasions I have seen long narrow larvae, both dead and alive, wedged between the corner of the valve and collar, with half their bodies within the bladder and half out. Professor Cohn of Germany tells of immersing a plant of this bladderwort one evening in clear water swarming with tiny crustaceans, and by the next morning most of the bladders contained them, entrapped and swimming around in their prisons.

So much for what is going on below the surface of the water: what above it? Several flowers on the showy spike attract numerous insects. One alighting on the lower lip must thrust his tongue beneath the upper one to reach the nectar in the spur, passing on its way the irritable stigma, which receives any pollen he has brought in. Instantly it is touched, the stigma folds up to be out of the way of the tongue when it is withdrawn from the spur now laden with fresh pollen. It is thus that self-fertilization is escaped. Many vigorous seeds follow in each capsule. This marvelous piece of mechanism is what Thoreau termed "a dirty-conditioned flower, like a sluttish woman with a gaudy yellow bonnet"!

Not through its seeds alone, however, has the little plant succeeded in firmly establishing itself. In early autumn the stems terminate in large buds which, falling off, lie dormant all winter at the bottom of the pond. In spring they root and put forth leaves bearing bladders, which at this stage of existence are filled with water to help anchor the plant. As flowering season approaches, the bladders undergo an internal change to fit them for a change of function; they now fill with air, when the buoyed plant rises toward the surface to send up its flowering scape, while the bladders proceed with their nefarious practices to nourish it more abundantly while its system is heavily taxed.

The HORNED BLADDERWORT (U. cornuta), found in sandy swamps, along the borders of ponds, marshy lake margins, and in bogs from Newfoundland to Florida, westward to Minnesota and Texas, bears from one to six deliciously fragrant yellow flowers on its leafless scape from June to August. It is "perhaps the most fragrant flower we have," says John Burroughs. "In a warm moist atmosphere its odor is almost too strong.... Its perfume is sweet and spicy in an eminent degree." The low scape, rooting in the mud, has some root-like stems and branches, sometimes with a few entire leaves and bladders. Its benefactors, bumblebees and butterflies, with their highly developed aesthetic taste, are attracted from afar by this pleasing flower, whose acute, curved spur filled with nectar may not be drained by small fry, to whom the hairy throat is an additional discouragement.

SWEET WILD HONEYSUCKLE, or WOODBINE; ITALIAN OR PERFOLIATE HONEYSUCKLE (Lonicera Caprifoliuin; L. grata of Gray) Honeysuckle family