Chapter 40

Flowers - Minute, greenish yellow, clustered on the lower part of a smooth, club-shaped, slender spadix within a green and maroon or whitish-striped spathe that curves in a broad-pointed flap above it. Leaves: 3-foliate, usually overtopping the spathe, their slender petioles 9 to 30 in. high, or as tall as the scape that rises from an acrid corm. Fruit: Smooth, shining red berries clustered on the thickened club. Preferred Habitat - Moist woodland and thickets. Flowering Season - April-June. Distribution - Nova Scotia westward to Minnesota, and southward to the Gulf States.

A jolly looking preacher is Jack, standing erect in his particolored pulpit with a sounding-board over his head; but he is a gay deceiver, a wolf in sheep's clothing,, literally a "brother to dragons," an arrant upstart, an ingrate, a murderer of innocent benefactors! "Female botanizing classes pounce upon it as they would upon a pious young clergyman," complains Mr. Ellwanger. A poor relation of the stately calla lily one knows Jack to be at a glance, her lovely white robe corresponding to his striped pulpit, her bright yellow spadix to his sleek reverence. In the damp woodlands where his pulpit is erected beneath leafy cathedral arches, minute flies or gnats, recently emerged from maggots in mushrooms, toadstools, or decaying logs, form the main part of his congregation.

Now, to drop the clerical simile, let us peep within the sheathing spathe, or, better still, strip it off altogether. Dr. Torrey states that the dark-striped spathes are the fertile plants, those with green and whitish lines, sterile. Within are smooth, glossy columns, and near the base of each we shall find the true flowers, minute affairs, some staminate; others, on distinct plants, pistillate, the berry bearers; or rarely both male and female florets seated on the same club, as if Jack's elaborate plan to prevent self-fertilization were not yet complete. Plants may be detected in process of evolution toward their ideals: just as nations and men are. Doubtless, when Jack's mechanism is perfected, his guilt will disappear. A little way above the florets the club enlarges abruptly, forming a projecting ledge that effectually closes the avenue of escape for many a guileless victim. A fungus gnat, enticed perhaps by the striped house of refuge from cold spring winds, and with a prospect of food below, enters and slides down the inside walls or the slippery colored column: in either case descent is very easy; it is the return that is made so difficult, if not impossible, for the tiny visitors. Squeezing past the projecting ledge, the gnat finds himself in a roomy apartment whose floor - the bottom of the pulpit - is dusted over with fine pollen; that is, if he is among staminate flowers already mature. To get some of that pollen, with which the gnat presently covers himself, transferred to the minute pistillate florets waiting for it in a distant chamber is, of course, Jack's whole aim in enticing visitors within his polished walls; but what means are provided for their escape? Their efforts to crawl upward over the slippery surface only land them weak and discouraged where they started. The projecting ledge overhead prevents them from using their wings; the passage between the ledge and the spathe is far too narrow to permit flight. Now, if a gnat be persevering, he will presently discover a gap in the flap where the spathe folds together in front, and through this tiny opening he makes his escape, only to enter another pulpit, like the trusted, but too trusting, messenger he is, and leave some of the vitalizing pollen on the fertile florets awaiting his coming.

But suppose the fly, small as he is, is too large to work his way out through the flap, or too bewildered or stupid to find the opening, or too exhausted after his futile efforts to get out through the overhead route to persevere, or too weak with hunger in case of long detention in a pistillate trap where no pollen is, what then? Open a dozen of Jack's pulpits, and in several, at least, dead victims will be found - pathetic little corpses sacrificed to the imperfection of his executive system. Had the flies entered mature spathes, whose walls had spread outward and away from the polished column, flight through the overhead route might have been possible. However glad we may be to make every due allowance for this sacrifice of the higher life to the lower, as only a temporary imperfection of mechanism incidental to the plant's higher development, Jacks present cruelty shocks us no less. Or, it may be, he will become insectivorous like the pitcher plant in time. He comes from a rascally family, anyhow. (See cuckoo pint.)

In June and July the thick-set club, studded over with bright berries, becomes conspicuous, to attract hungry woodland rovers in the hope that the seeds will be dropped far from the parent plant. The Indians used to boil the berries for food. The farinaceous root (corm) they likewise boiled or dried to extract the stinging, blistering juice, leaving an edible little "turnip," however insipid and starchy.

The GREEN DRAGON, or DRAGON-ROOT (A. Dracontium), to which Jack is brother, is found in similar situations or beside streams in wet, shady ground, and sends up a narrow greenish or whitish tapering spathe, one or two inches long, enwrapping a slender, pointed spadix, that projects sometimes seven inches beyond its tip. Within, tiny pistillate florets are seated around the base, while on the staminate plants the inflorescence extends higher. A large, solitary, dark green leaf, divided into from five to seventeen oblong, pointed segments, spreads above. Large ovoid heads of reddish-orange berries are the plant's most conspicuous feature.

SKUNK OR SWAMP CABBAGE (Spathyema fetida; Symplocarpus fetidus of Gray) Arum family

Flowers - Minute, perfect, fetid; many scattered over a thick, rounded, fleshy spadix, and hidden within a swollen, shell-shaped, purplish-brown to greenish-yellow, usually mottled, spathe, close to the ground, that appears before the leaves. Spadix much enlarged and spongy in fruit, the bulb-like berries imbedded in its surface. Leaves: In large crowns like cabbages, broadly ovate, often 1 ft. across, strongly nerved, their petioles with deep grooves, malodorous. Preferred Habitat - Swamps, wet ground. Flowering Season - February-April. Distribution - Nova Scotia to Florida, and westward to Minnesota and Iowa.

This despised relative of the stately calla lily proclaims spring in the very teeth of winter, being the first bold adventurer above ground. When the lovely hepatica, the first flower worthy the name to appear, is still wrapped in her fuzzy furs, the skunk cabbage's dark incurved horn shelters within its hollow, tiny, malodorous florets. Why is the entire plant so fetid that one flees the neighborhood, pervaded as it is with an odor that combines a suspicion of skunk, putrid meat, and garlic? After investigating the carrion-flower (q.v.) and the purple trillium, among others, we learned that certain flies delight in foul odors loathsome to higher organisms; that plants dependent on these pollen carriers woo them from long distances with a stench, and in addition sometimes try to charm them with color resembling the sort of meat it is their special mission, with the help of beetles and other scavengers of Nature, to remove from the face of the earth. In such marshy ground as the skunk cabbage lives in, many small flies and gnats live in embryo under the fallen leaves during the winter. But even before they are warmed into active life, the hive-bees, natives of Europe, and with habits not perfectly adapted as yet to our flora (nor our flora's habits to theirs - see milkweed), are out after pollen. Where would they find any so early, if not within the skunk cabbage's livid horn of plenty? Not even an alder catkin or a pussy willow has expanded yet. In spite of the bee's refined taste in the matter of perfume and color, she has no choice, now, but to enter so generous an entertainer. At the top of the thick rounded spadix within, the skunk cabbage florets there first mature their stigmas, and pollen must therefore be carried to them on the bodies of visitors. Later these stigmas wither, and abundant pollen is shed from the now ripe anthers. Meantime the lower, younger florets having matured their stigmas, some pollen may fall directly on them from the older flowers above. A bee crawling back and forth over the spadix gets thoroughly dusted, and flying off to another cluster of florets cross-fertilizes them - that is, if all goes well. But because the honeybee never entered the skunk cabbage's calculations, useful as the immigrant proved to be, the horn that was manifestly designed for smaller flies often proves a fatal trap. Occasionally a bee finds the entrance she has managed to squeeze through too narrow and slippery for an exit, and she perishes miserably.

"A couple of weeks after finding the first bee," says Mr. William Trelease in the "American Naturalist," "the spathes will be found swarming with the minute black flies that were sought in vain earlier in the season, and their number is attested not only by the hundreds of them which can be seen, but also by the many small but very fat spiders whose webs bar the entrance to three-fourths of the spathes. During the present spring a few specimens of a small scavenger beetle have been captured within the spathes of this plant.... Finally, other and more attractive flowers opening, the bees appear to cease visiting those of this species, and countless small flies take their place, compensating for their small size by their great numbers." These, of course, are the benefactors the skunk cabbage catered to ages before the honeybee reached our shores.

After the flowering time come the vivid green crowns of leaves that at least please the eye. Lizards make their home beneath them, and many a yellowthroat, taking advantage of the plant's foul odor, gladly puts up with it herself and builds her nest in the hollow of the cabbage as a protection for her eggs and young from four-footed enemies. Cattle let the plant alone because of the stinging, acrid juices secreted by it, although such tender, fresh, bright foliage must be especially tempting, like the hellebore's, after a dry winter diet. Sometimes tiny insects are found drowned in the wells of rain water that accumulate at the base of the grooved leafstalks.

RED, WOOD, FLAME, or PHILADELPHIA LILY (Lilium Philadelphicum) Lily family

Flowers - Erect, tawny or red-tinted outside; vermilion, or sometimes reddish orange, and spotted with madder brown within; 1 to 5, on separate peduncles, borne at the summit. Perianth of 6 distinct, spreading, spatulate segments, each narrowed into a claw, and with a nectar groove at its base; 6 stamens; 1 style, the club-shaped stigma 3-lobed. Stem: 1 to 3 ft. tall, from a bulb composed of narrow, jointed, fleshy scales. Leaves: In whorls of 3's to 8's, lance-shaped, seated at intervals on the stem. Preferred Habitat - Dry woods, sandy soil, borders, and thickets. Flowering Season - June-July. Distribution - Northern border of United States, westward to Ontario, south to the Carolinas and West Virginia.

Erect, as if conscious of its striking beauty, this vivid lily lifts a chalice that suggests a trap for catching sunbeams from fiery old Sol. Defiant of his scorching rays in its dry habitat, it neither nods nor droops even during prolonged drought; and vet many people confuse it with the gracefully pendent, swaying bells of the yellow Canada lily, which will grow in a swamp rather than forego moisture. Li, the Celtic for white, from which the family derived its name, makes this bright-hued flower blush to own it. Seedmen, who export quantities of our superb native lilies to Europe, supply bulbs so cheap that no one should wait four years for flowers from seed, or go without their splendor in our over-conventional gardens. Why this early lily is radiantly colored and speckled is told in the description of the Canada lily (q.v.).

The WESTERN RED LILY (L. umbellatum), that takes the place of the Philadelphia species from Ohio, Minnesota, and the Northwest Territory, southward to Missouri, Arkansas, and Colorado, lifts similar but smaller red, orange, or yellow flowers on a more slender stem, two feet high or less, set with narrow, linear, alternate leaves, or perhaps the upper ones in whorls. It blooms in June or July, in dry soil, preferably in open, sandy situations.

LARGE CORAL-ROOT (Corallorhiza multiflora) Orchid family

Flowers - Dull brownish purple, about 1/2 in. high; 10 to 30 borne in a raceme 2 to 8 in. long. Petals about the length of sepals, and somewhat united at the base; spur yellowish, the oval lip white, spotted and lined with purplish; 3-lobed, wavy edged. Scape, 8 to 20 in. tall, colored, furnished with several flat scales. Leaves: None. Root: A branching, coral-like mass. Preferred Habitat - Dry woods. Flowering Season - July-September. Distribution - Nova Scotia, westward to British Columbia; south to Florida, Missouri, and California.

To the majority of people the very word orchid suggests a millionaire's hothouse, or some fashionable florist's show window, where tropical air plants send forth gorgeous blossoms, exquisite in color, marvelous in form; so that when this insignificant little stalk pokes its way through the soil at midsummer and produces some dull flowers of indefinite shades and no leaves at all to help make them attractive, one feels that the coral-root is a very poor relation of theirs indeed. The prettily marked lower lip, at once a platform and nectar guide to the insect alighting on it, is all that suggests ambition worthy of an orchid.

If poverty of men and nations can be traced to certain radical causes by the social economist, just as surely can the botanist account for loss of leaves - riches - by closely examining the poverty-stricken plant. Every phenomenon has its explanation. A glance at the extraordinary formation under ground reveals the fact that the coral-roots, although related to the most aristocratic and highly organized plants in existence, have stooped to become ghoulish saprophytes. An honest herb abounds in good green coloring matter (chlorophyll), that serves as a light screen to the cellular juices of leaf and stem. It also forms part of its digestive apparatus, aiding a plant in the manufacture of its own food out of the soil, water, and gases; whereas a plant that lives by piracy - a parasite - or a saprophyte, that sucks up the already assimilated products of another's decay, loses its useless chlorophyll as surely as if it had been kept in a cellar. In time its equally useless leaves dwindle to bracts, or disappear. Nature wastes no energy. Fungi, for example, are both parasites and saprophytes; and so when plants far higher up in the evolutionary scale than they lose leaves and green color too, we may know they are degenerates belonging to that disreputable gang of branded sinners which includes the Indian-pipe, broom-rape, dodder, pine-sap, and beech-drops. Others, like the gerardias and foxgloves, may even now be detected on the brink of a fall from grace.

The EARLY CORAL-ROOT (C. Corallorhiza; C. innata of Gray) - a similar but smaller species, whose loose spike of dull purplish flowers likewise terminates a scaly purplish or yellowish scape arising from a mass of short, thick, whitish, fleshy, blunt fibers, may be found in the moist woods blooming in May or June. It has a more northerly range, however, extending from the mountains of Georgia, it is true, but chiefly from the northern boundary of the United States, from New England westward to the State of Washington, and northward to Nova Scotia and Alaska.

ADAM AND EVE; PUTTY-ROOT (Aplectrum spicatum; A. hyemale of Gray)) Orchid family

Flowers - Dingy yellowish brown and purplish, about 1 in. long, each on a short pedicel, in a few-flowered, loose, bracted raceme 2 to 4 in. long. No spur; sepals and petals similar, small and narrow, the lip wavy-edged. Scape: to 2 ft. high, smooth, with about 3 sheathing scales. Leaf: Solitary, rising from the corm in autumn, elliptic, broad, plaited-nerved, 4 to 6 in. long. Root: A corm usually attached to one of the preceding season. Preferred Habitat - Moist woods or swamps. Flowering Season - May-June. Distribution - Georgia, Missouri, and California northward, into British Possessions.

More curious than beautiful is this small orchid whose dingy flowers of indefinite color and without spurs interest us far less than the two corms barely hidden below ground. These singular solid bulbs, about an inch thick, are connected by a slender stalk, suggesting to the imaginative person who named the plant our first parents standing hand in hand in the Garden of Eden.

But usually several old corms - not always two, by any means - remain attached to the nearest one, a bulb being produced each year until Cain and Abel often join Adam and Eve to make up quite a family group. A strong, glutinous matter within the corms has been used as a cement, hence the plant's other popular name. From the newest bulb added, a solitary large leaf arises in late summer or autumn, to remain all winter. The flower stalk comes up at one side of it the following spring. Meantime the old corms retain their life, apparently to help nourish the young one still joined to them, while its system is taxed with flowering.

WILD GINGER; CANADA SNAKEROOT; ASARABACCA (Asarum Canadense) Birthwort family

Flower - Solitary, dull purplish brown, creamy white within, about 1 in. broad when expanded, borne on a short peduncle close to or upon the ground. Calyx cup-shaped, deeply cleft, its 3 acutely pointed lobes spreading, curved; corolla wanting; 12 short, stout stamens inserted on ovary; the thick style 6-lobed, its stigmas radiating on the lobes. Leaves: A single pair, dark green, reniform, 4 to 7 in. broad, on downy petioles 6 to 12 in. high, from a creeping, thick, aromatic, pungent rootstock. Preferred Habitat - Rich, moist woods; hillsides. Flowering Season - March-May. Distribution - North Carolina, Missouri, and Kansas, northward, to New Brunswick and Manitoba.

Like the wicked servant who buried the one talent entrusted to his care, the wild ginger hides its solitary flower if not actually under the dry leaves that clothe the ground in the still leafless woodlands, then not far above them. Why? When most plants flaunt their showy blossoms aloft, where they may be seen of all, why should this one bear only one dull, firm cup, inconspicuous in color as in situation? In early spring - and it is one of the earliest flowers - gnats and small flies are warming into active life from the maggots that have lain under dead leaves and the bark of decaying logs all winter. To such guests a flower need offer few attractions to secure them in swarms. Bright, beautiful colors, sweet fragrance, luscious nectar, with which the highly specialized bees, butterflies, and moths are wooed, would all be lost on them, lacking as they do esthetic taste. For flies, a snug shelter from cold spring winds such as Jack-in-the-pulpit, the marsh calla, the pitcher-plant, or the skunk cabbage offers; sometimes a fetid odor like the latter's, or dull purplish red or brownish color resembling stale meat, which the purple trillium likewise wears as an additional attraction, are necessary when certain carrion flies must be catered to; and, above all, an abundance of pollen for food - with any or all of these seductions a flower dependent on flies has nothing to fear from neglect. Therefore the wild ginger does not even attempt to fertilize itself. Within the cozy cup one can usually find a contented fly seeking shelter or food. Close to the ground it is warm and less windy. When the cup first opens, only the stigmas are mature and sticky to receive any pollen the visitors may bring in on their bodies from other asylums where they have been hiding. These stigmas presently withering, up rise the twelve stamens beside them to dust with pollen the flies coming in search of it. Only one flower from a root compels cross-fertilizing between flowers of distinct plants - a means to insure the most vigorous seed, as Darwin proved. Evidently the ginger is striving to attain some day the ambitious mechanism for temporarily imprisoning its guests that its cousin the Dutchman's pipe has perfected. After fertilization the cup nods, inverted, and the leathery capsule following it bursts irregularly, discharging many seeds.

No ruminant will touch the leaves, owing to their bitter juices, nor will a grub or nibbling rodent molest the root, which bites like ginger; nevertheless credulous mankind once utilized the plant as a tonic medicine.

DUTCHMAN'S PIPE; PIPE-VINE (Aristolochia macrophylla; A. Sipho of Gray))

Flower - An inflated, curved, yellowish-green, veiny tube (calyx), pipe-shaped, except that it abruptly broadens beyond the contracted throat into 3 flat, spreading, dark purplish or reddish-brown lobes; pipe 1 to 1 1/2 in. long, borne on a long, drooping peduncle, either solitary or 2 or 3 together, from the bracted leaf-axils; 6 anthers, without filaments, in united pairs under the 3 lobes of the short, thick stigma. Stem: A very long, twining vine, the branches smooth and green. Leaves: Thin, reniform to heart-shaped, slender petioled, downy underneath when young; 6 to 15 in. broad when mature. Fruit: An oblong, cylindric capsule, containing quantities of seeds within its six sections. Preferred Habitat - Rich, moist woods. Flowering Season - May-June. Distribution - Pennsylvania, westward to Minnesota, south to Georgia and Kansas. Escaped from cultivation further north.

After learning why the pitcher plant, Jack-in-the-pulpit, and skunk cabbage are colored and shaped as they are, no one will be surprised on opening this curious flower to find numbers of little flies within the pipe. Certain relatives of this vine produce flowers that are not only colored like livid, putrid meat around the entrance, but also emit a fetid odor to attract carrion flies especially. (See purple trillium.)