Chapter 11

All the kalmias resort to a most ingenious device for compelling insect visitors to carry their pollen from blossom to blossom. A newly-opened flower has its stigma erected where the incoming bee must leave on its sticky surface the four minute orange-like grains carried from the anther of another flower on the hairy underside of her body. Now, each anther is tucked away in one of the ten little pockets of the saucer-shaped blossom, and the elastic filaments are strained upward like a bow. After hovering above the nectary, the bee has only to descend toward it, when her leg, touching against one of the hair-triggers of the spring trap, pop! goes the little anther-gun, discharging pollen from its bores as it flies upward. So delicately is the mechanism adjusted, the slightest jar or rough handling releases the anthers; but, on the other hand, should insects be excluded by a net stretched over the plant, the flowers will fall off and wither without firing off their pollen-charged guns. At least, this is true in the great majority of tests. As in the case of hothouse flowers, no fertile seed is set when nets keep away the laurel’s benefactors. One has only to touch the hair-trigger with the end of a pin to see how exquisitely delicate is this provision for cross-fertilization.

However much we may be cautioned by the apiculturists against honey made from laurel nectar, the bees themselves ignore all warnings and apparently without evil results--happily for the flowers dependent upon them and their kin. Mr. Frank R. Cheshire, in “Bees and Bee-keeping,” the standard English work on the subject, writes: “During the celebrated Retreat of the Ten Thousand, as recorded by Xenophon in his ‘Anabasis,’ the soldiers regaled themselves upon some honey found near Trebizonde, where were many bee-hives. Intoxication with vomiting was the result. Some were so overcome”, he states, “as to be incapable of standing. Not a soldier died, but very many were greatly weakened for several days.” Tournefort endeavored to ascertain whether this account was corroborated by anything ascertainable in the locality, and had good reason to be satisfied respecting it. He concluded that the honey had been gathered from a shrub growing in the neighborhood of Trebizonde, which is well known there as producing the before-mentioned effects. It is now agreed that the plants were species of rhododendron and azaleas. Lamberti confirms Xenophon’s account by stating that similar effects are produced by honey of Colchis, where the same shrubs are common. In 1790, even, fatal cases occurred in America in consequence of eating wild honey, which was traced to _Kalmia latifolia_ by an inquiry instituted under direction of the American government.

Sheep-laurel, Lamb-kill, Wicky, Calf-kill, Sheep-poison, Narrow-leaved Laurel (_K. angustifolia_), and so on through a list of folk-names testifying chiefly to the plant’s wickedness in the pasture, may be especially deadly food for cattle, but it certainly is a feast to the eyes. However much we may admire the small, deep crimson-pink flowers that we find in June and July in moist fields or swampy ground or on the hillsides, few of us will agree with Thoreau, who claimed that it is “handsomer than the Mountain Laurel.” The low shrub may be only six inches high, or it may attain three feet. The narrow evergreen leaves, pale on the underside, have a tendency to form groups of threes, standing upright when newly put forth, but bent downward with the weight of age. A peculiarity of the plant is that clusters of leaves usually terminate the woody stem, for the flowers grow in whorls or in clusters at the side of it below.

Trailing Arbutus; Mayflower; Ground Laurel

_Epigaea repens_

_Flowers_--Pink, fading to nearly white, very fragrant, about 1/2 in. across when expanded, few or many in clusters at ends of branches. Calyx of 5 dry overlapping sepals; corolla salver-shaped, the slender, hairy tube spreading into 5 equal lobes; 10 stamens; 1 pistil with a column-like style and a 5-lobed stigma. _Stem:_ Spreading over the ground (_Epigaea_ = on the earth); woody, the leafy twigs covered with rusty hairs. _Leaves:_ Alternate, oval, rounded at the base, smooth above, more or less hairy below, evergreen, weather-worn, on short, rusty, hairy petioles.

_Preferred Habitat_--Light sandy loam in woods, especially under evergreen trees, or in mossy, rocky places.

_Flowering Season_--March-May.

_Distribution_--Newfoundland to Florida, west to Kentucky and the Northwest Territory.

Can words describe the fragrance of the very breath of spring--that delicious commingling of the perfume of arbutus, the odor of pines, and the snow-soaked soil just warming into life? Those who know the flower only as it is sold in the city streets, tied with wet, dirty string into tight bunches, withered and forlorn, can have little idea of the joy of finding the pink, pearly blossoms freshly opened among the withered leaves of oak and chestnut, moss and pine needles in which they nestle close to the cold earth in the leafless, windy northern forest. Even in Florida, where broad patches carpet the woods in February, one misses something of the arbutus’s accustomed charm simply because there are no slushy remnants of snowdrifts, no reminders of winter hardships in the vicinity. There can be no glad surprise at finding dainty spring flowers in a land of perpetual summer. Little wonder that the Pilgrim Fathers, after the first awful winter on the “stern New England coast,” loved this early messenger of hope and gladness above the frozen ground at Plymouth. In an introductory note to his poem “The Mayflowers,” Whittier states that the name was familiar in England, as the application of it to the historic vessel shows; but it was applied by the English, and still is, to the hawthorn. Its use in New England in connection with the Trailing Arbutus dates from a very early day, some claiming that the first Pilgrims so used it in affectionate memory of the vessel and its English flower association.

“Sad Mayflower! watched by winter stars, And nursed by winter gales, With petals of the sleeted spars, And leaves of frozen sails!

“But warmer suns ere long shall bring To life the frozen sod, And through dead leaves of hope shall spring Afresh the flowers of God!”

There is little use trying to coax this shyest of sylvan flowers into our gardens where other members of its family, rhododendrons, laurels, and azaleas make themselves delightfully at home. It is wild as a hawk, an untamable creature that slowly pines to death when brought into contact with civilization. Greedy street venders, who ruthlessly tear up the plant by the yard, and others without even the excuse of eking out a paltry income by its sale, have already exterminated it within a wide radius of our Eastern cities. How curious that the majority of people show their appreciation of a flower’s beauty only by selfishly, ignorantly picking every specimen they can find!

Creeping Wintergreen; Checker-berry; Partridge-berry; Mountain Tea; Ground Tea, Deer, Box, or Spice Berry

_Gaultheria procumbens_

_Flowers_--White, small, usually solitary, nodding from a leaf axil. Corolla rounded bell-shape, 5-toothed; calyx 5-parted, persistent; 10 included stamens, their anther-sacs opening by a pore at the top. _Stem:_ Creeping above or below ground, its branches 2 to 6 in. high. _Leaves:_ Mostly clustered at top of branches; alternate, glossy, leathery, evergreen, much darker above than underneath, oval to oblong, very finely saw-edged; the entire plant aromatic. _Fruit:_ Bright red, mealy, spicy, berry-like; ripe in October.

_Preferred Habitat_--Cool woods, especially under evergreens.

_Flowering Season_--June-September.

_Distribution_--Newfoundland to Georgia, westward to Michigan and Manitoba.

“Where cornels arch their cool, dark boughs o’er beds of wintergreen,” wrote Bryant; yet it is safe to say that nine colonies out of ten of this hardy little plant are under evergreens, not dogwood trees. Poets make us feel the _spirit_ of Nature in a wonderful way, but--look out for their facts!

Omnivorous children who are addicted to birch-chewing prefer these tender yellow-green leaves tinged with red, when newly put forth in June--“Youngsters” rural New Englanders call them then. In some sections a kind of tea is steeped from the leaves, which also furnish the old-fashioned embrocation, wintergreen oil. Late in the year the glossy bronze carpet of old leaves dotted over with vivid red “berries” invites much trampling by hungry birds and beasts, especially deer and bears, not to mention well-fed humans. Coveys of Bob Whites and packs of grouse will plunge beneath the snow for fare so delicious as this spicy, mealy fruit that hangs on the plant till spring, of course for the benefit of just such colonizing agents as they. Quite a different species, belonging to another family, bears the true partridge-berry, albeit the wintergreen shares with it a number of popular names. In a strict sense neither of these plants produces a berry; for the fruit of the true Partridge Vine (_Mitchella repens_) is a double drupe, or stone bearer, each half containing four hard, seed-like nutlets; while the wintergreen’s so-called berry is merely the calyx grown thick, fleshy, and gayly colored--only a coating for the five-celled ovary that contains the minute seeds. Little baskets of wintergreen berries bring none too high prices in the fancy fruit and grocery shops when we calculate how many charming plants such unnatural use of them sacrifices.

PRIMROSE FAMILY _(Primulaceae)_

Four-leaved or Whorled Loosestrife; Crosswort

_Lysimachia quadrifolia_

_Flowers_--Yellow, streaked with, dark red, 1/2 in. across or less; each on a thread-like, spreading footstem from a leaf axil. Calyx, 5 to 7 parted; corolla of 5 to 7 spreading lobes, and as many stamens inserted on the throat; 1 pistil. _Stem:_ Slender, erect, 1 to 3 ft. tall, leafy. _Leaves:_ In whorls of 4 (rarely in 3’s to 7’s), lance-shaped or oblong, entire, black dotted.

_Preferred Habitat_--Open woodland, thickets, roadsides; moist, sandy soil.

_Flowering Season_--June-August.

_Distribution_--Georgia and lllinois, north to New Brunswick.

Medieval herbalists usually recorded anything that “Plinie saieth” with profoundest respect; not always so, quaint old Parkinson. Speaking of the common _(vulgaris)_ Wild Loosestrife of Europe, a rather stout, downy species with terminal clusters of good-sized, yellow flowers, that was once cultivated in our Eastern states, and has sparingly escaped from gardens, he thus refers to the reputation given it by the Roman naturalist: “It is believed to take away strife, or debate between ye beasts, not onely those that are yoked together, but even those that are wild also, by making them tame and quiet ... if it be either put about their yokes or their necks,” significantly adding, “which how true, I leave to them shall try and find it soe.” Our slender, symmetrical, common loosestrife, with its whorls of leaves and little star-shaped blossoms on thread-like pedicels at regular intervals up the stem, is not even distantly related to the wonderful Purple Loosestrife.

Another common, lower-growing species, the Bulb-bearing Loosestrife (_L. terrestris_), blooms from July to September and shows a decided preference for swamps and ditches throughout a range which extends from Manitoba and Arkansas to the Atlantic Ocean.

Star-flower; Chickweed Wintergreen; Star Anemone

_Trientalis americana_

_Flowers_--White, solitary, or a few rising on slender, wiry footstalks 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 star-flower? 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.

Scarlet Pimpernel; Poor Man’s or Shepherd’s Weatherglass; Red Chickweed; Burnet Rose; Shepherd’s Clock

_Anagallis arvensis_

_Flower_--Variable, scarlet, deep salmon, copper red, flesh colored, or rarely white; usually darker in the centre; 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.

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.

Shooting Star; American Cowslip; Pride of Ohio

_Dodecatheon Meadia_

_Flowers_--Purplish pink or yellowish white, the cone tipped with yellow; few or numerous, hanging on slender, _recurved_ pedicels in an umbel at top of a simple scape 6 in. to 2 ft. high. Calyx deeply 5-parted; corolla of 5 narrow lobes bent backward and upward; the tube very short, thickened at throat, and marked with dark reddish purple dots; 5 stamens united into a protruding cone; 1 pistil, protruding beyond them. _Leaves:_ Oblong or spatulate, 3 to 12 in. long, narrowed into petioles, all from fibrous roots. _Fruit:_ A 5-valved capsule on _erect_ pedicels.

_Preferred Habitat_--Prairies, open woods, moist cliffs.

_Flowering Season_--April-May.

_Distribution_--Pennsylvania southward and westward, and from Texas to Manitoba.

Ages ago Theophrastus called an entirely different plant by this same scientific name, derived from _dodeka_ = twelve, and _theos_ = gods; and although our plant is native of a land unknown to the ancients, the fanciful Linnaeus imagined he saw in the flowers of its umbel a little congress of their divinities seated around a miniature Olympus! Who has said science kills imagination? These handsome, interesting flowers, so familiar in the Middle West and Southwest, especially, somewhat resemble the cyclamen in oddity of form. Indeed, these prairie wild flowers are not unknown in florists’ shops in Eastern cities.

Few bee workers are abroad at the shooting star’s season. The female bumblebees, which, by striking the protruding stigma before they jar out any pollen, cross-fertilize it, are the flower’s chief benefactors, but one often sees the little yellow puddle butterfly about it. Very different from the bright yellow cowslip of Europe is our odd, misnamed blossom.

GENTIAN FAMILY _(Gentianaceae)_

Bitter-bloom; Rose Pink; Square-stemmed Sabbatia; Rosy Centaury

_Sabbatia angularis_

_Flowers_--Clear rose pink, with greenish star in centre, rarely white, fragrant, 1-1/2 in. broad or less, usually solitary on long peduncles at ends of branches. Calyx lobes very narrow; corolla of 5 rounded segments; stamens 5; style 2-cleft. _Stem:_ Sharply 4-angled, 2 to 3 ft. high, with opposite branches, leafy. _Leaves:_ Opposite, 5-nerved, oval tapering at tip, and clasping stem by broad base.

_Preferred Habitat_--Rich soil, meadows, thickets.

_Flowering Season_--July-August.

_Distribution_--New York to Florida, westward to Ontario, Michigan, and Indian Territory.

During the drought of midsummer the lovely Rose Pink blooms inland with cheerful readiness to adapt itself to harder conditions than most of its moisture-loving kin will tolerate; but it may be noticed that although we may often-times find it growing in dry soil, it never spreads in such luxuriant clusters as when the roots are struck beside meadow runnels and ditches. Probably the plant would be commoner than it is about populous Eastern districts were it not so much sought by herb-gatherers for use as a tonic medicine.

It was the Centaurea, represented here by the blue Ragged Sailor of gardens, and not our Centaury, a distinctly American group of plants, which, Ovid tells us, cured a wound in the foot of the Centaur Chiron, made by an arrow hurled by Hercules.

* * * * *

Three exquisite members of the Sabbatia tribe keep close to the Atlantic Coast in salt meadows and marshes, along the borders of brackish rivers, and very rarely in the sand at the edges of fresh-water ponds a little way inland. From Maine to Florida they range, and less frequently are met along the shores of the Gulf of Mexico so far as Louisiana. How bright and dainty they are! Whole meadows are radiant with their blushing loveliness. Probably if they consented to live far away from the sea, they would lose some of the deep, clear pink from out their lovely petals, since all flowers show a tendency to brighten their colors as they approach the coast. In England some of the same wild flowers we have here are far deeper-hued, owing, no doubt, to the fact that they live on a sea-girt, moisture-laden island, and also that the sun never scorches and blanches at the far north as it does in the United States.

The Sea or Marsh Pink or Rose of Plymouth (_S. stellaris_), whose graceful alternate branching stem attains a height of two feet only under most favorable conditions, from July to September opens a succession of pink flowers that often fade to white. The yellow eye is bordered with carmine. They measure about one inch across, and are usually solitary at the ends of branches, or else sway on slender peduncles from the axils. The upper leaves are narrow and bract-like; those lower down gradually widen as they approach the root.

Fringed Gentian

_Gentiana crinita_

_Flowers--Deep_, bright blue, rarely white, several or many, about 2 in. high, stiffly erect, and solitary at ends of very long footstalk. Calyx of 4 unequal, acutely pointed lobes. Corolla funnel form, its four lobes spreading, rounded, fringed around ends, but scarcely on sides. Four stamens inserted on corolla tube; 1 pistil with 2 stigmas. _Stem:_ 1 to 3 ft. high, usually branched, leafy. _Leaves:_ Opposite, upper ones acute at tip, broadening to heart-shaped base, seated on stem. _Fruit:_ A spindle-shaped, 2-valved capsule, containing numerous scaly, hairy seeds.

_Preferred Habitat_--Low, moist meadows and woods.

_Flowering Season_--September-November.

_Distribution_--Quebec, southward to Georgia, and westward beyond the Mississippi.

“Thou waitest late, and com’st alone When woods are bare and birds have flown, And frosts and shortening days portend The aged year is near his end.

“Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye Look through its fringes to the sky, Blue--blue--as if that sky let fall A flower from its cerulean wall.”

When we come upon a bed of gentians on some sparkling October day, we can but repeat Bryant’s thoughts and express them prosaically who attempt description. In dark weather this sunshine lover remains shut, to protect its nectar and pollen from possible showers. An elusive plant is this gentian, which by no means always reappears in the same places year after year, for it is an annual whose seeds alone perpetuate it. Seating themselves on the winds when autumn gales shake them from out the home wall, these little hairy scales ride afar, and those that are so fortunate as to strike into soft, moist soil at the end of the journey, germinate. Because this flower is so rarely beautiful that few can resist the temptation of picking it, it is becoming sadly rare near large settlements.

Fifteen species of gentian have been gathered during a half-hour walk in Switzerland, where the pastures are spread with sheets of blue. Indeed, one can little realize the beauty of these heavenly flowers who has not seen them among the Alps.

A deep, intense blue is the Closed, Blind, or Bottle Gentian (_G. Andrewsii_), more truly the color of the “male bluebird’s back,” to which Thoreau likened the paler Fringed Gentian. Rarely some degenerate plant bears white flowers. As it is a perennial, we are likely to find it in its old haunts year after year; nevertheless its winged seeds sail far abroad to seek pastures new. This gentian also shows a preference for moist soil. Gray thought that it expanded slightly, and for a short time only in sunshine, but added that, although it is proterandrous, _i.e._, it matures and sheds its pollen before its stigma is susceptible to any, he believed it finally fertilized itself by the lobes of the stigma curling backward until they touched the anthers. But Gray was doubtless mistaken. Several authorities have recently proved that the flower is adapted to bumblebees. It offers them the last feast of the season, for although it comes into bloom in August southward, farther northward--and it extends from Quebec to the Northwest Territory--it lasts through October.

DOGBANE FAMILY (_Apocynaceae_)

Spreading Dogbane; Fly-trap Dogbane; Honey-bloom; Bitter-root

_Apocynum androsaemifolium_

_Flowers_--Delicate pink, veined with a deeper shade, fragrant, bell-shaped, about 1/3 in. across, borne in loose terminal cymes. Calyx 5-parted; corolla of 5 spreading, recurved lobes united into a tube; within the tube 5 tiny, triangular appendages alternate with stamens; the arrow-shaped anthers united around the stigma and slightly adhering to it. _Stem:_ 1 to 4 ft. high, with forking, spreading, leafy branches. _Leaves:_ Opposite, entire-edged, broadly oval, narrow at base, paler, and more or less hairy below. _Fruit:_ Two pods about 4 in. long.

_Preferred Habitat_--Fields, thickets, beside roads, lanes, and walls.

_Flowering Season_--June-July.

_Distribution_--Northern part of British Possessions south to Georgia, westward to Nebraska.

Everywhere at the North we come across this interesting, rather shrubby plant, with its pretty but inconspicuous little rose-veined bells suggesting pink lilies-of-the-valley. Now that we have learned to read the faces of flowers, as it were, we instantly suspect by the color, fragrance, pathfinders, and structure that these are artful wilers, intent on gaining ends of their own through their insect admirers. What are they up to?