Chapter 12
Let us watch. Bees, flies, moths, and butterflies, especially the latter, hover near. Alighting, the butterfly visitor unrolls his long tongue and inserts it where the five pink veins tell him to, for five nectar-bearing glands stand in a ring around the base of the pistil. Now, as he withdraws his slender tongue through one of the V-shaped cavities that make a circle of traps, he may count himself lucky to escape with no heavier toll imposed than pollen cemented to it. This granular dust he is required to rub off against the stigma of the next flower entered. Some bees, too, have been taken with the dogbane’s pollen cemented to their tongues. But suppose a fly call upon this innocent-looking blossom? His short tongue, as well as the butterfly’s, is guided into one of the V-shaped cavities after he has sipped; but, getting wedged between the trap’s horny teeth, the poor little victim is held a prisoner there until he slowly dies of starvation in sight of plenty. This is the penalty he must pay for trespassing on the butterfly’s preserves! The dogbane, which is perfectly adapted to the butterfly, and dependent upon it for help in producing fertile seed, ruthlessly destroys all poachers that are not big or strong enough to jerk away from its vise-like grasp. One often sees small flies and even moths dead and dangling by the tongue from the wicked little charmers. If the flower assimilated their dead bodies as the pitcher plant, for example, does those of its victims, the fly’s fate would seem less cruel. To be killed by slow torture and dangled like a scarecrow simply for pilfering a drop of nectar is surely an execution of justice medieval in its severity.
MILKWEED FAMILY (_Aselepiadaceae_)
Common Milkweed or Silkweed
_Asclepias syriaca (A. cornuti)_
_Flowers_--Dull, pale greenish purple pink, or brownish pink, borne on pedicels, in many flowered, broad umbels. Calyx inferior, 5-parted; corolla deeply 5-cleft, the segments turned backward. Above them an erect, 5-parted crown, each part called a hood, containing a nectary, and with a tooth on either side, and an incurved horn projecting from within. Behind the crown the short, stout stamens, united by their filaments in a tube, are inserted on the corolla. Broad anthers united around a thick column of pistils terminating hi a large, sticky, 5-angled disk. The anther sacs tipped with a winged membrane; a waxy, pear-shaped pollen-mass in each sac connected with the stigma in pairs or fours by a dark gland, and suspended by a stalk like a pair of saddle-bags. _Stem:_ Stout, leafy, usually unbranched, 3 to 5 ft. high, juice milky. _Leaves:_ Opposite, oblong, entire-edged smooth above, hairy below, 4 to 9 in. long. _Fruit:_ 2 thick, warty pods, usually only one filled with compressed seeds attached to tufts of silky, white, fluffy hairs.
_Preferred Habitat_--Fields and waste places, roadsides.
_Flowering Season_--June-September.
_Distribution_--New Brunswick, far westward and southward to North Carolina and Kansas.
After the orchids, no flowers show greater executive ability, none have adopted more ingenious methods of compelling insects to work for them than the milkweeds. Wonderfully have they perfected their mechanism in every part until no member of the family even attempts to fertilize itself; hence their triumphal, vigorous march around the earth, the tribe numbering more than nineteen hundred species located chiefly in those tropical and warm temperate regions that teem with the insects whose cooperation they seek.
Commonest of all with us is this rank weed, which possesses the dignity of a rubber plant. Much more attractive to human eyes, at least, than the dull, pale, brownish-pink umbels of flowers are its exquisite silky seed-tufts. But not so with insects. Knowing that the slightly fragrant blossoms are rich in nectar, bees, wasps, flies, beetles, and butterflies come to feast. Now, the visitor finding his alighting place slippery, his feet claw about in all directions to secure a hold, just as it was planned they should; for in his struggles some of his feet must get caught in the fine little clefts at the base of the flower. His efforts to extricate his foot only draw it into a slot at the end of which lies a little dark-brown body. In a newly-opened flower five of these little bodies may be seen between the horns of the crown, at equal distances around it. This tiny brown excrescence is hard and horny, with a notch in its face. It is continuous with and forms the end of the slot in which the visitor’s foot is caught. Into this he must draw his foot or claw, and finding it rather tightly held, must give a vigorous jerk to get it free. Attached to either side of the little horny piece is a flattened yellow pollen-mass, and so away he flies with a pair of these pollinia, that look like tiny saddle-bags, dangling from his feet. One might think that such rough handling as many insects must submit to from flowers would discourage them from making any more visits; but the desire for food is a mighty passion. While the insect is flying off to another blossom, the stalk to which the saddle-bags are attached twists until it brings them together, that, when his feet get caught in other slots, they may be in the position to get broken off in his struggles for freedom precisely where they will fertilize the stigmatic chambers. Now the visitor flies away with the stalks alone sticking to his claws. Bumblebees and hive-bees have been caught with a dozen pollen-masses dangling from a single foot. Outrageous imposition!
Better than any written description of the milkweed blossom’s mechanism is a simple experiment. If you have neither time nor patience to sit in the hot sun, magnifying-glass in hand, and watch for an unwary insect to get caught, take an ordinary house-fly, and hold it by the wings so that it may claw at one of the newly-opened flowers from which no pollinia have been removed. It tries frantically to hold on, and with a little direction it may be led to catch its claws in the slots of the flower. Now pull it gently away, and you will find a pair of saddle-bags slung over his foot by a slender curved stalk. If you are rarely skilful, you may induce your fly to withdraw the pollinia from all five slots on as many of his feet. And they are not to be thrown or scraped off, let the fly try as hard as he pleases. You may now invite the fly to take a walk on another flower in which he will probably leave one or more pollinia in its stigmatic cavities.
Doctor Kerner thought the milky juice in milkweed plants, especially abundant in the uppermost leaves and stems, serves to protect the flowers from useless crawling pilferers. He once started a number of ants to climb up a milky stalk. When they neared the summit, he noticed that at each movement the terminal hooks of their feet cut through the tender epiderm, and from the little clefts the milky juice began to flow, bedraggling their feet and the hind part of then-bodies. “The ants were much impeded in their movements,” he writes, “and in order to rid themselves of the annoyance, drew their feet through their mouths.... Their movements, however, which accompanied these efforts, simply resulted in making fresh fissures and fresh discharges of milky juice, so that the position of the ants became each moment worse and worse. Many escaped by getting to the edge of a leaf and dropping to the ground. Others tried this method of escape too late, for the air soon hardened the milky juice into a tough brown substance, and after this, all the strugglings of the ants to free themselves from the viscid matter were in vain.” Nature’s methods of preserving a flower’s nectar for the insects that are especially adapted to fertilize it, and of punishing all useless intruders, often shock us; yet justice is ever stern, ever kind in the largest sense.
If the asclepias really do kill some insects with their juice, others doubtless owe their lives to it. Among the “protected” insects are the milkweed butterflies and their caterpillars, which are provided with secretions that are distasteful to birds and predaceous insects. “These acrid secretions are probably due to the character of the plants upon which the caterpillars feed,” says Doctor Holland, in his beautiful and invaluable “Butterfly Book.” “Enjoying on this account immunity from attack, they have all, in the process of time, been mimicked by species in other genera which have not the same immunity.” “One cannot stay long around a patch of milkweeds without seeing the monarch butterfly (_Anosia plexippus_), that splendid, bright, reddish-brown winged fellow, the borders and veins broadly black, with two rows of white spots on the outer borders and two rows of pale spots across the tip of the fore wings. There is a black scent-pouch on the hind wings. The caterpillar, which is bright yellow or greenish yellow, banded with shining black, is furnished with black fleshy ‘horns’ fore and aft.”
Like the dandelion, thistle, and other triumphant strugglers for survival, the milkweed sends its offspring adrift on the winds to found fresh colonies afar. Children delight in making pompons for their hats by removing the silky seed-tufts from pods before they burst, and winding them, one by one, on slender stems with fine thread. Hung in the sunshine, how charmingly fluffy and soft they dry!
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Among the comparatively few butterfly flowers--although, of course, other insects not adapted to them are visitors--is the Purple Milkweed (_A. purpurasceus_), whose deep magenta umbels are so conspicuous through the summer months. Humming birds occasionally seek it, too. From eastern Massachusetts to Virginia, and westward to the Mississippi, or beyond, it is to be found in dry fields, woods, and thickets.
Butterfly-weed; Pleurisy-root; Orange-root; Orange Milkweed
_Asclepias tuberosa_
_Flowers--_Bright reddish orange, in many-flowered, terminal clusters, each flower similar in structure to the common milkweed (see above). _Stem:_ Erect, 1 to 2 ft. tall, hairy, leafy, milky juice scanty. _Leaves:_ Usually all alternate, lance-shaped, seated on stem. _Fruit:_ A pair of erect, hoary pods, 2 to 5 in. long, 1 at least containing silky plumed seeds.
_Preferred Habitat_--Dry or sandy fields, hills, roadsides.
_Flowering Season_--June-September.
_Distribution_--Maine and Ontario to Arizona, south to the Gulf of Mexico.
Intensely brilliant clusters of this the most ornamental of all native milkweeds set dry fields ablaze with color. Above them butterflies hover, float, alight, sip, and sail away--the great dark, velvety, pipe-vine swallow-tail _(Papilio philenor)_, its green-shaded hind wings marked with little white half moons; the yellow and brown, common, Eastern swallow-tail _(P. asterias)_, that we saw about the wild parsnip and other members of the carrot family; the exquisite, large, spice-bush swallow-tail, whose bugaboo caterpillar startled us when we unrolled a leaf of its favorite food supply; the small, common, white cabbage butterfly _(Pieris protodice)_; the even more common little sulphur butterflies, inseparable from clover fields and mud puddles; the painted lady that follows thistles around the globe; the regal fritillary _(Argynnis idalia)_, its black and fulvous wings marked with silver crescents, a gorgeous creature developed from the black and orange caterpillar that prowls at night among violet plants; the great spangled fritillary of similar habit; the bright fulvous and black pearl crescent butterfly _(Phyciodes tharos)_, its small wings usually seen hovering about the asters; the little grayish-brown, coral hairstreak _(Thecla titus)_, and the bronze copper _(Chrysophanus thoe)_, whose caterpillar feeds on sorrel _(Rumex);_ the delicate, tailed blue butterfly _(Lycena comyntas,)_ with a wing expansion of only an inch from tip to tip; all these visitors duplicated again and again--these and several others that either escaped the net before they were named, or could not be run down, were seen one bright midsummer day along a Long Island roadside bordered with butterfly weed. Most abundant of all was still another species, the splendid monarch _(Anosia plexippus)_, the most familiar representative of the tribe of milkweed butterflies. It is said the Indians used the tuberous root of this plant for various maladies, although they could scarcely have known that because of the alleged healing properties of the genus Linnaeus dedicated it to Aesculapius, of whose name Asklepios is the Greek form.
CONVOLVULUS FAMILY _(Convolvulaceae)_
Hedge or Great Bindweed; Wild Morning-glory; Rutland Beauty; Bell-bind; Lady’s Nightcap
_Convolvulus sepium_
_Flowers_--Light pink, with white stripes or all white, bell-shaped, about 2 in. long, twisted in the bud, solitary, on long peduncles from leaf axils. Calyx of 5 sepals, concealed by 2 large bracts at base. Corolla 5-lobed, the 5 included stamens inserted on its tube; style with 2 oblong stigmas. _Stem:_ Smooth or hairy, 3 to 10 ft. long, twining or trailing over ground. _Leaves:_ Triangular or arrow-shaped, 2 to 5 in. long, on slender petioles.
_Preferred Habitat_--Wayside hedges, thickets, fields, walls.
_Flowering Season_--June-September.
_Distribution_--Nova Scotia to North Carolina, westward to Nebraska. Europe and Asia.
No one need be told that the pretty, bell-shaped pink and white flower on the vigorous vine clambering over stone walls and winding about the shrubbery of wayside thickets in a suffocating embrace is akin to the morning-glory of the garden trellis (_C. Major_). An exceedingly rapid climber, the twining stem often describes a complete circle in two hours, turning against the sun, or just contrary to the hands of a watch. Late in the season, when an abundance of seed has been set, the flower can well afford to keep open longer hours, also in rainy weather; but early in the summer, at least, it must attend to business only while the sun shines and its benefactors are flying. Usually it closes at sundown. On moonlight nights, however, the hospitable blossom keeps open for the benefit of certain moths.
From July until hard frost look for that exquisite little beetle, _Cassida aurichalcea_, like a drop of molten gold, clinging beneath the bindweed’s leaves. The small perforations reveal his hiding places. “But you must be quick if you would capture him,” says William Hamilton Gibson, “for he is off in a spangling streak of glitter. Nor is this golden sheen all the resource of the little insect; for in the space of a few seconds, as you hold him in your hand, he has become a milky, iridescent opal, and now mother-of-pearl, and finally crawls before you in a coat of dull orange.” A dead beetle loses all this wonderful lustre. Even on the morning-glory in our gardens we may sometimes find these jewelled mites, or their fork-tailed, black larvae, or the tiny chrysalids suspended by their tails, although it is the wild bindweed that is ever their favorite abiding place.
Gronovius’ or Common Dodder; Strangle-weed; Love Vine; Angel’s Hair
_Cuscuta Gronovii_
_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 jewel-weed--a conspicuous sufferer--is hung about with dodder, one must be grateful for at least such symphony of yellows.
POLEMONIUM FAMILY _(Polemoniaceae)_
Ground or Moss Pink
_Phlox subulata_
_Flowers_--Very numerous, small, deep purplish pink, lavender or rose, varying to white, with a darker eye, growing in simple cymes, or solitary in a Western variety. Calyx with 5 slender teeth; corolla salver-form with 5 spreading lobes; 5 stamens inserted on corolla tube; style 3-lobed. _Stems:_ Rarely exceeding 6 in. in height, tufted like mats, much branched, plentifully set with awl-shaped, evergreen leaves barely 1/2 in. long, growing in tufts at joints of stem.
_Preferred Habitat_--Rocky ground, hillsides.
_Flowering Season_--April-June.
_Distribution_--Southern New York to Florida, westward to Michigan and Kentucky.
A charming little plant, growing in dense evergreen mats with which Nature carpets dry, sandy, and rocky hillsides, is often completely hidden beneath its wealth of flowers. Far beyond its natural range, as well as within it, the Moss Pink glows in gardens, cemeteries, and parks, wherever there are rocks to conceal or sterile wastes to beautify. Very slight encouragement induces it to run wild. There are great rocks in Central Park, New York, worth travelling miles to see in early May, when their stern faces are flushed and smiling with these blossoms.
BORAGE FAMILY _(Boraginaceae)_
Forget-me-not; Mouse-ear; Scorpion Grass; Snake Grass; Love Me
_Myosotis scorpioides (M. palustris)_
_Flowers_--Pure blue, pinkish, or white, with yellow eye; flat, 5-lobed, borne in many-flowered, long, often 1-sided racemes. Calyx 5-cleft; the lobes narrow, spreading, erect, and open in fruit; 5 stamens inserted on corolla tube; style thread-like; ovary 4-celled. _Stem:_ Low, branching, leafy, slender, hairy, partially reclining. _Leaves:_ (_Myosotis_ = mouse-ear) oblong, alternate, seated on stem; hairy. _Fruit:_ Nutlets, angled and keeled on inner side.
_Preferred Habitat_--Escaped from gardens to brooksides, marshes, and low meadows.
_Flowering Season_--May-July.
_Distribution_--Native of Europe and Asia, now rapidly spreading from Nova Scotia southward to New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and beyond.
How rare a color blue must have been originally among our flora is evident from the majority of blue and purple flowers that, although now abundant here and so perfectly at home, are really quite recent immigrants from Europe and Asia. But our dryer, hotter climate never brings to the perfection attained in England
“The sweet forget-me-nots That grow for happy lovers.”
Tennyson thus ignores the melancholy association of the flower in the popular legend which tells how a lover, when trying to gather some of these blossoms for his sweetheart, fell into a deep pool, and threw a bunch on the bank, calling out, as he sank forever from her sight, “Forget me not.” Another dismal myth sends its hero forth seeking hidden treasure caves in a mountain, under the guidance of a fairy. He fills his pockets with gold, but not heeding the fairy’s warning to “forget not the best”--_i.e._, the myosotis--he is crushed by the closing together of the mountain. Happiest of all is the folk-tale of the Persians, as told by their poet Shiraz: “It was in the golden morning of the early world, when an angel sat weeping outside the closed gates of Paradise. He had fallen from his high estate through loving a daughter of earth, nor was he permitted to enter again until she whom he loved had planted the flowers of the forget-me-not in every corner of the world. He returned to earth and assisted her, and together they went hand in hand. When their task was ended, they entered Paradise together, for the fair woman, without tasting the bitterness of death, became immortal like the angel whose love her beauty had won when she sat by the river twining forget-me-nots in her hair.”
It was the golden ring around the forget-me-not’s centre that first led Sprengel to believe the conspicuous markings at the entrance of many flowers served as pathfinders to insects. This golden circle also shelters the nectar from rain, and indicates to the fly or bee just where it must probe between stigma and anthers to touch them with opposite sides of its tongue. Since it may probe from any point of the circle, it is quite likely that the side of the tongue that touched a pollen-laden anther in one flower will touch the stigma in the next one visited, and so cross-fertilize it. But forget-me-nots are not wholly dependent on insects. When these fail, a fully mature flower is still able to set fertile seed by shedding its own pollen directly on the stigma.
Viper’s Bugloss; Blue-weed; Viper’s Herb or Grass; Snake-flower; Blue Thistle; Blue Devil
_Echium vulgare_
_Flowers_--Bright blue, afterward reddish purple, pink in the bud, numerous, clustered on short, 1-sided curved spikes rolled up at first, and straightening out as flowers expand. Calyx deeply 5-cleft; corolla 1 in. long or less, funnel form, the 5 lobes unequal, acute; 5 stamens inserted on corolla tube, the filaments spreading below, and united above into slender appendage, the anthers forming a cone; 1 pistil with 2 stigmas. _Stem:_ 1 to 2 1/2 ft. high; bristly-hairy, erect, spotted. _Leaves:_ Hairy, rough, oblong to lance-shaped, alternate, seated on stem, except at base of plant.
_Preferred Habitat_--Dry fields, waste places, roadsides
_Flowering Season_--June-July.
_Distribution_--New Brunswick to Virginia, westward to Nebraska; Europe and Asia.
Years ago, when simple folk believed God had marked plants with some sign to indicate the special use for which each was intended, they regarded the spotted stem of the bugloss, and its seeds shaped like a serpent’s head, as certain indications that the herb would cure snake bites. Indeed, the genus takes its name from _Echis_, the Greek viper.
VERVAIN FAMILY _(Verbenaceae)_
Blue Vervain; Wild Hyssop; Simpler’s Joy
_Verbena hastata_