Chapter 15
_Flowering Season_--April-July, or sparsely through summer.
_Distribution_--Eastern Canada and United States west to Michigan, south to Georgia and Alabama.
Millions of these dainty wee flowers, scattered through the grass of moist meadows and by the wayside, reflect the blue and the serenity of heaven in their pure, upturned faces. Where the white variety grows, one might think a light snowfall had powdered the grass, or a milky way of tiny floral stars had streaked a terrestrial path. Linnaeus named the flower for Doctor Houston, a young English physician, botanist, and collector, who died in South America in 1733, after an exhausting tramp about the Gulf of Mexico. Flies, beetles, and the common little meadow fritillary butterfly visit these flowers. But small bees are best adapted to it.
John Burroughs found a single bluet in blossom one January, near Washington, when the clump of earth on which it grew was frozen solid. A pot of roots gathered in autumn and placed in a sunny window has sent up a little colony of star-like flowers throughout a winter.
BLUEBELL FAMILY (_Campanulaceae_)
Harebell or Hairbell; Blue Bells of Scotland; Lady’s Thimble
_Campanula rotundifolia_
_Flowers_--Bright blue or violet-blue, bell-shaped, 1/2 in. long, or over, drooping from hair-like stalks. Calyx of 5-pointed, narrow, spreading lobes; 5 slender stamens alternate with lobes of corolla, and borne on summit of calyx tube, which is adherent to ovary; 1 pistil with 3 stigmas in maturity only. _Stem:_ Very slender, 6 in. to 3 ft. high, often several from same root; simple or branching. _Leaves:_ Lower ones nearly round, usually withered and gone by flowering season; stem leaves narrow, pointed, seated on stem. _Fruit:_ An egg-shaped, pendent, 3-celled capsule with short openings near base; seeds very numerous, tiny.
_Preferred Habitat_--Moist rocks, uplands.
_Flowering Season_--June-September.
_Distribution_--Arctic regions of Europe, Asia, and America; southward on this continent, through Canada to New Jersey and Pennsylvania; westward to Nebraska, to Arizona in the Rockies, and to California in the Sierra Nevadas.
The inaccessible crevice of a precipice, moist rocks sprayed with the dashing waters of a lake or some tumbling mountain stream, wind-swept upland meadows, and shady places by the roadside may hold bright bunches of these hardy bells, swaying with exquisite grace on tremulous, hair-like stems that are fitted to withstand the fiercest mountain blasts, however frail they appear. How dainty, slender, tempting these little flowers are! One gladly risks a watery grave or broken bones to bring down a bunch from its aerial cranny.
Venus’ Looking-glass; Clasping Bellflower
_Specularia perfoliata (Legouzia perfoliata)_
_Flowers_--Violet blue, from 1/2 to 3/4 in. across; solitary or 2 or 3 together, seated, in axils of upper leaves. Calyx lobes varying from 3 to 5 in earlier and later flowers, acute, rigid; corolla a 5-spoked wheel; 5 stamens; 1 pistil with 3 stigmas. _Stem:_ 6 in. to 2 ft. long, hairy, densely leafy, slender, weak. _Leaves:_ Round, clasped about stem by heart-shaped base.
_Preferred Habitat_--Sterile waste places, dry woods.
_Flowering Season_--May-September.
_Distribution_--From British Columbia, Oregon, and Mexico, east to Atlantic Ocean.
At the top of a gradually lengthened and apparently overburdened leafy stalk, weakly leaning upon surrounding vegetation, a few perfect blossoms spread their violet wheels, while below them are insignificant earlier flowers, which, although they have never opened, nor reared their heads above the hollows of the little shell-like leaves where they lie secluded, have, nevertheless, been producing seed without imported pollen while their showy sisters slept. But the later blooms, by attracting insects, set cross-fertilized seed to counteract any evil tendencies that might weaken the species if it depended upon self-fertilization only. When the European Venus’ Looking-glass used to be cultivated in gardens here, our grandmothers tell us it was altogether too prolific, crowding out of existence its less fruitful, but more lovely, neighbors.
LOBELIA FAMILY (_Lobeliaceae_)
Cardinal Flower; Red Lobelia
_Lobelia cardinalis_
_Flowers_--Rich vermilion, very rarely rose or white, 1 to 1-1/2 in. long, numerous, growing in terminal, erect, green-bracted, more or less 1-sided racemes. Calyx 5-cleft; corolla tubular, split down one side, 2-lipped; the lower lip with 3 spreading lobes, the upper lip 2-lobed, erect; 5 stamens united into a tube around the style; 2 anthers with hairy tufts. _Stem:_ 2 to 4-1/2 ft. high, rarely branched. _Leaves:_ Oblong to lance-shaped, slightly toothed, mostly sessile.
_Preferred Habitat_--Wet or low ground, beside streams, ditches, and meadow runnels.
_Flowering Season_--July-September.
_Distribution_--New Brunswick to the Gulf states, westward to the Northwest Territory and Kansas.
The easy cultivation from seed of this peerless wild flower--and it is offered in many trade catalogues--might save it to those regions in Nature’s wide garden that now know it no more. The ranks of floral missionaries need recruits.
Curious that the great Blue Lobelia should be the cardinal flower’s twin sister! Why this difference of color? Sir John Lubbock proved by tireless experiment that the bees’ favorite color is blue, and the shorter-tubed Blue Lobelia elected to woo them as her benefactors. Whoever has made a study of the ruby-throated humming bird’s habits must have noticed how red flowers entice him--columbines, painted cups, coral honeysuckle, Oswego Tea, trumpet flower, and cardinal in Nature’s garden; cannas, salvia, gladioli, pelargoniums, fuchsias, phloxes, verbenas, and nasturtiums among others in ours.
Great Lobelia; Blue Cardinal Flower
_Lobelia syphilitica_
_Flowers_--Bright blue, touched with white, fading to pale blue, about 1 in. long, borne on tall, erect, leafy spike. Calyx 5-parted, the lobes sharply cut, hairy. Corolla tubular, open to base on one side, 2-lipped, irregularly 5-lobed, the petals pronounced at maturity only. Stamens 5, united by their hairy anthers into a tube around the style; larger anthers smooth. _Stem:_ 1 to 3 ft. high, stout, simple, leafy, slightly hairy. _Leaves:_ Alternate, oblong, tapering, pointed, irregularly toothed 2 to 6 in. long, 1/2 to 2 in. wide.
_Preferred Habitat_--Moist or wet soil; beside streams.
_Flowering Season_--July-October.
_Distribution_--Ontario and northern United States west to Dakota, south to Kansas and Georgia.
To the evolutionist, ever on the lookout for connecting links, the lobelias form an interesting group, because their corolla, slit down the upper side and somewhat flattened, shows the beginning of the tendency toward the strap or ray flowers that are nearly confined to the composites of much later development, of course, than tubular single blossoms. Next to massing their flowers in showy heads, as the composites do, the lobelias have the almost equally advantageous plan of crowding theirs along a stem so as to make a conspicuous advertisement to attract the passing bee and to offer him the special inducement of numerous feeding places close together.
The handsome Great Lobelia, constantly and invidiously compared with its gorgeous sister the cardinal flower, suffers unfairly. When asked what his favorite color was, Eugene Field replied: “Why, I like any color at all so long as it’s red!” Most men, at least, agree with him, and certainly humming birds do; our scarcity of red flowers being due, we must believe, to the scarcity of humming birds, which chiefly fertilize them. But how bees love the blue blossoms!
Linnaeus named this group of plants for Matthias de l’Obel, a Flemish botanist, or herbalist more likely, who became physician to James I of England.
COMPOSITE FAMILY (_Compositae_)
Iron-weed; Flat Top
_Vernonia noveboracensis_
_Flower-head_--Composite of tubular florets only, intense reddish-purple thistle-like heads, borne on short, branched peduncles and forming broad, flat clusters; bracts of involucre, brownish purple, tipped with awl-shaped bristles. _Stem:_ 3 to 9 ft. high, rough or hairy, branched. _Leaves:_ Alternate, narrowly oblong or lanceolate, saw-edged, 3 to 10 in. long, rough.
_Preferred Habitat_--Moist soil, meadows, fields.
_Flowering Season_--July-September.
_Distribution_--Massachusetts to Georgia, and westward to the Mississippi.
Emerson says a weed is a plant whose virtues we have not yet discovered; but surely it is no small virtue in the iron-weed to brighten the roadsides and low meadows throughout the summer with bright clusters of bloom. When it is on the wane, the asters, for which it is sometimes mistaken, begin to appear, but an instant’s comparison shows the difference between the two flowers. After noting the yellow disk in the centre of an aster, it is not likely the iron-weed’s thistle-like head of ray florets only will ever again be confused with it. Another rank-growing neighbor with which it has been comfounded by the novice is the Joe-Pye Weed, a far paler, old-rose colored flower, as one who does not meet them both afield may see on comparing the colored plates in this book.
Joe-Pye Weed; Trumpet Weed; Purple Thoroughwort; Gravel or Kidney-root; Tall or Purple Boneset
_Eupatorium purpureum_
_Flower-heads_--Pale or dull magenta or lavender pink, slightly fragrant, of tubular florets only, very numerous, in large, terminal, loose, compound clusters, generally elongated. Several series of pink overlapping bracts form the oblong involucre from which the tubular floret and its protruding fringe of style-branches arise. _Stem:_ 3 to 10 ft. high, green or purplish, leafy, usually branching toward top. _Leaves:_ In whorls of 3 to 6 (usually 4), oval to lance-shaped, saw-edged, petioled, thin, rough.
_Preferred Habitat_--Moist soil, meadows, woods, low ground.
_Flowering Season_--August-September.
_Distribution_--New Brunswick to the Gulf of Mexico, westward to Manitoba and Texas.
Towering above the surrounding vegetation of low-lying meadows, this vigorous composite spreads clusters of soft, fringy bloom that, however deep or pale of tint, are ever conspicuous advertisements, even when the golden-rods, sunflowers, and asters enter into close competition for insect trade. Slight fragrance, which to the delicate perception of butterflies is doubtless heavy enough, the florets’ color and slender tubular form indicate an adaptation to them, and they are by far the most abundant visitors, which is not to say that long-tongued bees and flies never reach the nectar and transfer pollen, for they do. But an excellent place for the butterfly collector to carry his net is to a patch of Joe-Pye Weed in September. As the spreading style-branches that fringe each tiny floret are furnished with hairs for three quarters of their length, the pollen caught in them comes in contact with the alighting visitor. Later, the lower portion of the style-branches, that is covered with stigmatic papillae along the edge, emerges from the tube to receive pollen carried from younger flowers when the visitor sips his reward. If the hairs still contain pollen when the stigmatic part of the style is exposed, insects self-fertilize the flower; and if in stormy weather no insects are flying, the flower is nevertheless able to fertilize itself, because the hairy fringe must often come in contact with the stigmas of neighboring florets. It is only when we study flowers with reference to their motives and methods that we understand why one is abundant and another rare. Composites long ago utilized many principles of success in life that the triumphant Anglo-Saxon carries into larger affairs to-day.
Joe-Pye, an Indian medicine-man of New England, earned fame and fortune by curing typhus fever and other horrors with decoctions made from this plant.
Boneset; Common Thorough wort; Agueweed; Indian Sage
_Eupatorium perfoliatum_
_Flower-heads_--Composite, the numerous, small, dull, white heads of tubular florets only, crowded in a scaly involucre and borne in spreading, flat-topped terminal cymes. _Stem:_ Stout, tall, branching above, hairy, leafy. _Leaves:_ Opposite, often united at their bases, or clasping, lance-shaped, saw-edged, wrinkled.
_Preferred Habitat_--Wet ground, low meadows, roadsides.
_Flowering Season_--July-September.
_Distribution_--From the Gulf states north to Nebraska, Manitoba, and New Brunswick.
Frequently, in just such situations as its sister the Joe-Pye Weed selects, and with similar intent, the boneset spreads its soft, leaden-white bloom; but it will be noticed that the butterflies, which love color, especially deep pinks and magenta, let this plant alone, whereas beetles, that do not find the butterfly’s favorite, fragrant Joe-Pye Weed at all to their liking, prefer these dull, odorous flowers. Many flies, wasps, and bees also, get generous entertainment in these tiny florets, where they feast with the minimum loss of time, each head in a cluster containing, as it does, from ten to sixteen restaurants. An ant crawling up the stem is usually discouraged by its hairs long before reaching the sweets. Sometimes the stem appears to run through the centre of one large leaf that is kinky in the middle and taper-pointed at both ends, rather than between a pair of leaves.
An old-fashioned illness known as break-bone fever--doubtless paralleled to-day by the grippe--once had its terrors for a patient increased a hundredfold by the certainty he felt of taking nauseous doses of boneset tea, administered by zealous old women outside the “regular practice.” Children who had to have their noses held before they would--or, indeed, could--swallow the decoction, cheerfully munched boneset taffy instead.
Golden-rods
_Solidago_
When these flowers transform whole acres into “fields of the cloth-of-gold,” the slender wands swaying by every roadside, and Purple Asters add the final touch of imperial splendor to the autumn landscape, already glorious with gold and crimson, is any parterre of Nature’s garden the world around more gorgeous than that portion of it we are pleased to call ours? Within its limits eighty-five species of golden-rod flourish, while a few have strayed into Mexico and South America, and only two or three belong to Europe, where many of ours are tenderly cultivated in gardens, as they would be here, had not Nature been so lavish. To name all these species, or the asters, the sparrows, and the warblers at sight is a feat probably no one living can perform; nevertheless, certain of the commoner golden-rods have well-defined peculiarities that a little field practice soon fixes in the novice’s mind.
Along shady roadsides, and in moist woods and thickets, from August to October, the Blue-stemmed, Wreath, or Woodland Golden-rod (_S. caesia_) sways an unbranched stem with a bluish bloom on it. It is studded with pale golden clusters of tiny florets in the axils of lance-shaped, feather-veined leaves for nearly its entire length. Range from Maine, Ontario, and Minnesota to the Gulf states. None is prettier, more dainty, than this common species.
In rich woodlands and thicket borders we find the Zig-zag or Broad-leaved Golden-rod (_S. latifolia_)--its prolonged, angled stem that grows as if waveringly uncertain of the proper direction to take, strung with small clusters of yellow florets, somewhat after the manner of the preceding species. But its saw-edged leaves are ovate, sharply tapering to a point, and narrowed at the base into petioles. It blooms from July to September. Range from New Brunswick to Georgia, and westward beyond the Mississippi.
During the same blooming period, and through a similar range, our only albino, with an Irish-bull name, the White Golden-rod, or more properly Silver-rod (_S. bicolor_), cannot be mistaken. Its cream-white florets also grow in little clusters from the upper axils of a usually simple and hairy gray stem six inches to four feet high. Most of the heads are crowded in a narrow, terminal pyramidal cluster. This plant approaches more nearly the idea of a rod than its relatives. The leaves, which are broadly oblong toward the base of the stem, and narrowed into long margined petioles, are frequently quite hairy, for the silver-rod elects to live in dry soil and its juices must be protected from heat and too rapid transpiration.
When crushed in the hand, the _dotted_, bright green, lance-shaped, entire leaves of the Sweet Golden-rod or Blue Mountain Tea (_S. odora_) cannot be mistaken, for they give forth a pleasant anise scent. The slender, simple smooth stem is crowned with a graceful panicle, whose branches have the florets seated all on one side. Dry soil. New England to the Gulf states. July to September.
The Wrinkle-leaved, or Tall, Hairy Golden-rod or Bitterweed (_S. rugosa_), a perversely variable species, its hairy stem perhaps only a foot high, or, maybe, more than seven feet, its rough leaves broadly oval to lance-shaped, sharply saw-edged, few if any furnished with footstems, lifts a large, compound, and gracefully curved panicle, whose florets are seated on one side of its spreading branches. Sometimes the stem branches at the summit. One usually finds it blooming in dry soil from July to November throughout a range extending from Newfoundland and Ontario to the Gulf states.
The unusually beautiful, spreading, recurved, branching panicle of bloom borne by the early, Plume, or Sharp-toothed Golden-rod or Yellow-top (_S. juncea_), so often dried for winter decoration, may wave four feet high but, usually not more than two, at the summit of a smooth, rigid stem. Toward the top, narrow, elliptical, uncut leaves are seated on the stalk; below, much larger leaves, their sharp teeth slanting forward, taper into a broad petiole, whose edges may be cut like fringe. In dry, rocky soil this is, perhaps, the first and last golden-rod to bloom, having been found as early as June, and sometimes lasting into November. Range from North Carolina and Missouri very far north.
Perhaps the commonest of all the lovely clan east of the Mississippi, or throughout a range extending from Arizona and Florida northward to British Columbia and New Brunswick, is the Canada Golden-rod or Yellow-weed (_S. canadensis_). Surely every one must be familiar with the large, spreading, dense-flowered panicle, with recurved sprays, that crowns a rough, hairy stem sometimes eight feet tall, or again only two feet. Its lance-shaped, acutely pointed, triple-nerved leaves are rough, and the lower ones saw-edged. From August to November one cannot fail to find it blooming in dry soil.
Most brilliantly colored of its tribe is the low-growing Gray or Field Golden-rod or Dyer’s Weed (_S. nemoralis_). The rich, deep yellow of its little spreading recurved, and usually one-sided panicles is admirably set off by the ashy gray, or often cottony, stem, and the hoary, grayish-green leaves in the open, sterile places where they arise from July to November. Quebec and the Northwest Territory to the Gulf states.
“Along the roadside, like the flowers of gold That tawny Incas for their gardens wrought, Heavy with sunshine droops the golden-rod.”
Bewildered by the multitude of species, and wondering at the enormous number of representatives of many of them, we cannot but inquire into the cause of such triumphal conquest of a continent by a single genus. Much is explained simply in the statement that golden-rods belong to the vast order of _Compositae_, flowers in reality made up sometimes of hundreds of minute florets united into a far-advanced socialistic community having for its motto, “In union there is strength.” In the first place, such an association of florets makes a far more conspicuous advertisement than a single flower, one that can be seen by insects at a great distance; for most of the composite plants live in large colonies, each plant, as well as each floret, helping the others in attracting their benefactors’ attention. The facility with which insects are enabled to collect both pollen and nectar makes the golden-rods exceedingly popular restaurants. Finally, the visits of insects are more likely to prove effectual, because any one that alights must touch several or many florets, and cross-pollinate them simply by crawling over a head. The disk florets mostly contain both stamens and pistil, while the ray florets in one series are all male. Immense numbers of wasps, hornets, bees, flies, beetles, and “bugs” feast without effort here: indeed, the budding entomologist might form a large collection of _Hymenoptera, Diptera, Coleoptera_, and _Hemiptera_ from among the visitors to a single field of golden-rod alone. Usually to be discovered among the throng are the velvety black _Lytta_ or _Cantharis_, that impostor wasp-beetle, the black and yellow wavy-banded, red-legged locust-tree borer, and the painted _Clytus_, banded with yellow and sable, squeaking contentedly as he gnaws the florets that feed him.
Where the slender, brown, plume-tipped wands etch their charming outline above the snow-covered fields, how the sparrows, finches, buntings, and juncos love to congregate, of course helping to scatter the seeds to the wind while satisfying their hunger on the swaying, down-curved stalks. Now that the leaves are gone, some of the golden-rod stems are seen to bulge as if a tiny ball were concealed under the bark. In spring a little winged tenant, a fly, will emerge from the gall that has been his cradle all winter.
Blue and Purple Asters or Starworts
_Aster_
Evolution teaches us that thistles, daisies, sunflowers, asters, and all the triumphant horde of composites were once very different flowers from what we see to-day. Through ages of natural selection of the fittest among their ancestral types, having finally arrived at the most successful adaptation of their various parts to their surroundings in the whole floral kingdom, they are now overrunning the earth. Doubtless the aster’s remote ancestors were simple green leaves around the vital organs, and depended upon the wind, as the grasses do--a most extravagant method--to transfer their pollen. Then some rudimentary flower changed its outer row of stamens into petals, which gradually took on color to attract insects and insure a more economical method of transfer. Gardeners to-day take advantage of a blossom’s natural tendency to change stamens into petals when they wish to produce double flowers. As flowers and insects developed side by side, and there came to be a better and better understanding between them of each other’s requirements, mutual adaptation followed. The flower that offered the best advertisement, as the composites do, by its showy rays; that secreted nectar in tubular flowers where no useless insect could pilfer it; that fastened its stamens to the inside wall of the tube where they must dust with pollen the underside of every insect, unwittingly cross-fertilizing the blossom as he crawled over it; that massed a great number of these tubular florets together where insects might readily discover them and feast with the least possible loss of time--this flower became the winner in life’s race. Small wonder that our June fields are white with daisies and the autumn landscape is glorified with golden-rod and asters!
Since North America boasts the greater part of the two hundred and fifty asters named by scientists, and as variations in many of our common species frequently occur, the tyro need expect no easy task in identifying every one he meets afield. However, the following are possible acquaintances to every one: