Chapter 6

_Flowers_--Yellow, small, odor disagreeable, 6-parted, borne in drooping, many-flowered racemes from the leaf axils along arching twigs. _Stem_: A much-branched, smooth, gray shrub, 5 to 8 ft. tall, armed with sharp spines. _Leaves_: From the 3-pronged spines (thorns); oval or obovate, bristly edged. _Fruit_: Oblong, scarlet, acid berries.

_Preferred Habitat_--Thickets, roadsides, dry or gravelly soil.

_Flowering Season_--May-June.

_Distribution_--Naturalized in New England and Middle states; less common in Canada and the West. Europe and Asia.

When the twigs of barberry bushes arch with the weight of clusters of beautiful bright berries in September, every one must take notice of a shrub so decorative, which receives scant attention from us, however, when its insignificant little flowers are out.

In the barberry bushes, as in the gorse, when grown in dry, gravelly situations, we see many leaves and twigs modified into thorns to diminish the loss of water through evaporation by exposing too much leaf surface to the sun and air. That such spines protect the plants which bear them from the ravages of grazing cattle is, of course, an additional motive for their presence. Under cultivation, in well-watered garden soil--and how many charming varieties of barberries are cultivated--the thorny shrub loses much of its armor, putting forth many more leaves, in rosettes, along more numerous twigs, instead. Even the prickly pear cactus might become mild as a lamb were it to forswear sandy deserts and live in marshes instead. Country people sometimes rob the birds of the acid berries to make preserves. The wood furnishes a yellow dye.

POPPY FAMILY _(Papaveraceae)_

Bloodroot; Indian Paint; Red Puccoon

_Sanguinaria canadensis_

_Flowers_--Pure white, rarely pinkish, golden centred, 1 to 1-1/2 in. across, solitary, at end of a smooth, naked scape 6 to 14 in. tall. Calyx of 2 short-lived sepals; corolla of 8 to 12 oblong petals, early falling; stamens numerous; 1 short pistil composed of 2 carpels. _Leaves:_ Rounded, deeply and palmately lobed, the 5 to 9 lobes often cleft. _Rootstock:_ Thick, several inches long, with fibrous roots, and filled with orange-red juice.

_Preferred Habitat_--Rich woods and borders; low hillsides.

_Flowering Season_--April-May.

_Distribution_--Nova Scotia to Florida, westward to Nebraska.

Snugly protected in a papery sheath enfolding a silvery-green leaf-cloak, the solitary erect bud slowly rises from its embrace, sheds its sepals, expands into an immaculate golden-centred blossom that, poppy-like, offers but a glimpse of its fleeting loveliness ere it drops its snow-white petals and is gone. But were the flowers less ephemeral, were we always certain of hitting upon the very time its colonies are starring the woodland, would it have so great a charm? Here to-day, if there comes a sudden burst of warm sunshine; gone to-morrow, if the spring winds, rushing through the nearly leafless woods, are too rude to the fragile petals--no blossom has a more evanescent beauty, none is more lovely. After its charms have been displayed, up rises the circular leaf-cloak on its smooth reddish petiole, unrolls, and at length overtops the narrow, oblong seed-vessel. Wound the plant in any part, and there flows an orange-red juice, which old-fashioned mothers used to drop on lumps of sugar and administer when their children had coughs and colds. As this fluid stains whatever it touches--hence its value to the Indians as a war-paint--one should be careful in picking the flower. It has no value for cutting, of course; but in some rich, shady corner of the garden, a clump of the plants will thrive and bring a suggestive picture of the spring woods to our very doors. It will be noticed that plants having thick rootstock, corms, and bulbs, which store up food during the winter, like the irises, Solomon’s seals, bloodroot, adder’s tongue, and crocuses, are prepared to rush into blossom far earlier in spring than fibrous-rooted species that must accumulate nourishment after the season has opened.

Greater Celandine; Swallow-wort

_Chelidonium majus_

_Flowers_--Lustreless yellow, about 1/2 in. across, on slender pedicels, in a small umbel-like cluster. Sepals 2, soon falling; 4 petals, many yellow stamens, pistil prominent. _Stem:_ Weak, 1 to 2 ft. high, branching, slightly hairy, containing bright orange acrid juice. _Leaves:_ Thin, 4 to 8 in. long, deeply cleft into 5 (usually) irregular oval lobes, the terminal one largest. _Fruit:_ Smooth, slender, erect pods, 1 to 2 in. long, tipped with the persistent style.

_Preferred Habitat_--Dry waste land, fields, roadsides, gardens, near dwellings.

_Flowering Season_--April-September.

_Distribution_--Naturalized from Europe in eastern United States.

Not this weak invader of our roadsides, whose four yellow petals suggest one of the cross-bearing mustard tribe, but the pert little Lesser Celandine, Pilewort, or Figwort Buttercup (_Ficaria Ficaria_), one of the crowfoot family, whose larger solitary satiny yellow flowers so commonly star European pastures, was Wordsworth’s special delight--a tiny, turf-loving plant, about which much poetical association clusters. Having stolen passage across the Atlantic, it is now making itself at home about College Point, Long Island; on Staten Island; near Philadelphia, and maybe elsewhere. Doubtless it will one day overrun our fields, as so many other European immigrants have done.

The generic Greek name of the greater celandine, meaning a swallow, was given it because it begins to bloom when the first returning swallows are seen skimming over the water and freshly ploughed fields in a perfect ecstasy of flight, and continues in flower among its erect seed capsules until the first cool days of autumn kill the gnats and small winged insects not driven to cover. Then the swallows, dependent on such fare, must go to warmer climes where plenty still fly. Quaint old Gerarde claims that the Swallow-wort was so called because “with this herbe the dams restore eyesight to their young ones when their eye be put out” by swallows. Coles asserts “the swallow cureth her dim eyes with Celandine.”

FUMITORY FAMILY _(Fumariaceae)_

Dutchman’s Breeches; White Hearts; Soldier’s Cap; Ear-drops

_Dicentra Cucullaria_

_Flowers_--White, tipped with yellow, nodding in a 1-sided raceme. Two scale-like sepals; corolla of 4 petals, in 2 pairs, somewhat cohering into a heart-shaped, flattened, irregular flower, the outer pair of petals extended into 2 widely spread spurs, the small inner petals united above; 6 stamens in 2 sets; style slender, with a 2-lobed stigma. _Scape: 5_ to 10 in. high, smooth, from a bulbous root. _Leaves:_ Finely cut, thrice compound, pale beneath, on slender petioles, all from base.

_Preferred Habitat_--Rich, rocky woods.

_Flowering Season_--April-May.

_Distribution_--Nova Scotia to the Carolinas, west to Nebraska.

Rich leaf mould, accumulated between crevices of rock, makes the ideal home of this delicate yet striking flower, coarse-named, but refined in all its parts. Consistent with the dainty, heart-shaped blossoms that hang trembling along the slender stem like pendants from a lady’s ear, are the finely dissected, lace-like leaves, the whole plant repudiating by its femininity its most popular name. It was Thoreau who observed that only those plants which require but little light, and can stand the drip of trees, prefer to dwell in the woods--plants which have commonly more beauty in their leaves than in their pale and almost colorless blossoms. Certainly few woodland dwellers have more delicately beautiful foliage than the fumitory tribe.

Squirrel Corn

_Dicentra canadensis_

_Flowers_--Irregular, greenish white tinged with rose, slightly fragrant, heart-shaped, with 2 short rounded spurs, more than 1/2 in. long, nodding on a slender Calyx of 2 scale-like sepals; corolla heart-shaped at base, consisting of 4 petals in 2 united pairs, a prominent crest on tips of inner ones; 6 stamens in 2 sets; style with 2-lobed stigma. _Scape_; Smooth, 6 to 12 in. high, the rootstock bearing many small, round, yellow tubers like kernels of corn. _Leaves_: All from root, delicate, compounded of 3 very finely dissected divisions.

_Preferred Habitat_--Rich, moist woods.

_Flowering Season_--May-June.

_Distribution_--Nova Scotia to Virginia, and westward to the Mississippi.

Any one familiar with the Bleeding-heart _(Dicentra eximia)_ of old-fashioned gardens, found growing wild in the Alleghanies, and with the exquisite White Mountain Fringe _(Adlumia fungosa)_ often brought from the woods to be planted over shady trellises, or with the Dutchman’s breeches, need not be told that the little squirrel corn is next of kin or far removed from the Pink Corydalis. It is not until we dig up the plant and look at its roots that we see why it received its name. A delicious perfume like hyacinths, only fainter and subtler, rises from the dainty blossoms.

MUSTARD FAMILY _(Cruciferae)_

Shepherd’s Purse; Mother’s Heart

_Capsella Bursa-pastoris_

_Flowers_--Small, white, in a long, loose raceme, followed by triangular and notched (somewhat heart-shaped) pods, the valves boat-shaped and keeled. Sepals and petals 4; stamens 6; 1 pistil. _Stem:_ 6 to 18 in. high, from a deep root. _Leaves:_ Forming a rosette at base, 2 to 5 in. long, more or less cut (pinnatifid), a few pointed, arrow-shaped leaves also scattered along stem and partly clasping it.

_Preferred Habitat_--Fields, roadsides, waste places.

_Flowering Season_--Almost throughout the year.

_Distribution_--Over nearly all parts of the earth.

From Europe this little low plant found its way, to become the commonest of our weeds, so completing its march around the globe. At a glance one knows it to be related to the alyssum and candytuft of our gardens, albeit a poor relation in spite of its vaunted purses--the tiny, heart-shaped seed-pods that so rapidly succeed the flowers. What is the secret of its successful march over the face of the earth? Like the equally triumphant chickweed, it is easily satisfied with unoccupied waste land, it avoids the fiercest competition for insect trade by prolonging its season of bloom far beyond that of any native flower, for there is not a month in the year when one may not find it even in New England in sheltered places.

Black Mustard

_Brassica nigra_

_Flowers_--Bright yellow, fading pale, 1/4 to 1/2 in. across, 4-parted, in elongated racemes; quickly followed by narrow, upright 4-sided pods about 1/2 in. long appressed against the stem. _Stem:_ Erect, 2 to 7 ft. tall, branching. _Leaves:_ Variously lobed and divided, finely toothed, the terminal lobe larger than the 2 to 4 side ones.

_Preferred Habitat_--Roadsides, fields, neglected gardens.

_Flowering Season_--June-November.

_Distribution_--Common throughout our area; naturalized from Europe and Asia.

“The kingdom of heaven is like unto a grain of mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field: which indeed is less than all seeds; but when it is grown, it is greater than the herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof.”

Commentators differ as to which is the mustard of the parable--this common Black Mustard, or a rarer shrub-like tree (_Salvadora Persica_), with an equivalent Arabic name, a pungent odor, and a very small seed. Inasmuch as the mustard which is systematically planted for fodder by Old World farmers grows with the greatest luxuriance in Palestine, and the comparison between the size of its seed and the plant’s great height was already proverbial in the East when Jesus used it, evidence strongly favors this wayside weed. Indeed, the late Doctor Royle, who endeavored to prove that it was the shrub that was referred to, finally found that it does not grow in Galilee.

Now, there are two species which furnish the most powerfully pungent condiment known to commerce; but the tiny dark brown seeds of the Black Mustard are sharper than the serpent’s tooth, whereas the pale brown seeds of the White Mustard, often mixed with them, are far more mild. The latter (_Brassica alba_) is a similar, but more hairy, plant, with slightly larger yellow flowers. Its pods are constricted like a necklace between the seeds.

The coarse Hedge Mustard (_Sisymbrium officinale_), with rigid, spreading branches, and spikes of tiny pale yellow flowers, quickly followed by awl-shaped pods that are closely appressed to the stem, abounds in waste places throughout our area. It blooms from May to November, like the next species.

Another common and most troublesome weed from Europe is the Field or Corn Mustard, Charlock or Field Kale (_Brassica arvensis_) found in grain fields, gardens, rich waste lands, and rubbish heaps. The alternate leaves, which stand boldly out from the stem, are oval, coarsely saw-toothed, or the lower ones more irregular, and lobed at their bases, all rough to the touch, and conspicuously veined.

PITCHER-PLANT FAMILY _(Sarracenaceae)_

Pitcher-plant; Side-saddle Flower; Huntsman’s Cup; Indian Dipper

_Sarracenea purpurea_

_Flower_--Deep reddish purple, sometimes partly greenish, pink, or red, 2 in. or more across, globose; solitary, nodding from scape 1 to 2 ft. tall. Calyx of 5 sepals, with 3 or 4 bracts at base; 5 overlapping petals, enclosing a yellowish, umbrella-shaped dilation of the style, with 5 rays terminating in 5-hooked stigmas; stamens indefinite. _Leaves:_ Hollow, pitcher-shaped through the folding together of their margins, leaving a broad wing; much inflated, hooded, yellowish green with dark maroon or purple lines and veinings, 4 to 12 in. long, curved, in a tuft from the root.

_Preferred Habitat_--Peat-bogs; spongy, mossy swamps.

_Flowering Season_--May-June.

_Distribution_--Labrador to the Rocky Mountains, south to Florida, Kentucky, and Minnesota.

“What’s this I hear About the new carnivora? Can little plants Eat bugs and ants And gnats and flies? A sort of retrograding: Surely the fare Of flowers is air Or sunshine sweet; They shouldn’t eat Or do aught so degrading!”

There must always be something shocking in the sacrifice of the higher life to the lower, of the sensate to what we are pleased to call the insensate, although no one who has studied the marvellously intelligent motives that impel a plant’s activities can any longer consider the vegetable creation as lacking sensibility. Science is at length giving us a glimmering of the meaning of the word universe, teaching, as it does, that all creatures in sharing the One Life share in many of its powers, and differ from one another only in degree of possession, not in kind. The transition from one so-called kingdom into another presumably higher one is a purely arbitrary line marked by man, and often impossible to define. The animalcule and the insectivorous plant know no boundaries between the animal and the vegetable. And who shall say that the sundew or the bladderwort is not a higher organism than the amoeba? Animated plants and vegetating animals parallel each other. Several hundred carnivorous plants in all parts of the world have now been named by scientists.

It is well worth a journey to some spongy, sphagnum bog to gather clumps of pitcher-plants which will furnish an interesting study to an entire household throughout the summer while they pursue their nefarious business in a shallow bowl on the veranda. A modification of the petiole forms a deep, hollow pitcher having for its spout a modification of the blade of the leaf. Usually the pitchers are half filled with water and tiny drowned victims when we gather them. Some of this fluid must be rain, but the open pitcher secretes much juice, too. Certain relatives, whose pitchers have hooded lids that keep out rain, are nevertheless filled with fluid. On the Pacific Coast the golden jars of _Darlingtonia californica_, with their overarching hoods, are often so large and watery as to drown small birds and field mice. Note in passing that these otherwise dark prisons have translucent spots at the top, whereas our pitcher-plant is lighted through its open transom.

A sweet secretion within the pitcher’s rim, which some say is intoxicating, others that it is an anesthetic, invites insects to a fatal feast. It is a simple enough matter for them to walk into the pitcher over the band of stiff hairs pointing downward like the withes of a lobster pot, that form an inner covering, or to slip into the well if they attempt crawling over its polished upper surface. To fly upward in a perpendicular line, once their wings are wet, is additionally hopeless, because of the hairs that guard the mouth of the trap; and so, after vain attempts to fly or crawl out of the prison, they usually sink exhausted into a watery grave.

When certain plants live in soil that is so poor in nitrogen compounds that proteid formation is interfered with, they have come to depend more or less on a carnivorous diet. The sundew actually digests its prey with the help of a gastric juice similar to what is found in the stomach of animals; but the bladderwort and pitcher-plants can only absorb in the form of soup the products of their victims’ decay. Flies and gnats drowned in these pitchers quickly yield their poor little bodies; but owing to the beetle’s hard shell covering, many a rare specimen may be rescued intact to add to a collection.

A similar ogre plant is the yellow-flowered Trumpet-leaf (_S. flava_) found in bogs in the Southern states.

SUNDEW FAMILY _(Droseraceae)_

Round-leaved Sundew; Dew-plant

_Drosera rotundifolia_

_Flowers_--Small, white, growing in a 1-sided, curved raceme of buds chiefly. Calyx usually 5-parted; usually 5 petals, and as many stamens as petals; usually 3 styles, but 2-cleft, thus appearing to be twice as many. _Scape:_ 4 to 10 in. high. _Leaves:_ Growing in an open rosette on the ground; round or broader, clothed with reddish bristly hairs tipped with purple glands, and narrowed into long, flat, hairy petioles; young leaves curled like fern fronds.

_Preferred Habitat_--Bogs, sandy and sunny marshes.

_Flowering Season_--July-August.

_Distribution_--Labrador to the Gulf of Mexico and westward. From Alaska to California. Europe and Asia.

Here is a bloodthirsty little miscreant that lives by reversing the natural order of higher forms of life preying upon lower ones, an anomaly in that the vegetable actually eats the animal. The dogbane, as we shall see, simply catches the flies that dare trespass upon the butterflies’ preserves, for excellent reasons of its own; the Silenes and phloxes, among others, spread their calices with a sticky gum that acts as limed twigs do to birds, in order to guard the nectar secreted for flying benefactors from pilfering ants; the honey bee being an imported, not a native, insect, and therefore not perfectly adapted to the milkweed, occasionally gets entrapped by it; the big bumblebee is sometimes fatally imprisoned in the moccasin flower’s gorgeous tomb--the punishment of insects that do not benefit the flowers is infinite in its variety. But the local Venus’s flytrap (_Dionaea muscipula_), gathered only from the low savannas in North Carolina to entertain the owners of hothouses as it promptly closes the crushing trap at the end of its sensitive leaves over a hapless fly, and the common sundew that tinges the peat-bogs of three continents with its little reddish leaves, belong to a distinct class of carnivorous plants which actually masticate their animal food, depending upon it for nourishment as men do upon cattle slaughtered in an abattoir. Darwin’s luminous account of these two species alone, which occupies more than three hundred absorbingly interesting pages of his “Insectivorous Plants,” should be read by every one interested in these freaks of nature.

When we go to some sunny cranberry bog to look for these sundews, nothing could be more innocent looking than the tiny plant, its nodding raceme of buds, usually with only a solitary little blossom (that opens only in the sunshine) at the top of the curve, its leaves glistening with what looks like dew, though the midsummer sun may be high in the heavens. A little fly or gnat, attracted by the bright jewels, alights on a leaf only to find that the clear drops, more sticky than honey, instantly glue his feet, that the pretty reddish hairs about him act like tentacles, reaching inward, to imprison him within their slowly closing embrace. Here is one of the horrors of the Inquisition operating in this land of liberty before our very eyes! Excited by the struggles of the victim, the sensitive hairs close only the faster, working on the same principle that a vine’s tendrils do when they come in contact with a trellis. More of the sticky fluid pours upon the hapless fly, plastering over his legs and wings and the pores on his body through which he draws his breath. Slowly, surely, the leaf rolls inward, making a temporary stomach; the cruel hairs bind, the glue suffocates and holds him fast. Death alone releases him. And now the leaf’s orgy begins: moistening the fly with a fresh peptic fluid, which helps in the assimilation, the plant proceeds to digest its food. Curiously enough, chemical analysis proves that this sundew secrets a complex fluid corresponding almost exactly to the gastric juice in the stomach of animals.

Darwin, who fed these leaves with various articles, found that they could dissolve matter out of pollen, seeds, grass, etc.; yet without a human caterer, how could a leaf turn vegetarian? When a bit of any undesirable substance, such as chalk or wood, was placed on the hairs and excited them, they might embrace it temporarily; but as soon as the mistake was discovered, it would be dropped! He also poisoned the plants by administering acids, and gave them fatal attacks of indigestion by overfeeding them with bits of raw beef!

SAXIFRAGE FAMILY _(Saxifragaceae)_

Early Saxifrage

_Saxifraga virginiensis_

_Flowers_--White, small, numerous, perfect, spreading into a loose panicle. Calyx 5-lobed; 5 petals; 10 stamens; 1 pistil with 2 styles. _Scape:_ 4 to 12 in. high, naked, sticky-hairy. _Leaves:_ Clustered at the base, rather thick, obovate, toothed, and narrowed into spatulate-margined petioles. _Fruit:_ Widely spread, purplish brown pods.

_Preferred Habitat_--Rocky woodlands, hillsides.

_Flowering Season_--March-May.

_Distribution_--New Brunswick to Georgia, and westward a thousand miles or more.

Rooted in clefts of rock that, therefore, appears to be broken by this vigorous plant, the saxifrage shows rosettes of fresh green leaves in earliest spring, and soon whitens with its blossoms the most forbidding niches. (_Saxum_ = a rock; _frango_ = I break.) At first a small ball of green buds nestles in the leafy tuffet, then pushes upward on a bare scape, opening its tiny, white, five-pointed star flowers as it ascends, until, having reached the allotted height, it scatters them in spreading clusters that last a fortnight.

Foam-flower; False Miterwort; Cool wort; Nancy-over-the-Ground

_Tiarella cordifolia_

_Flowers_--White, small, feathery, borne in a close raceme at the top of a scape 6 to 12 in. high. Calyx white, 5-lobed; 5 clawed petals; 10 stamens, long-exserted; 1 pistil with 2 styles. _Leaves_: Long-petioled from the rootstock or runners, rounded or broadly heart-shaped, 3 to 7-lobed, toothed, often downy along veins beneath.

_Preferred Habitat_--Rich, moist woods, especially along mountains.

_Flowering Season_--April-May.

_Distribution_--Nova Scotia to Georgia, and westward scarcely to the Mississippi.