Chapter 7
Fuzzy, bright white foam-flowers are most conspicuous in the forest when seen against their unevenly colored leaves that carpet the ground. A relative, the true Miterwort or Bishop’s Cap (_Mittella diphylla_), with similar foliage, except that two opposite leaves may be found almost seated near the middle of its hairy stem, has its flowers rather distantly scattered on the raceme, and their fine petals deeply cut like fringe. Both species may be found in bloom at the same time, offering an opportunity for comparison to the confused novice. Now, _tiarella_, meaning a little tiara, and _mitella_, a little miter, refer, of course, to the odd forms of their seed-cases; but all of us are not gifted with the imaginative eyes of Linnaeus, who named the plants. Xenophon’s assertion that the royal tiara or turban of the Persians was encircled with a crown helps us no more to see what Linnaeus saw in the one case than the fact that the papal miter is encircled by three crowns helps in the other. And as for the lofty, two-peaked cap worn by Bishops in the Roman Church, a dozen plants, with equal propriety, might be said to wear it.
Grass of Parnassus
_Parnassia caroliniana_
_Flowers_--Creamy white, delicately veined with greenish, solitary, 1 in. broad or over, at the end of a scape 8 in. to 2 ft. high, 1 ovate leaf clasping it. Calyx deeply 5-lobed; corolla of 5 spreading, parallel veined petals; 5 fertile stamens alternating with them, and 3 stout imperfect stamens clustered at base of each petal; 1 very short pistil with 4 stigmas. _Leaves:_ From the root, on long petioles, broadly oval or rounded, heart-shaped at base, rather thick.
_Preferred Habitat_--Wet ground, low meadows, swamps.
_Flowering Season_--July-September.
_Distribution_--New Brunswick to Virginia, west to Iowa.
What’s in a name? Certainly our common grass of Parnassus, which is no grass at all, never starred the meadows round about the home of the Muses, nor sought the steaming savannas of the Carolinas. The European counterpart (_P. palustris_), fabled to have sprung up on Mount Parnassus, is at home here only in the Canadian border states and northward.
WITCH-HAZEL FAMILY _(Hamamelidaceae)_
Witch-hazel
_Hamamelis virginiana_
_Flowers_--Yellow, fringy, clustered in the axils of branches. Calyx 4-parted; 4 very narrow curving petals about 3/4 in. long; 4 short stamens, also 4 that are scale-like; 2 styles. _Stem_: A tall, crooked shrub. _Leaves_: Broadly oval, thick, wavy-toothed, mostly fallen at flowering time. _Fruit_: Woody capsules maturing the next season and remaining with flowers of the succeeding year (_Hama_ = together with; _mela_ = fruit).
The literature of Europe is filled with allusions to the witch-hazel, which, however, is quite distinct from our shrub. Swift wrote:
“They tell us something strange and odd About a certain magic rod That, bending down its top divines Where’er the soil has hidden mines; Where there are none, it stands erect Scorning to show the least respect.”
A good story is told on Linnaeus in Baring-Gould’s “Curious Myths of the Middle Ages”: “When the great botanist was on one of his voyages, hearing his secretary highly extol the virtues of his divining-wand, he was willing to convince him of its insufficiency, and for that purpose concealed a purse of one hundred ducats under a ranunculus, which grew by itself in a meadow, and bid the secretary find it if he could. The wand discovered nothing, and Linnaeus’s mark was soon trampled down by the company present, so that when he went to finish the experiment by fetching the gold himself, he was utterly at a loss where to find it. The man with the wand assisted him, and informed him that it could not lie in the way they were going, but quite the contrary; so they pursued the direction of the wand, and actually dug out the gold. Linnaeus said that another such experiment would be sufficient to make a proselyte of him.”
Many a well has been dug even in this land of liberty where our witch-hazel indicated; but here its kindly magic is directed chiefly through the soothing extract distilled from its juices. Its yellow, thread-like blossoms are the latest to appear in the autumn woods.
ROSE FAMILY _(Rosaceae)_
Hardhack; Steeple Bush
_Spiraea tomentosa_
_Flowers_--Pink or magenta, rarely white, very small, in dense, pyramidal clusters. Calyx of 5 sepals; corolla of 5 rounded petals; stamens, 20 to 60; usually 5 pistils, downy. _Stem:_ 2 to 3 ft. high, erect, shrubby, simple, downy. _Leaves:_ Dark green above, covered with whitish woolly hairs beneath; oval, saw-edged, 1 to 2 in. long.
_Preferred Habitat_--Low, moist ground, roadside ditches, swamps.
_Flowering Season_--July-September.
_Distribution_--Nova Scotia westward, and southward to Georgia and Kansas.
An instant’s comparison shows the steeple bush to be closely related to the fleecy, white meadow-sweet, often found growing near. The pink spires, which bloom from the top downward, have pale brown tips where the withered flowers are, toward the end of summer.
Why is the underside of the leaves so woolly? Not as a protection against wingless insects crawling upward, that is certain; for such could only benefit these tiny clustered flowers. Not against the sun’s rays, for it is only the under surface that is coated. When the upper leaf surface is hairy, we know that the plant is protected in this way from perspiring too freely. Doubtless these leaves of the steeple bush, like those of other plants that choose a similar habitat, have woolly hairs beneath as an absorbent to protect their pores from clogging with the vapors that must rise from the damp ground where the plant grows. If these pores were filled with moisture from without, how could they possibly throw off the waste of the plant? All plants are largely dependent upon free perspiration for health, but especially those whose roots, struck in wet ground, are constantly sending up moisture through the stem and leaves.
Meadow-sweet; Quaker Lady; Queen-of-the-Meadow
_Spiraea salicifolia_
_Flowers_--Small, white, or flesh pink, clustered in dense, pyramidal terminal panicles. Calyx 5 cleft; corolla of 5 rounded petals; stamens numerous; pistils 5 to 8. _Stem:_ 2 to 4 ft. high, simple or bushy, smooth, usually reddish. _Leaves:_ Alternate, oval, or oblong, saw-edged.
_Preferred Habitat_--Low meadows, swamps, fence-rows, ditches.
_Flowering Season_--June-August.
_Distribution_--Newfoundland to Georgia, west to Rocky Mountains. Europe and Asia.
Fleecy white plumes of meadow-sweet, the “spires of closely clustered bloom” sung by Dora Read Goodale, are surely not frequently found near dusty “waysides scorched with barren heat,” even in her Berkshires; their preference is for moister soil, often in the same habitat with a first cousin, the pink steeple-bush. But plants, like humans, are capricious creatures. If the meadow-sweet always elected to grow in damp ground whose rising mists would clog the pores of its leaves, doubtless they would be protected with a woolly absorbent, as its cousins are.
Inasmuch as perfume serves as an attraction to the more highly specialized, aesthetic insects, not required by the spiraeas, our meadow-sweet has none, in spite of its misleading name. Small bees, flies, and beetles, among other visitors, come in great numbers, seeking the accessible pollen, and, in this case, nectar also, secreted in a conspicuous orange-colored disk.
Common Hawthorn; White Thorn; Scarlet-fruited Thorn; Red Haw; Mayflower
_Crataegus coccinea_
_Flowers_--White, rarely pinkish, usually less than 1 in. across, numerous, in terminal corymbs. Calyx 5-lobed; 5 spreading petals inserted in its throat; numerous stamens; styles 3 to 5. _Stem:_ A shrub or small tree, rarely attaining 30 ft. in height (_Kratos_ = strength, in reference to hardness and toughness of the wood); branches spreading, and beset with stout spines (thorns) nearly 2 in. long. _Leaves:_ Alternate, petioled, 2 to 3 in. long, ovate, very sharply cut or lobed, the teeth glandular-tipped. _Fruit:_ Coral red, round or oval; not edible.
_Preferred Habitat--_Thickets, fence-rows, woodland borders.
_Flowering Season_--May.
_Distribution_--Newfoundland and Manitoba southward to the Gulf of Mexico.
“The fair maid who, the first of May, Goes to the fields at break of day And washes in dew from the hawthorn tree Will ever after handsome be.”
Here is a popular recipe omitted from that volume of heart-to-heart talks entitled “How to Be Pretty Though Plain!”
The sombre-thoughted Scotchman, looking for trouble, tersely observes:
“Mony haws, Mony snaws.”
But in delicious, blossoming May, when the joy of living fairly intoxicates one, and every bird’s throat is swelling with happy music, who but a Calvinist would croak dismal prophecies? In Ireland, old crones tell marvellous tales about the hawthorns, and the banshees which have a predilection for them.
Five-finger; Common Cinquefoil
_Potentilla canadensis_
_Flowers_--Yellow, 1/4 to 1/2 in. across, growing singly on long peduncles from the leaf axils. Five petals longer than the 5 acute calyx lobes with 5 linear bracts between them; about 20 stamens; pistils numerous, forming a head. _Stem:_ Spreading over ground by slender runners or ascending. _Leaves:_ 5-fingered, the digitate, saw-edged leaflets (rarely 3 or 4) spreading from a common point, petioled; some in a tuft at base.
_Preferred Habitat_--Dry fields, roadsides, hills, banks.
_Flowering Season_--April-August.
_Distribution_--Quebec to Georgia, and westward beyond the Mississippi.
Every one crossing dry fields in the eastern United States and Canada at least must have trod on a carpet of cinquefoil (_cinque_ = five, _feuilles_ = leaves), and have noticed the bright little blossoms among the pretty foliage, possibly mistaking the plant for its cousin, the trefoliate barren strawberry. Both have flowers like miniature wild yellow roses. During the Middle Ages, when misdirected zeal credited almost any plant with healing virtues for every ill that flesh is heir to, the cinquefoils were considered most potent remedies, hence their generic name.
High Bush Blackberry; Bramble
_Rubus villosus_
_Flowers_--White, 1 in. or less across, in terminal raceme-like clusters. Calyx deeply 5-parted, persistent; 5 large petals; stamens and carpels numerous, the latter inserted on a pulpy receptacle. _Stem:_ 3 to 10 ft. high, woody, furrowed, curved, armed with stout, recurved prickles. _Leaves:_ Compounded of 3 to 5 ovate, saw-edged leaflets, the end one stalked, all hairy beneath. _Fruit:_ Firmly attached to the receptacle; nearly black, oblong juicy berries 1 in. long or less, hanging in clusters. Ripe, July-August.
_Preferred Habitat_--Dry soil, thickets, fence-rows, old fields, waysides. Low altitudes.
_Flowering Season_--May-June.
_Distribution_--New England to Florida, and far westward.
“There was a man of our town, And he was wondrous wise, He jumped into a bramble bush”--
If we must have poetical associations for every flower, Mother Goose furnishes several.
But for the practical mind this plant’s chief interest lies in the fact that from its wild varieties the famous Lawton and Kittatinny blackberries have been derived. The late Peter Henderson used to tell how the former came to be introduced. A certain Mr. Secor found an unusually fine blackberry growing wild in a hedge at New Rochelle, New York, and removed it to his garden, where it increased apace. But not even for a gift could he induce a neighbor to relieve him of the superfluous bushes, so little esteemed were blackberries in his day. However, a shrewd lawyer named Lawton at length took hold of it, exhibited the fruit, advertised it cleverly, and succeeded in pocketing a snug little fortune from the sale of the prolific plants. Another fine variety of the common wild blackberry, which was discovered by a clergyman at the edge of the woods on the Kittatinny Mountains in New Jersey, has produced fruit under skilled cultivation that still remains the best of its class. When clusters of blossoms and fruit in various stages of green, red, and black hang on the same bush, few ornaments in Nature’s garden are more decorative.
Purple-flowering or Virginia Raspberry
_Rubus odoratus_
_Flowers_--Royal purple or bluish pink, showy, fragrant, 1 to 2 in. broad, loosely clustered at top of stem. Calyx sticky-hairy, deeply 5-parted, with long, pointed tips; corolla of 5 rounded petals; stamens and pistils very numerous. _Stem_: 3 to 5 ft. high, erect, branched, shrubby, bristly, not prickly. _Leaves_: Alternate, petioled, 3 to 5 lobed, middle lobe largest, and all pointed; saw-edged lower leaves immense. _Fruit_: A depressed red berry, scarcely edible.
_Preferred Habitat_--Rocky woods, dells, shady roadsides.
_Flowering Season_--June-August.
_Distribution_--Northern Canada south to Georgia, westward to Michigan and Tennessee.
To be an unappreciated, unloved relative of the exquisite wild rose, with which this flower is so often likened, must be a similar misfortune to being the untalented son of a great man, or the unhappy author of a successful first book never equalled in later attempts. But where the bright blossoms of the Virginia raspberry burst forth above the roadside tangle and shady woodland dells, even those who despise magenta see beauty in them where abundant green tones all discordant notes into harmony. Purple, as we of to-day understand the color, the flower is not; but rather the purple of ancient Orientals. On cool, cloudy days the petals are a deep rose that fades into bluish pink when the sun is hot.
Wild Roses
_Rosa_
Just as many members of the lily tribe show a preference for the rule of three in the arrangements of their floral parts, so the wild roses cling to the quinary method of some primitive ancestor, a favorite one also with the buttercup and many of its kin, the geraniums, mallows, and various others. Most of our fruit trees and bushes are near relatives of the rose. Five petals and five sepals, then, we always find on roses in a state of nature; and although the progressive gardener of to-day has nowhere shown his skill more than in the development of a multitude of petals from stamens in the magnificent roses of fashionable society, the most highly cultivated darling of the greenhouses quickly reverts to the original wild type, setting his work of years at naught, if once it regain its natural liberties through neglect.
To protect its foliage from being eaten by hungry cattle, the rose goes armed into the battle of life with curved, sharp prickles, not true thorns or modified branches, but merely surface appliances which peel off with the bark. To destroy crawling pilferers of pollen, several species coat their calices, at least, with fine hairs or sticky gum; and to insure wide distribution of offspring, the seeds are packed in the attractive, bright red calyx tube or hip, a favorite food of many birds, which drop them miles away.
In literature, ancient and modern, sacred and profane, no flower figures so conspicuously as the rose. To the Romans it was most significant when placed over the door of a public or private banquet hall. Each who passed beneath it bound himself thereby not to disclose anything said or done within; hence the expression _sub rosa_, common to this day.
The Smoother, Early, or Meadow Rose (_R. blanda_), found blooming in June and July in moist, rocky places from Newfoundland to New Jersey and a thousand miles westward, has slightly fragrant flowers, at first pink, later pure white. Their styles are separate, not cohering in a column nor projecting as in the climbing rose. This is a leafy, low bush mostly less than three feet high; it is either entirely unarmed, or else provided with only a few weak prickles; the stipules are rather broad, and the leaf is compounded of from five to seven oval, blunt, and pale green leaflets, often hoary below.
* * * * *
In swamps and low, wet ground from Quebec to Florida and westward to the Mississippi, the Swamp Rose (_R. carolina_) blooms late in May and on to midsummer. The bush may grow taller than a man, or perhaps only a foot high. It is armed with stout, hooked, rather distant prickles, and few or no bristles. The leaflets, from five to nine, but usually seven, to a leaf, are smooth, pale, or perhaps hairy beneath to protect the pores from filling with moisture arising from the wet ground. Long, sharp calyx lobes, which drop off before the cup swells in fruit into a round, glandular, hairy red hip, are conspicuous among the clustered pink flowers and buds.
How fragrant are the pages of Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare with the Eglantine! This delicious plant, known here as Sweetbrier (_R. rubiginosa_), emits its very aromatic odor from russet glands on the under, downy side of the small leaflets, always a certain means of identification. From eastern Canada to Virginia and Tennessee the plant has happily escaped from man’s gardens back to Nature’s.
In spite of its American Indian name, the lovely white Cherokee Rose (_R. Sinica_), that runs wild in the South, climbing, rambling, and rioting with a truly Oriental abandon and luxuriance, did indeed come from China. Would that our northern thickets and roadsides might be decked with its pure flowers and almost equally beautiful dark, glossy, evergreen leaves!
PULSE FAMILY _(Leguminosae)_
Wild or American Senna
_Cassia marylandica_
_Flowers_--Yellow, about 3/4 in. broad, numerous, in short axillary clusters on the upper part of plant. Calyx of 5 oblong lobes; 5 petals, 3 forming an upper lip, 2 a lower one; 10 stamens of 3 different kinds; 1 pistil. _Stem:_ 3 to 8 ft. high, little branched. _Leaves:_ Alternately pinnately compounded of 6 to 10 pairs of oblong leaflets. _Fruit:_ A narrow, flat curving pod, 3 to 4 in. long.
_Preferred Habitat_--Alluvial or moist, rich soil, swamps, roadsides.
_Flowering Season_--July-August.
_Distribution_--New England, westward to Nebraska, south to the Gulf States.
Whoever has seen certain Long Island roadsides bordered with wild senna, the brilliant flower clusters contrasted with the deep green of the beautiful foliage, knows that no effect produced by art along the drives of public park or private garden can match these country lanes in simple charm.
While leaves of certain African and East Indian species of senna are most valued for their medicinal properties, those of this plant are largely collected in the Middle and Southern states as a substitute. Caterpillars of several sulphur butterflies, which live exclusively on cassia foliage, appear to feel no evil effects from overdoses.
Wild Indigo; Yellow or Indigo Broom; Horsefly Weed
_Baptisia tinctoria_
_Flowers_--Bright yellow, papilionaceous, about 1/2 in. long, on short pedicels, in numerous but few flowered terminal racemes. Calyx light green, 4 or 5-toothed; corolla of 5 oblong petals, the standard erect, the keel enclosing 10 incurved stamens and 1 pistil. _Stem:_ Smooth, branched, 2 to 4 ft. high. _Leaves:_ Compounded of 3 ovate leaflets. _Fruit:_ A many-seeded round or egg-shaped pod tipped with the awl-shaped style.
_Preferred Habitat_--Dry, sandy soil.
_Flowering Season_--June-September.
_Distribution_--Maine and Minnesota to the Gulf states.
Dark grayish green, clover-like leaves, and small, bright yellow flowers growing in loose clusters at the ends of the branches of a bushy little plant, are so commonly met with they need little description. A relative, the true indigo-bearer, a native of Asia, once commonly grown in the Southern states when slavery made competition with Oriental labor possible, has locally escaped and become naturalized. But the false species, although, as Doctor Gray says, it yields “a poor sort of indigo,” yields a most valuable medicine employed by the homoeopathists in malarial fevers. The plant turns black in drying. As in the case of other papilionaceous blossoms, bees are the visitors best adapted to fertilize the flowers. When we see the little, sleepy, dusky-winged butterfly (_Thanaos brizo_) around the plant we may know she is there only to lay eggs, that the larvae and caterpillars may find their favorite food at hand on waking into life.
Wild Lupine; Old Maid’s Bonnets; Wild Pea; Sun Dial
_Lupinus perennis_
_Flowers_--Vivid blue, very rarely pink or white, butterfly-shaped; corolla consisting of standard, wings, and keel; about 1/2 in. long, borne in a long raceme at end of stem; calyx 2-lipped, deeply toothed. _Stem:_ Erect, branching, leafy, 1 to 2 ft. high. _Leaves:_ Palmate, compounded of from 7 to 11 (usually 8) leaflets. _Fruit:_ A broad, flat, very hairy pod, 1-1/2 in. long, and containing 4 or 5 seeds.
_Preferred Habitat_--Dry, sandy places, banks, and hillsides.
_Flowering Season_--May-June.
_Distribution_--United States east of Mississippi, and eastern Canada.
Farmers once thought that this plant preyed upon the fertility of their soil, as we see in the derivation of its name, from _lupus_, a wolf; whereas the lupine contents itself with sterile waste land no one should grudge it--steep, gravelly banks, railroad tracks, exposed sunny hills, where even it must often burn out under fierce sunshine did not its root penetrate to surprising depths. It spreads far and wide in thrifty colonies, reflecting the vivid color of June skies, until, as Thoreau says, “the earth is blued with it.”
The lupine is another of those interesting plants which go to sleep at night. Some members of the genus erect one half of the leaf and droop the other half until it becomes a vertical instead of the horizontal star it is by day. Frequently the leaflets rotate as much as 90 degrees on their own axes. Some lupines fold their leaflets, not at night only, but during the day also there is more or less movement in the leaves. Sun dial, a popular name for the wild lupine, has reference to this peculiarity. The leaf of our species shuts downward around its stem umbrella fashion, or the leaflets are erected to prevent the chilling which comes to horizontal surfaces by radiation, some scientists think. “That the sleep movements of leaves are in some manner of high importance to the plants which exhibit them,” says Darwin, “few will dispute who have observed how complex they sometimes are.”
Common Red, Purple, Meadow, or Honeysuckle Clover
_Trifolium pratense_
_Flowers_--Magenta, pink, or rarely whitish, sweet-scented, the tubular corollas set in dense round, oval, or egg-shaped heads about 1 in. long, and seated in a sparingly hairy calyx. _Stem:_ 6 in. to 2 ft. high, branching, reclining, or erect, more or less hairy. _Leaves:_ On long petioles, commonly compounded of 3, but sometimes of 4 to 11 oval or oblong leaflets, marked with white crescent, often dark-spotted near centre; stipules egg-shaped, sharply pointed, strongly veined, more than 1/2 in. long.
_Preferred Habitat_--Fields, meadows, roadsides.
_Flowering Season_--April-November.
_Distribution_--Common throughout Canada and United States.
Meadows bright with clover-heads among the grasses, daisies, and buttercups in June resound with the murmur of unwearying industry and rapturous enjoyment. Bumblebees by the tens of thousands buzzing above acres of the farmer’s clover blossoms should be happy in a knowledge of their benefactions, which doubtless concern them not at all. They have never heard the story of the Australians who imported quantities of clover for fodder, and had glorious fields of it that season, but not a seed to plant next year’s crops, simply because the farmers had failed to import the bumblebee. After her immigration the clovers multiplied prodigiously.