F. Marion Crawford - "Sant' Ilario"

William Shakespeare - "The Winters Tale"

Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade - "Shock and Awe"

Will N. Harben - "The Desired Woman"

Wild Flowers Worth Knowing

N >> Neltje Blanchan et al >> Wild Flowers Worth Knowing




_Flowers_--Solitary, or rarely 2; about 1 in. across, 5-parted, with
showy yellow petals; the 5 unequal sepals hairy. Also abundant small
flowers lacking petals, produced from the axils later. _Stem:_ Erect, 3
in. to 2 ft. high; at first simple, later with elongated branches.
_Leaves:_ Alternate, oblong, almost seated on stem.

_Preferred Habitat_--Dry fields, sandy or rocky soil.

_Flowering Season_--Petal-bearing flowers, May-July.

_Distribution_--New England to the Carolinas, westward to Wisconsin
and Kentucky.

When the stubble in the dry fields is white some cold November morning,
comparatively few notice the ice crystals, like specks of glistening
quartz, at the base of the stems of this plant. The similar Hoary
Frost-weed (_H. majus_), whose showy flowers appear in clusters at the
hoary stem's summit in June and July, also bears them. Often this ice
formation assumes exquisite feathery, whimsical forms, bursting the
bark asunder where an astonishing quantity of sap gushes forth and
freezes. Indeed, so much sap sometimes goes to the making of this
crystal flower, that it would seem as if an extra reservoir in the soil
must pump some up to supply it with its large fantastic corolla.




VIOLET FAMILY _(Violaceae)_


Blue and Purple Violets

Lacking perfume only to be a perfectly satisfying flower, the Common
Purple, Meadow, or Hooded Blue Violet (_V. cucullata_) has nevertheless
established itself in the hearts of the people from the Arctic to the
Gulf as no sweet-scented, showy, hothouse exotic has ever done. Royal in
color as in lavish profusion, it blossoms everywhere--in woods,
waysides, meadows, and marshes, but always in finer form in cool, shady
dells; with longer flowering scapes in meadow bogs; and with longer
leaves than wide in swampy woodlands. The heart-shaped, saw-edged
leaves, folded toward the centre when newly put forth, and the
five-petalled, bluish-purple, golden-hearted blossom are too familiar
for more detailed description. From the three-cornered stars of the
elastic capsules, the seeds are scattered abroad.

In shale and sandy soil, even in the gravel of hillsides, one finds the
narrowly divided, finely cut leaves and the bicolored beardless blossom
of the Bird's-foot Violet (_V. pedata_), pale bluish purple on the lower
petals, dark purple on one or two upper ones, and with a heart of gold.
The large, velvety, pansy-like blossom and the unusual foliage which
rises in rather dense tufts are sufficient to distinguish the plant from
its numerous kin. This species produces no cleistogamous or blind
flowers. Frequently the Bird's-foot Violet blooms a second time, in
autumn, a delightful eccentricity of this family. The spur of its lower
petal is long and very slender, and, as might be expected, the
longest-tongued bees and butterflies are its most frequent visitors.
These receive the pollen on the base of the proboscis.

In course of time the lovely English, March, or Sweet Violet _(V.
odorata)_, which has escaped from gardens, and which is now rapidly
increasing with the help of seed and runners on the Atlantic and the
Pacific coasts, may be established among our wild flowers. No blossom
figures so prominently in European literature. In France, it has even
entered the political field since Napoleon's day. Yale University has
adopted the violet for its own especial flower, although it is the
corn-flower, or bachelor's button _(Centaurea cyanus)_ that is the true
Yale blue. Sprengel, who made a most elaborate study of the violet,
condensed the result of his research into the following questions and
answers, which are given here because much that he says applies to our
own native species, which have been too little studied in the modern
scientific spirit:

"1. Why is the flower situated on a long stalk which is upright, but
curved downward at the free end? In order that it may hang down; which,
firstly, prevents rain from obtaining access to the nectar; and,
secondly, places the stamens in such a position that the pollen falls
into the open space between the pistil and the free ends of the stamens.
If the flower were upright, the pollen would fall into the space
between the base of the stamen and the base of the pistil, and would not
come in contact with the bee.

"2. Why does the pollen differ from that of most other insect-fertilized
flowers? In most of such flowers the insects themselves remove the
pollen from the anthers, and it is therefore important that the pollen
should not easily be detached and carried away by the wind. In the
present case, on the contrary, it is desirable that it should be looser
and drier, so that it may easily fall into the space between the stamens
and the pistil. If it remained attached to the anther, it would not be
touched by the bee, and the flower would remain unfertilized.

"3. Why is the base of the style so thin? In order that the bee may be
more easily able to bend the style.

"4. Why is the base of the style bent? For the same reason. The result
of the curvature is that the pistil is much more easily bent than would
be the case if the style were straight.

"5. Finally, why does the membranous termination of the upper filament
overlap the corresponding portions of the two middle stamens? Because
this enables the bee to move the pistil and thereby to set free the
pollen more easily than would be the case under the reverse
arrangement."


Yellow Violets

Fine hairs on the erect, leafy, usually single stem of the Downy Yellow
Violet _(V. pubescens)_, whose dark veined, bright yellow petals gleam
in dry woods in April and May, easily distinguish it from the Smooth
Yellow Violet _(V. scabriuscula)_, formerly considered a mere variety in
spite of its being an earlier bloomer, a lover of moisture, and well
equipped with basal leaves at flowering time, which the downy species is
not. Moreover, it bears a paler blossom, more coarsely dentate leaves,
often decidedly taper-pointed, and usually several stems together.

Bryant, whose botanical lore did not always keep step with his Muse,
wrote of the Yellow Violet as the first spring flower, because he
found it "by the snowbank's edges cold," one April day, when the
hepaticas about his home at Roslyn, Long Island, had doubtless been in
bloom a month.

"Of all her train the hands of Spring
First plant thee in the watery mould,"

he wrote, regardless of the fact that the round-leaved violet's
preferences are for dry, wooded, or rocky hillsides. Mueller believed
that all violets were originally yellow, not white, after they developed
from the green stage.


White Violets

Three small-flowered, white, purple-veined, and almost beardless species
which prefer to dwell in moist meadows, damp, mossy places, and along
the borders of streams, are the Lance-leaved Violet _(V. lanceolata)_,
the Primrose-leaved Violet _(V. primulifolia)_, and the Sweet White
Violet _(V. blanda)_, whose leaves show successive gradations from the
narrow, tapering, smooth, long-petioled blades of the first to the oval
form of the second and the almost circular, cordate leaf of the
delicately fragrant, little white _blanda_, the dearest violet of all.
Inasmuch as these are short-spurred species, requiring no effort for
bees to drain their nectaries, no footholds in the form of beards on
the side petals are provided for them. The purple veinings show the
stupidest visitor the path to the sweets.




EVENING PRIMROSE FAMILY _(Onagraceae)_


Great or Spiked Willow-herb; Fire-weed

_Epilobium angustifolium (Chamaenerion angustifolium)_

_Flowers_--Magenta or pink, sometimes pale, or rarely white, more or
less than 1 in. across, in an elongated, terminal, spike-like raceme.
Calyx tubular, narrow, in 4 segments; 4 rounded, spreading petals; 8
stamens; 1 pistil, hairy at base; the stigma 4-lobed. _Stem:_ 2 to 8 ft.
high, simple, smooth, leafy. _Leaves:_ Narrow, tapering, willow-like, 2
to 6 in. long. _Fruit:_ A slender, curved, violet-tinted capsule, from 2
to 3 in. long, containing numerous seeds attached to tufts of fluffy,
white, silky threads.

_Preferred Habitat_--Dry soil, fields, roadsides, especially in
burnt-over districts.

_Flowering Season_--June-September.

_Distribution_--From Atlantic to Pacific, with few interruptions;
British Possessions and United States southward to the Carolinas and
Arizona. Also Europe and Asia.

Spikes of these beautiful brilliant flowers towering upward above dry
soil, particularly where the woodsman's axe and forest fires have
devastated the landscape, illustrate Nature's abhorrence of ugliness.
Other kindly plants have earned the name of fireweed, but none so
quickly beautifies the blackened clearings of the pioneer, nor blossoms
over the charred trail in the wake of the locomotive. Whole
mountainsides in Alaska are dyed crimson with it. Beginning at the
bottom of the long spike, the flowers open in slow succession upward
throughout the summer, leaving behind the attractive seed-vessels,
which, splitting lengthwise in September, send adrift white silky tufts
attached to seeds that will one day cover far distant wastes with
beauty. Almost perfect rosettes, made by the young plants, are met with
on one's winter walks.


Evening Primrose; Night Willow-herb

_Oenothera biennis_

_Flowers_--Yellow, fragrant, opening at evening, 1 to 2 in. across,
borne in terminal leafy-bracted spikes. Calyx tube slender, elongated,
gradually enlarged at throat, the 4-pointed lobes bent backward; corolla
of 4 spreading petals; 8 stamens; 1 pistil; the stigma 4-cleft. _Stem:_
Erect, wand-like, or branched, 1 to 5 ft. tall, rarely higher, leafy.
_Leaves:_ Alternate, lance-shaped, mostly seated on stem, entire, or
obscurely toothed.

_Preferred Habitat_--Roadsides, dry fields, thickets, fence-corners.

_Flowering Season_--June-October.

_Distribution_--Labrador to the Gulf of Mexico, west to the Rocky
Mountains.

Like a ball-room beauty, the Evening Primrose has a jaded, bedraggled
appearance by day when we meet it by the dusty roadside, its erect buds,
fading flowers from last night's revelry, wilted ones of previous
dissipations, and hairy oblong capsules, all crowded together among the
willow-like leaves at the top of the rank-growing plant. But at sunset a
bud begins to expand its delicate petals slowly, timidly--not suddenly
and with a pop, as the evening primrose of the garden does.

Now, its fragrance, that has been only faintly perceptible during the
day, becomes increasingly powerful. Why these blandishments at such an
hour? Because at dusk, when sphinx moths, large and small, begin to fly,
the primrose's special benefactors are abroad. All these moths, whose
length of tongue has kept pace with the development of the tubes of
certain white and yellow flowers dependent on their ministrations, find
such glowing like miniature moons for their special benefit, when
blossoms of other hues have melted into the deepening darkness. If such
have fragrance, they prepare to shed it now. Nectar is secreted in tubes
so deep and slender that none but the moths' long tongues can drain the
last drop. An exquisite, little, rose-pink twilight flyer, his wings
bordered with yellow, flutters in ecstasy above the Evening Primrose's
freshly opened flowers, transferring in his rapid flight some of their
abundant, sticky pollen that hangs like a necklace from the outstretched
filaments. By day one may occasionally find a little fellow asleep in a
wilted blossom, which serves him as a tent, under whose flaps the
brightest bird eye rarely detects a dinner. After a single night's
dissipation the corolla wilts, hangs a while, then drops from the
maturing capsule as if severed with a sharp knife. Few flowers,
sometimes only one opens on a spike on a given evening--a plan to
increase the chances of cross-fertilization between distinct plants; but
there is a very long succession of bloom. If a flower has not been
pollenized during the night it remains open a while in the morning.
Bumblebees now hurry in, and an occasional humming bird takes a sip of
nectar. Toward the end of summer, when so much seed has been set that
the flower can afford to be generous, it distinctly changes its habit
and keeps open house all day.




GINSENG FAMILY (_Araliaceae_)


Spikenard; Indian Root; Spignet

_Aralia racemosa_

_Flowers_--Greenish white, small, 5-parted, mostly imperfect, in a
drooping compound raceme of rounded clusters. _Stem:_ 3 to 6 ft. high,
branches spreading. _Roots:_ Large, thick, fragrant. _Leaves:_
Compounded of heart-shaped, sharply tapering, saw-edged leaflets from 2
to 5 in. long, often downy underneath. Lower leaves often enormous.
_Fruit:_ Dark reddish-brown berries.

_Preferred Habitat_--Rich open woods, wayside thickets, light soil.

_Flowering Season_--July-August.

_Distribution_--New Brunswick to Georgia, west to the Mississippi.

A striking, decorative plant, once much sought after for its medicinal
virtues--still another herb with which old women delight to dose their
victims for any malady from a cold to a carbuncle. Quite a different
plant, but a relative, is the one with hairy spike-like shoots from its
fragrant roots, from which the "very precious" ointment poured by Mary
upon the Saviour's head was made. The nard, an Indian product from that
plant, which is still found growing on the distant Himalayas, could then
be imported into Palestine only by the rich.

How certain of the winter birds gormandize on the resinous, spicy little
berries! A flock of juncos will strip the fruit from every spikenard in
the neighborhood the first day it arrives from the North.

It should be understood that the Wild Spikenard, or False Solomon's
Seal, has not the remotest connection with this tribe of plants.

The Wild or False Sarsaparilla (_A. nudicaulis_), so common in woods,
hillsides, and thickets, shelters its three spreading umbels of
greenish-white flowers in May and June beneath a canopy formed by a
large, solitary, compound leaf. The aromatic roots, which run
horizontally sometimes three feet or more through the soil, send up a
very short, smooth proper stem which lifts a tall leafstalk and a
shorter, naked flower-stalk. The single large leaf, of exquisite bronzy
tints when young, is compounded of from three to five oval, toothed
leaflets on each of its three divisions.

While the true sarsaparilla of medicine should come from a quite
different herb that flourishes in Mexico and South America, this one
furnishes a commercial substitute enormously used as a blood purifier
and cooling summer drink. Burrowing rabbits delight to nibble the long,
slender, fragrant roots.




PARSLEY FAMILY (_Umbelliferae_)


Wild or Field Parsnip; Madnep; Tank

_Pastinaca sativa_

_Flowers_--Dull or greenish yellow, small, without involucre or
involucels; borne in 7 to 15 rayed umbels, 2 to 6 in. across. _Stem:_ 2
to 5 ft. tall, stout, smooth, branching, grooved, from a long, conic,
fleshy, strong-scented root. _Leaves:_ Compounded (pinnately), of
several pairs of oval, lobed, or cut sharply toothed leaflets; the
petioled lower leaves often 1-1/2 ft. long.

_Preferred Habitat_--Waste places, roadsides, fields.

_Flowering Season_--June-September.

_Distribution_--Common throughout nearly all parts of the United States
and Canada. Europe.

Men are not the only creatures who feed upon such of the umbel-bearing
plants as are innocent--parsnips, celery, parsley, carrots, caraway, and
fennel, among others; and even those which contain properties that are
poisonous to highly organized men and beasts, afford harmless food for
insects. Pliny says that parsnips, which were cultivated beyond the
Rhine in the days of Tiberius, were brought to Rome annually to please
the emperor's exacting palate, yet this same plant, which has overrun
two continents, in its wild state (when its leaves are a paler yellowish
green than under cultivation) often proves poisonous. A strongly acrid
juice in the very tough stem causes intelligent cattle to let it
alone--precisely the object desired.


Wild Carrot; Queen Anne's Lace; Bird's-nest

_Daucus Carota_

_Flowers_--Small, of unequal sizes (polygamous), white, rarely pinkish
gray, 5-parted, in a compound, flat, circular, umbel, the central floret
often dark crimson; the umbels very concave in fruit. An involucre of
narrow, pinnately cut bracts. _Stem:_ 1 to 3 ft. high, with stiff hairs;
from a deep, fleshy, conic root. _Leaves:_ Cut into fine, fringy
divisions; upper ones smaller and less dissected.

_Preferred Habitat_--Waste lands, fields, roadsides.

_Flowering Season_--June-September.

_Distribution_--Eastern half of United States and Canada. Europe and
Asia.

A pest to farmers, a joy to the flower-lover, and a welcome signal for
refreshment to hosts of flies, beetles, bees, and wasps, especially to
the paper-nest builders, the sprangly wild carrot lifts its fringy
foliage and exquisite lacy blossoms above the dry soil of three
continents. From Europe it has come to spread its delicate wheels over
our summer landscape, until whole fields are whitened by them east of
the Mississippi. Having proved fittest in the struggle for survival in
the fiercer competition of plants in the over-cultivated Old World, it
takes its course of empire westward year by year, finding most favorable
conditions for colonizing in our vast, uncultivated area; and the less
aggressive, native occupants of our soil are only too readily crowded
out. Would that the advocates of unrestricted immigration of foreign
peasants studied the parallel examples among floral invaders!

Still another fiction is that the cultivated carrot, introduced to
England by the Dutch in Queen Elizabeth's reign, was derived from
this wild species. Miller, the celebrated English botanist and
gardener, among many others, has disproved this statement by utterly
failing again and again to produce an edible vegetable from this wild
root. When cultivation of the garden carrot lapses for a few
generations, it reverts to the ancestral type--a species quite
distinct from _Daucus Carota_.




DOGWOOD FAMILY _(Cornaceae)_


Flowering Dogwood

_Cornus florida_

_Flowers_--(Apparently) large, white or pinkish, the four conspicuous
parts simulating petals, notched at the top, being really bracts of an
involucre below the true flowers, clustered in the centre, which are
very small, greenish yellow, 4-parted, perfect. _Stem:_ A large shrub or
small tree, wood hard, bark rough. _Leaves:_ Opposite oval,
entire-edged, petioled, paler underneath. _Fruit:_ Clusters of
egg-shaped scarlet berries, tipped with the persistent calyx.

_Preferred Habitat_--Woodlands, rocky thickets, wooded roadsides.

_Flowering Season_--April-June.

_Distribution_--Maine to Florida, west to Ontario and Texas.

Has Nature's garden a more decorative ornament than the Flowering
Dogwood, whose spreading flattened branches whiten the woodland borders
in May as if an untimely snowstorm had come down upon them, and in
autumn paint the landscape with glorious crimson, scarlet, and gold,
dulled by comparison only with the clusters of vivid red berries among
the foliage? Little wonder that nurserymen sell enormous numbers of
these small trees to be planted on lawns. The horrors of pompous
monuments, urns, busts, shafts, angels, lambs, and long-drawn-out
eulogies in stone in many a cemetery are mercifully concealed in part by
these boughs, laden with blossoms of heavenly purity.

"Let dead names be eternized in dead stone,
But living names by living shafts be known.
Plant thou a tree whose leaves shall sing
Thy deeds and thee each fresh, recurrent spring."

When the Massachusetts farmers think they hear the first brown thrasher
in April advising them to plant their Indian corn, reassuringly calling,
"Drop it, drop it--cover it up, cover it up--pull it up, pull it up,
pull it up" (Thoreau), they look to the dogwood flowers to confirm the
thrasher's advice before taking it.

* * * * *

The Low or Dwarf Cornel, or Bunchberry _(C. canadensis)_, whose scaly
stem does its best to attain a height of nine inches, bears a whorl of
from four to six oval, pointed, smooth leaves at the summit. From the
midst of this whorl comes a cluster of minute greenish florets,
encircled by four to six large, showy, white petal-like bracts, quite
like a small edition of the Flowering Dogwood blossom. Tight clusters
of round berries, that are lifted upward on a gradually lengthened
peduncle after the flowers fade (May-July), brighten with vivid touches
of scarlet, shadowy, mossy places in cool, rich woods, where the dwarf
cornels, with the partridge vine, twin flower, gold thread, and fern,
form the most charming of carpets.

Even more abundant is the Silky Cornel, Kinnikinnick, or Swamp Dogwood
(_C. Amomum_) found in low, wet ground, and beside streams, from
Nebraska to the Atlantic Ocean, south to Florida and north to New
Brunswick. Its dull, reddish twigs, oval or oblong leaves, rounded at
the base, but tapering to a point at the apex, and usually silky-downy
with fine, brownish hairs underneath (to prevent the pores from clogging
with vapors arising from its damp habitat); its rather compact, flat
clusters of white flowers from May to July, and its bluish berries are
its distinguishing features. The Indians loved to smoke its bark for its
alleged tonic effect.




HEATH FAMILY (_Ericaceae_)


Pipsissewa; Prince's Pine

_Chimaphila umbellata_

_Flowers_--Flesh-colored, or pinkish, fragrant, waxy, usually with deep
pink ring around centre, and the anthers colored; about 1/2 in. across;
several flowers in loose, terminal cluster. Calyx 5-cleft; corolla of 5
concave, rounded, spreading petals; 10 stamens, the filaments hairy;
style short, conical, with a round stigma. _Stem:_ Trailing far along
ground, creeping, or partly subterranean, sending up sterile and
flowering branches 3 to 10 in. high. _Leaves:_ Opposite or in whorls,
evergreen, bright, shining, spatulate to lance-shaped, sharply
saw-edged.

_Preferred Habitat_--Dry woods, sandy leaf mould.

_Flowering Season_--June-August.

_Distribution_--British Possessions and the United States north of
Georgia from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Also Mexico, Europe, and Asia.

A lover of winter indeed (_cheima_ = winter and _phileo_ = to love) is the
Prince's Pine, whose beautiful dark leaves keep their color and gloss in
spite of snow and intense cold. A few yards of the trailing stem, easily
ripped from the light soil of its woodland home, make a charming indoor
decoration, especially when the little brown seed-cases remain. Few
flowers are more suggestive of the woods than these shy, dainty,
deliciously fragrant little blossoms.

* * * * *

The Spotted Wintergreen, or Pipsissewa (_C. maculata_), closely
resembles the Prince's Pine, except that its slightly larger white or
pinkish flowers lack the deep pink ring; and the lance-shaped leaves,
with rather distant saw-teeth, are beautifully mottled with white along
the veins. When we see short-lipped bees and flies about these flowers,
we may be sure their pollen-covered mouths come in contact with the
moist stigma on the summit of the little top-shaped style, and so effect
cross-fertilization.


Indian Pipe; Ice-plant; Ghost-flower; Corpse-plant

_Monotropa uniflora_

_Flowers_--Solitary, smooth, waxy, white (rarely pink), oblong
bell-shaped, nodding from the tip of a fleshy, white, scaly scape 4 to
10 in. tall. Calyx of 2 to 4 early-falling white sepals; 4 or 5 oblong,
scale-like petals; 8 or 10 tawny, hairy stamens; a 5-celled, egg-shaped
ovary, narrowed into the short, thick style. _Leaves:_ None. _Roots:_ A
mass of brittle fibres, from which usually a cluster of several white
scapes arises. _Fruit:_ A 5-valved, many-seeded, erect capsule.

_Preferred Habitat_--Heavily shaded, moist, rich woods, especially under
oak and pine trees.

_Flowering Season_--June-August.

_Distribution_--Almost throughout temperate North America.

Colorless in every part, waxy, cold, and clammy, Indian pipes rise like
a company of wraiths in the dim forest that suits them well. Ghoulish
parasites, uncanny saprophytes, for their matted roots prey either on
the juices of living plants or on the decaying matter of dead ones, how
weirdly beautiful and decorative they are! The strange plant grows also
in Japan, and one can readily imagine how fascinated the native artists
must be by its chaste charms.

Yet to one who can read the faces of flowers, as it were, it stands a
branded sinner. Doubtless its ancestors were industrious, honest
creatures, seeking their food in the soil, and digesting it with the
help of leaves filled with good green matter (chlorophyll) on which
virtuous vegetable life depends; but some ancestral knave elected to
live by piracy, to drain the already digested food of its neighbors; so
the Indian Pipe gradually lost the use of parts for which it has need no
longer, until we find it to-day without color and its leaves degenerated
into mere scaly bracts. Nature had manifold ways of illustrating the
parable of the ten pieces of money. Spiritual law is natural law: "From
him that hath not, even that he hath shall be taken away." Among plants
as among souls, there are all degrees of backsliders. The foxglove,
which is guilty of only sly, petty larceny, wears not the equivalent of
the striped suit and the shaved head; nor does the mistletoe, which
steals crude food from the tree, but still digests it itself, and is
therefore only a dingy yellowish green. Such plants, however, as the
broom-rape, Pine Sap, beech-drops, the Indian Pipe, and the
dodder--which marks the lowest stage of degradation of them all--appear
among their race branded with the mark of crime as surely as was Cain.

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