Wild Flowers Part 42

Preferred Habitat - Floating free in ponds and slow streams, or rooting in mud.

Flowering Season - June-August.

Distribution - Throughout nearly the whole of North America, Cuba, and Mexico. Europe and Asia.

Here is an extraordinary little plant indeed, which, by its amazing cleverness, now overruns the globe - one of the higher order of intelligence so closely akin to the animals that the gulf which separates such from them seems not very wide after all. In studying the water-crowfoots (q.v.) and other aquatic plants, we learned why submerged leaves must be so finely cut; but what mean the little bladders tipped with bristles among the pop-weed's threadlike foliage? Formerly these were regarded as mere floats - a thoughtless theory, for branches without bladders might have been observed floating perfectly. It is now known they are traps for capturing tiny aquatic creatures: nearly every bladder you examine under a microscope contains either minute crustaceans or larvae, worms, or lower organisms, some perhaps still alive, but most of them more or less advanced toward putrefaction - a stage hastened, it is thought, by a secretion within the bladders; for the plant cannot digest fresh food; it can only absorb, through certain processes within the bladder's walls, the fluid products of decay. The little insectivorous sundew (q.v.), on the contrary, not only digests, but afterward absorbs, animal matter. Tiny aquatic creatures, ever seeking shelter from larger ones ready to devour them, enter the pop-weed bladders by bending inward the free edge of the valve, which, being strongly elastic, snaps shut again behind them instantly.

"Abandon hope, all ye who enter here," might be written above the entrance. No victim ever escapes from that prison. Scientists are not agreed that the bristles draw creatures into the bladder.

Whatever touches the sensitive valves is at once drawn in. "To show how closely the edge fits," says Charles Darwin, "I may mention that my son found a daphnia which had inserted one of its antennae into the slit, and it was thus held fast during a whole day. On three or four occasions I have seen long narrow larvae, both dead and alive, wedged between the corner of the valve and collar, with half their bodies within the bladder and half out.

Professor Cohn of Germany tells of immersing a plant of this bladderwort one evening in clear water swarming with tiny crustaceans, and by the next morning most of the bladders contained them, entrapped and swimming around in their prisons.

So much for what is going on below the surface of the water: what above it? Several flowers on the showy spike attract numerous insects. One alighting on the lower lip must thrust his tongue beneath the upper one to reach the nectar in the spur, pa.s.sing on its way the irritable stigma, which receives any pollen he has brought in. Instantly it is touched, the stigma folds up to be out of the way of the tongue when it is withdrawn from the spur now laden with fresh pollen. It is thus that self-fertilization is escaped. Many vigorous seeds follow in each capsule. This marvelous piece of mechanism is what Th.o.r.eau termed "a dirty-conditioned flower, like a s.l.u.ttish woman with a gaudy yellow bonnet"!

Not through its seeds alone, however, has the little plant succeeded in firmly establis.h.i.+ng itself. In early autumn the stems terminate in large buds which, falling off, lie dormant all winter at the bottom of the pond. In spring they root and put forth leaves bearing bladders, which at this stage of existence are filled with water to help anchor the plant. As flowering season approaches, the bladders undergo an internal change to fit them for a change of function; they now fill with air, when the buoyed plant rises toward the surface to send up its flowering scape, while the bladders proceed with their nefarious practices to nourish it more abundantly while its system is heavily taxed.

The HORNED BLADDERWORT (U. cornuta), found in sandy swamps, along the borders of ponds, marshy lake margins, and in bogs from Newfoundland to Florida, westward to Minnesota and Texas, bears from one to six deliciously fragrant yellow flowers on its leafless scape from June to August. It is "perhaps the most fragrant flower we have," says John Burroughs. "In a warm moist atmosphere its odor is almost too strong.... Its perfume is sweet and spicy in an eminent degree." The low scape, rooting in the mud, has some root-like stems and branches, sometimes with a few entire leaves and bladders. Its benefactors, b.u.mblebees and b.u.t.terflies, with their highly developed aesthetic taste, are attracted from afar by this pleasing flower, whose acute, curved spur filled with nectar may not be drained by small fry, to whom the hairy throat is an additional discouragement.

SWEET WILD HONEYSUCKLE, or WOODBINE; ITALIAN OR PERFOLIATE HONEYSUCKLE (Lonicera Caprifoliuin; L. grata of Gray) Honeysuckle family

Flowers - White within, the tube pinkish, soon fading yellow, 1 to 1 1/2 in. long, very fragrant; borne in terminal whorls seated in the united pair of upper leaves. Calyx small, 5-toothed; corolla slender, tubular, 2-lipped; upper lip 4-lobed; lower lip narrow, curved downward; 5 stamens and 1 style far protruding.

Stem: Climbing high, smooth. Leaves: Upper pairs united around the stem into an oval disk or shallow cup; lower leaves opposite, but not united oval, entire. Fruit: Red berries, cl.u.s.tered.

Preferred Habitat - Thickets, wayside hedges, rocky woodlands.

Flowering Season - May-June.

Distribution - New England and Michigan to the Southern States.

"Escaped from cultivation and naturalized." How does it happen that this vine, a native of Europe, is now so common in the Eastern United States as to be called the American woodbine? Had Columbus been a botanist and wandered about our continent in search of flowers, he would have found very few that were familiar to him at home, except such as were common both to Europe and Asia also. Where the Aleutian Islands jut far out into the Pacific, and the strongest of ocean currents flows our way, must once have been a substantial highroad for beasts, birds, and vegetables, if not for men as well; but in the wide, briny Atlantic no European seed could live long enough to germinate after drifting across to our sh.o.r.es, if, indeed, it ever reached here. Once the American colonies came to be peopled, with homesick Europeans, who sent home for everything portable they had loved there, enormous numbers of trees, shrubs, plants, and seeds were respectably carried across in s.h.i.+ps; the seeds of others stole a pa.s.sage, as they do this day, among the hay used in packing. This was the chance for expansion they had been waiting for for ages. While many cultivated species found it practically impossible to escape from the vigilance of gardeners here, others, with a better plan for disseminating seed, quickly ran wild. Now some of the commonest plants we have are of European origin. This honeysuckle, by bearing red berries to attract migrating birds in autumn, soon escaped the confines of gardens. Its undigested seeds, dropped in the woodland far from the parent vine, germinated quite as readily as in Europe, and pursued in peace their natural mode of existence, until here too we now have banks

"Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine."

The HAIRY HONEYSUCKLE, or ROUGH WOODBINE (L. hirsuta), with a more northerly and westerly range, bears cl.u.s.ters of flowers that are yellow on the outside, and orange within the tube, the terminal cl.u.s.ters slightly elevated above a united pair of dull green leaves that are softly hairy underneath. The slender flower tube is sticky outside to protect it from pilfering ants, and the hairs at the base of the stamens serve to hide the nectar from unbidden guests. Berries, bright orange. Flowering season, June-July.

The deliciously fragrant CHINESE or j.a.pANESE HONEYSUCKLE (L.

j.a.ponica), as commonly grown on garden trellises and fences here as the morning-glory, has freely escaped from cultivation from New York southward to West Virginia and North Carolina. Everyone must be familiar with the pairs of slender, tubular, two-lipped, white or pinkish flowers, quickly turning yellow, which are borne in the leaf axils along the sprays. The smooth, dark green, opposite leaves, pale beneath, cling almost the entire year through. The stem, in winding, follows the course taken by the hands of a clock. Were the berries red instead of black, they would, doubtless, have attracted more birds to disperse their seeds, and the vine would have traveled as fast in its wild state as the Italian honeysuckle has done. It blooms from June to August, and sparingly again in autumn.

When daylight begins to fade, these long, slender-tubed buds expand to welcome their chosen benefactors, the sphinx moths, wooing them with fragrance so especially strong and sweet at this time that, long after dark, guests may be guided from afar by it alone, and entertaining them with copious draughts of deeply hidden nectar, which their long tongues alone may drain. Poised above the blossoms, they sip without pause of their whirring wings, and it is not strange that many people mistake them in the half light for hummingbirds. Indeed, they are often called hummingbird moths. Darting away suddenly and swift as thought, they have also earned the name of hawk moths. Because the caterpillars have a curious trick of raising the fore part of their bodies and remaining motionless so long (like an Egyptian sphinx), the commoner name seems most appropriate. A sphinx moth at rest curls up its exceedingly long tongue like .a watch- spring: in action only the hummingbird can penetrate to such depths; hence that honeysuckle which prefers to woo the tiny bird, whose decided preference is for red, is the TRUMPET or CORAL HONEYSUCKLE; whereas the other twiners developed deep, tubular flowers that are white or yellow, so that the moths may see them in the dark, when red blossoms are engulfed in the prevailing blackness. Moreover, the latter bloom at a season when the crepuscular and nocturnal moths are most abundant. Rough rounded pollen grains, carried on the hairs and scales on the under side of the moth's body from his head to his abdomen, including antennae, tongue, legs, and wings, cannot but be rubbed off on the protruding sticky stigma of the next honeysuckle tube entered; hence cross-fertilization is regularly effected by moths alone. The next day such interlopers as bees, flies, b.u.t.terflies, and even the outwitted hummingbird, may take whatever nectar or pollen remains. If the previous evening has been calm and fine, they will find little or none; but if the night has been wild and stormy, keeping the moths under cover, the tubes will brim with sweets. After fertilization the corolla turns yellow to let visitors know the mutual benefit a.s.sociation has gone out of business.

BUSH HONEYSUCKLE; GRAVEL-WEED (Diervilla Diervilla; D. trifida of Gray) Honeysuckle family

Flowers - Yellow, small, fragrant, 1 to 5 (usually 3) together on a peduncle from upper leaf-axils. Calyx tube slender, elongated; corolla narrowly funnel-form, about 3/4 in. long, its 5 lobes spreading, 3 of them somewhat united; 5 stamens; 1 pistil projecting. Stem: A smooth, branching shrub 2 to 4 ft. high.

Leaves. Opposite, oval, and taper-pointed, finely saw-edged.

Fruit: Slender, beaked pods crowned with the 5 calyx lobes.

Preferred Habitat - Dry or rocky soil, woodlands, hills.

Flowering Season - May-August.

Distribution - British Possessions southward to Michigan and North Carolina.

The coral honeysuckle determined to woo the hummingbird by wearing his favorite color; the twining white and yellow honeysuckles of our porches chose for their benefactors the sphinx moths, attracting them by delicious fragrance and deeply hidden nectar in slender tubes that are visible even in the dark; whereas the small-flowered bush honeysuckles still cater to the bees which, in all probability, once sufficed for the entire family. For them a conspicuous landing place has been provided in the more highly colored lower lobe of this flower, from which the visitor cannot fail to find the pocket full of nectar that swells the base of the tube but when he alights, pollen laden from another blossom, he must pay toll by leaving some of the vitalizing dust on the projecting stigma before he feasts and dusts himself afresh. After they have been plundered, and consequently fertilized, all the honeysuckles change color, this one taking on a deeper yellow to let the bees know the larder is empty, that they may waste no precious time, but confine their visits where they are needed. "Many flowers adapted to bees show b.u.t.terflies, hawk moths and hummingbirds as intruders," says Professor Robertson; "and this is important, since it enables us to understand how bee-flowers might become modified to suit them"

- just as certain of the honeysuckles have done. Once the Oriental pink weigelias, grown in nearly every American garden, were thought to belong to the Diervilla clan, from which later-day systematists have banished them.

The EARLY FLY or TWIN HONEYSUCKLE (Lonicera ciliata), found in moist, cool woods from Pennsylvania and Michigan far northward, sends forth pairs of funnel-form, honey-yellow flowers, about three-quarters of an inch long, with five, regular lobes, on a slender footstalk from the leaf axils in May. It is a straggling, shrubby bush from three to five feet tall. The opposite leaves are thin, oval, bright green on both sides, the edges hairy. Two little ovoid, light red berries follow the flowers.

Another species, a shrubby SWAMP FLY-HONEYSUCKLE (L.

oblongifolia), found in wet ground and bogs throughout a similar range, blooming about two weeks later, coats the under side of its young leaves with fine hairs to prevent their pores from clogging with vapors arising from its moist retreats. The little pale yellow flowers, also growing in pairs on a footstalk from the leaf axils, have their tubular corollas strongly cleft into two lips. Reddish markings within serve as pathfinders for the b.u.mblebee, who finds so much nectar at the base that a tiny bulging pocket had to be provided to hold it. Sometimes the two flowers join below like Siamese twins, in which case the pair of crimson berries become more or less united.

"So we grew together, Like to a double cherry, seeming parted."

One occasionally finds the pink and white twin-flowered TARTARIAN BUSH HONEYSUCKLE (L. Tartarica) escaped from cultivation in the Eastern States through the agency of birds which feast upon its little round, red, translucent berries.

COMMON DANDELION; BLOWBALL; LION'S-TOOTH; PEASANT'S CLOCK (Taraxac.u.m Taraxac.u.m; T. Densleonis of Gray) Chicory family

Flower-head - Solitary, golden yellow, to 2 in. across, containing 150 to 200 perfect ray florets on a flat receptacle at the top of a hollow, milky scape 2 to 18 in. tall. Leaves: From a very deep, thick, bitter root; oblong to spatulate in outline, irregularly jagged.

Preferred Habitat - Lawns, fields, gra.s.sy waste places.

Flowering Season - Every month in the year.

Distribution - Around the civilized world.

"Dear common flower that grow'st beside the way, Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold.

Gold such as thine ne'er drew the Spanish prow Through the primeval hush of Indian seas, Nor wrinkled the lean brow Of age, to rob the lover's heart of ease.

'Tis the spring's largess, which she scatters now To rich and poor alike, with lavish hand Though most hearts never understand To take it at G.o.d's value, but pa.s.s by The offered wealth with unrewarded eye."

Let the triumphant Anglo-Saxon with dreams of expansion that include the round earth, the student of sociology who wishes an insight into cooperative methods as opposed to individualism, the young man anxious to learn how to get on, parents with children to be equipped for the struggle for existence, business men and employers of labor, all sit down beside the dandelion and take its lesson to heart. How has it managed without navies and armies - for it is no imperialist - to land its peaceful legions on every part of the civilized world and take possession of the soil? How can this neglected wayside composite weed triumph over the most gorgeous hothouse individual on which the horticulturist expends all the science at his command; to flourish where others give up the struggle defeated; to send its vigorous offspring abroad prepared for similar conquest of adverse conditions wherever met to attract myriads of customers to its department store, and by consummate executive ability to make every visitor unwittingly contribute to its success? Any one who doubts the dandelion's fitness to survive, should humble himself by spending days and weeks on his knees, trying to eradicate the plant from even one small lawn with a knife, only to find the turf starred with golden blossoms, or, worse still from his point of view, h.o.a.ry with seed balloons, the following spring.

Deep, very deep, the stocky bitter root penetrates where heat and drought affect it not, nor nibbling rabbits, moles, grubs of insects, and other burrowers break through and steal. Cut off the upper portion only with your knife, and not one, but several, plants will likely sprout from what remains; and, however late in the season, will economize stem and leaf to produce flowers and seeds, cuddled close within the tuft, that set all your pains at naught. "Never say die" is the dandelion's motto. An exceedingly bitter medicine is extracted from the root of this dandelion, formerly known as T. officinale. Likewise are the leaves bitter.

Although they appear so early in the spring, they must be especially tempting to grazing cattle and predaceous insects, the rosettes remain untouched, while other succulent, agreeable plants are devoured wholesale. Only Italians and other thrifty Old-World immigrants, who go about then with sack and knife collecting the fresh young tufts, give the plants pause but even they leave the roots intact. When boiled like spinach or eaten with French salad dressing, the bitter juices are extracted from the leaves or disguised - mean tactics by an enemy outside the dandelion's calculation. All nations know the plant by some equivalent for the name dent de lion = lion's tooth, which the jagged edges of the leaves suggest.

Presently a hollow scape arises to display the flower above the surrounding gra.s.s. Bridge builders and constructing engineers know how yielding and economical, yet how invincibly strong, is the hollow tube. March winds may buffet and bend the dandelion's stem without harm. How children delight to split this slippery tube, and run it in and out of their mouths until curls form! At the top of the scape is a double involucre of narrow, green, leaf-like scales similar to what all composites have. Half the involucre bends downward to protect the flower from crawling pilferers, half stands erect to play the role for the community of florets within that the calyx does for individual blossoms.

When it is time to close the dandelion shop, business being ended for the day, this upper-half of the involucre protects it like the heavy shutters merchants put up at their windows.

Seated on a fleshy receptacle, not one flower, but often two hundred minute, perfect florets generously cooperate. "In union there is strength" is another motto adopted, not only by the chicory clan, but by the entire horde of composites. Each floret of itself could hope for no attention from busy insects; united, how gorgeously attractive these disks of overlapping rays are!

Doubtless each tiny flower was once a five-petaled blossom, for in the five teeth at the top and the five lines are indications that once distinct parts have been welded together to form a more showy and suitable corolla. Each floret insures cross-pollination from insects crawling over the head, much as the minute yellow tubes in the center of a daisy do (q.v.). Quant.i.ties of small bees, wasps, flies, b.u.t.terflies, and beetles - over a hundred species of insects - come seeking the nectar that wells up in each little tube, and the abundant pollen, which are greatly appreciated in early spring, when food is so scarce. In rainy weather and at night, when its benefactors are not flying, the canny dandelion closes completely to protect its precious attractions. Because the plant, which is likely to bloom every month in the year, may not always certainly reckon on being pollinated by insects, each neglected floret will curl the two spreading, sticky branches of its style so far backward that they come in contact with any pollen that has been carried out of the tube by the sweeping brushes on their tips. Occasional self-fertilization is surely better than setting no seed at all when insects fail. Not a chance does the dandelion lose to "get on."

After flowering, it again looks like a bud, lowering its head to mature seed un.o.bserved. Presently rising on a gradually lengthened scape to elevate it where there is no interruption for the pa.s.sing breeze from surrounding rivals, the transformed head, now globular, white, airy, is even more exquisite, set as it is with scores of tiny parachutes ready to sail away. A child's breath puffing out the time of day, a vireo plucking at the fluffy ball for lining to put in its nest, the summer breeze, the scythe, rake, and mowing machines, sudden gusts of winds sweeping the country before thunderstorms - these are among the agents that set the flying vagabonds free. In the hay used for packing they travel to foreign lands in s.h.i.+ps, and, once landed, readily adapt themselves to conditions as they find them. After soaking in the briny ocean for twenty-eight days - long enough for a current to carry them a thousand miles along the coast - they are still able to germinate.

The DWARF DANDELION, CYNTHIA, or VIRGINIA GOATSBEARD (Adepogon Virginic.u.m; formerly Krigia Virginica) - with from two to six long-peduncled, flat, deep yellow or reddish-orange flower heads, about an inch and a half across, on the summit of its stem from May to October, elects to grow in moist meadows, woodlands, and shady rocky places. How it glorifies them! From a tuffet of spatulate, wavy-toothed or entire leaves, the smooth, s.h.i.+ning, branching stem arises bearing a single oblong, clasping leaf below the middle. Particularly beautiful is its silvery seed-ball, the pappus consisting of about a dozen hairlike bristles inside a ring of small oblong scales, on which the seed sails away. Range, from Ma.s.sachusetts to Manitoba, south to Georgia and Kansas.

A charming little plant, the CAROLINA DWARF DANDELION or KRIGIA (A. Carolinianum), once confounded with the above, sends up several unbranched scapes from the same tuffet. It blooms in dry, sandy soil from April to August, from Maine and Minnesota to the Gulf States.

Like a small edition of Lowell's "dear common flower" is the TALL DANDELION, or AUTUMNAL HAWKBIT (Leontodon autumnale), its slender, wiry, branching scape six inches to two feet high, terminated by several flower-heads, each on a separate peduncle, which is usually a little thickened and scaly just below it. Only forty to seventy five-toothed ray florets spread in a flat golden disk from an oblong involucre. They close in rainy weather and at night. From June to November, in spite of its common name, it blooms in fields and along roadsides, its brownish seed-plumes rapidly following; but these are produced at the frightfully extravagant cost of over two hundred thousand grains of pollen to each head, it is estimated. The Greek generic name, meaning lion's tooth, refers to the shape of the lobes of the narrowly oblong leaves in a tuft at the base. Range, from New Jersey and Ohio far northward. Naturalized from Europe and Asia.

FIELD SOW-THISTLE; MILK THISTLE (Sonchus arvensis) Chicory family

Flower-heads - Bright yellow, very showy, to 2 in. across, several or numerous, on rough peduncles in a spreading cl.u.s.ter.

Involucre nearly 1 in. high; the scales narrow, rough. Stem: 2 to 4 ft. high, leafy below, naked, and paniculately branched above, from deep roots and creeping rootstocks. Leaves: Long, narrow, spiny, but not sharp-toothed; deeply cut, mostly clasping at base.

Preferred Habitat - Meadows, fields, roadsides, salt.w.a.ter marshes.

Flowering Season - July-October.

Distribution - Newfoundland to Minnesota and Utah, south to New Jersey.

It cannot be long, at their present rate of increase, before this and its sister immigrant become very common weeds throughout our entire area, as they are in Europe and Asia.