Part 32 (1/2)
At a glance one knows this flower to be akin to Robin's plantain, the asters and daisy. A smaller, more delicate species, with mostly entire leaves and appressed hairs (_E. ramosus_)--_E. strigosum_ of Gray--has a similar range and season of bloom. Both soon grow h.o.a.ry-headed after they have been fertilized by countless insects crawling over them (_Erigeron_ = early old). That either of these plants, or the pinkish, small-flowered, strong-scented Salt-marsh Fleabane (_Pluchea camphorata_), drive away fleas, is believed only by those who have not used them dried, reduced to powder, and sprinkled in kennels, from which, however, they have been known to drive away dogs.
Robin's, or Poor Robin's, or Robert's Plantain; Blue Spring Daisy; Daisy-leaved Fleabane
_Erigeron pulch.e.l.lus_
_Flower-heads_--Composite, daisy-like, 1 to 1-1/2 in. across; the outer circle of about 50 pale bluish-violet ray florets; the disk florets greenish yellow. _Stem:_ Simple, erect, hairy, juicy, flexible, from 10 in. to 2 ft. high, producing runners and offsets from base. _Leaves:_ Spatulate, in a flat tuft about the root; stem leaves narrow, more acute, seated, or partly clasping.
_Preferred Habitat_--Moist ground, hills, banks, gra.s.sy fields.
_Flowering Season_--April-June.
_Distribution_--United States and Canada, east of the Mississippi.
Like an aster blooming long before its season, Robin's Plantain wears a finely cut lavender fringe around a yellow disk of minute florets; but one of the first, not the last, in the long procession of composites has appeared when we see gay companies of these flowers nodding their heads above the gra.s.s in the spring breezes as if they were village gossips.
Pearly, or Large-flowered, Everlasting; Immortelle, Silver Leaf; Moons.h.i.+ne; Cottonweed; None-so-pretty
_Anaphalis margaritacea_
_Flower-heads_--Numerous pearly-white scales of the involucre holding tubular florets only; borne in broad, rather flat, compound corymbs at the summit. _Stem:_ Cottony, 1 to 3 ft. high, leafy to the top.
_Leaves:_ Upper ones small, narrow, linear; lower ones broader, lance-shaped, rolled backward, more or less woolly beneath.
_Preferred Habitat_--Dry fields, hillsides, open woods, uplands.
_Flowering Season_--July-September.
_Distribution_--North Carolina, Kansas, and California, far north.
When the small, white, overlapping scales of an everlasting's oblong involucre expand stiff and straight, each pert little flower-head resembles nothing so much as a miniature pond lily, only what would be a lily's yellow stamens are in this case the true flowers, which become brown in drying. It will be noticed that these tiny florets, so well protected in the centre, are of two different kinds, separated on distinct heads: the female florets with a tubular, five-cleft corolla, a two-cleft style, and a copious pappus of hairy bristles; the staminate, or male, florets more slender, the anthers tailed at the base.
Self-fertilization being, of course, impossible under such an arrangement, the florets are absolutely dependent upon little winged pollen carriers, whose sweet reward is well protected for them from pilfering ants by the cottony substance on the wiry stem, a device successfully employed by thistles also.
An imaginary blossom that never fades has been the dream of poets from Milton's day; but seeing one, who loves it? Our amaranth has the aspect of an artificial flower--stiff, dry, soulless, quite in keeping with the decorations on the average farmhouse mantelpiece. Here it forms the most uncheering of winter bouquets, or a wreath about flowers made from the lifeless hair of some dear departed.
Elecampane; Horseheal; Yellow Starwort
_Inula Helenium_
_Flower-heads_--Large, yellow, solitary or a few, 2 to 4 in. across, on long, stout peduncles; the scaly green involucre nearly 1 in. high, holding disk florets surrounded by a fringe of long, very narrow, 3-toothed ray florets. _Stem:_ Usually unbranched, 2 to 6 ft. high, hairy above. _Leaves:_ Alternate, large, broadly oblong, pointed, saw-edged, rough above, woolly beneath; some with heart-shaped, clasping bases.
_Preferred Habitat_--Roadsides, fields, fence-rows, damp pastures.
_Flowering Season_--July-September.
_Distribution_--Nova Scotia to the Carolinas, and westward to Minnesota and Missouri.
The elecampane has not always led a vagabond existence. Once it had its pa.s.sage paid across the Atlantic, because special virtue was attributed to its thick, mucilaginous roots as a horse medicine. For more than two thousand years it has been employed by home doctors in Europe and Asia; and at first Old World immigrants thought they could not live here without the plant on their farms. Once given a chance to naturalize itself, no composite is slow in seizing it. The vigorous elecampane, rearing its fringy, yellow disks above lichen-covered stone walls in New England, the Virginia rail fence, and the rank weedy growth along barbed-wire barriers farther west, now bids fair to cross the continent.