Part 8 (1/2)
Distribution - British Possessions and United States from coast to coast, southward to Virginia, and Texas.
A curious, beautiful parasite, fastened on the roots of honest plants from which it draws its nourishment. The ancestors of this species, having deserted the path of rect.i.tude ages ago to live by piracy, gradually lost the use of their leaves, upon which virtuous plants depend as upon a part of their digestive apparatus; they grew smaller and smaller, shriveled and dried, until now that the one-flowered broom-rape sucks its food, rendered already digestible through another's a.s.similation, no leaves remain on its brownish scapes. Disuse of any talent in the vegetable kingdom, as in the spiritual, leads to inevitable loss: ”Unto every one which hath shall be given; and from him that hath not, even that he hath shall be taken away.”
HAIRY RUELLIA (Ruellia ciliosa) Acanthus family
Flowers - Pale violet blue, showy, about 2 in. long, solitary or cl.u.s.tered in the axils or at the end of stem. Calyx of 5 bristle-shaped hairy segments; corolla with very slender tube expanding above in 5 nearly equal obtuse lobes; stamens 4; pistil with recurved style. Stem: Hairy, especially above, erect, 1 to 2 1/2 ft. high. Leaves: Opposite, oblong, narrowed at apex, entire, covered with soft white hairs.
Preferred Habitat - Dry soil.
Flowering Season - June-September.
Distribution - New Jersey southward to the Gulf and westward to Michigan and Nebraska.
Many charming ruellias from the tropics adorn hothouses and window gardens in winter; but so far north as the New Jersey pine barrens, and westward where killing frosts occur, this perennial proves to be perfectly hardy. In addition to its showy blossoms, which so successfully invite insects to transfer their pollen, thereby counteracting the bad effects of close inbreeding, the plant bears inconspicuous cleistogamous or blind ones also. These look like arrested buds that never open; but, being fertilized with their own pollen, ripen abundant seed nevertheless.
One frequently finds holes bitten in these flowers, as in so many others long of tube or spur. b.u.mblebees, among the most intelligent and mischievous of insects, are apt to be the chief offenders; but wasps are guilty too, and the female carpenter bee, which ordinarily slits holes to extract nectar, has been detected in the act of removing circular pieces of the corolla from this ruellia with which to plug up a thimble-shaped tube in some decayed tree. Here she deposits an egg on top of a layer of baby food, consisting of a paste of pollen and nectar, and seals up the nursery with another bit of leaf or flower, repeating the process until the long tunnel is filled with eggs and food for larvae. Then she dies, leaving her entire race apparently extinct, and living only in embryo for months. This is the bee which commonly cuts her round plugs from rose leaves.
The SMOOTH RUELLIA (R. strepens), an earlier bloomer than the preceding, and with a more southerly range, has a shorter, thicker tube to its handsome blue flower, and lacks the hairs which guard its relative from crawling pilferers.
BLUETS; INNOCENCE; HOUSTONIA; QUAKER LADIES; QUAKER BONNETS; VENUS' PRIDE (Houstonia caerulea) Madder family
Flowers - Very small, light to purplish blue or white, with yellow center, and borne at end of each erect slender stem that rises from 3 to 7 in. high. Corolla funnel-shaped, with 4 oval, pointed, spreading lobes that equal the slender tube in length; rarely the corolla has more divisions; 4 stamens inserted on tube of corolla; 2 stigmas; calyx 4-lobed. Leaves: Opposite, seated on stem, oblong, tiny; the lower ones spatulate. Fruit: A 2-lobed pod, broader than long, its upper half free from calyx; seeds deeply concave. Root stock: Slender, spreading, forming dense tufts.
Preferred Habitat - Moist meadows, wet rocks and banks.
Flowering Season - April-July, or spa.r.s.ely through summer.
Distribution - Eastern Canada and United States west to Michigan, south to Georgia and Alabama.
Millions of these dainty wee flowers, scattered through the gra.s.s of moist meadows and by the wayside, reflect the blue and the serenity of heaven in their pure, upturned faces. Where the white variety grows, one might think a light snowfall had powdered the gra.s.s, or a milky way of tiny floral stars had streaked a terrestrial path. Linnaeus named the flower for Dr. Houston, a young English physician, botanist, and collector, who died in South America in 1733, after an exhausting tramp about the Gulf of Mexico.
To secure cross-fertilization, the object toward which so much marvelous floral organism is directed, this little plant puts forth two forms of blossoms - one with the stamens in the lower portion of the corolla tube, and the stigmas exserted; the other form with the stigmas below, and the stamens elevated to the mouth of the corolla. But the two kinds do not grow in the same patch, seed from either producing after its kind. Many insects visit these blossoms, but chiefly small bees and b.u.t.terflies.
Conspicuous among the latter is the common little meadow fritillary (Brenthis bellona), whose tawny, dark-speckled wings expand and close in apparent ecstasy as he tastes the tiny drop of nectar in each dainty enameled cup. Coming to feast with his tongue dusted from anthers nearest the nectary, he pollenizes the large stigmas of a short-styled blossom without touching its tall anthers. But it is evident that he could not be depended on to fertilize the long-styled form, with its smaller stigma, because of this ability to insert his slender tongue from the side where it avoids contact. Flies and beetles enter the blossoms, but small bees are best adapted as all-round benefactors. This simple-looking blossom, that measures barely half an inch across, is clever enough to multiply its lovely species a thousand fold, while many a larger, and therefore one might suppose a wiser, flower dwindles toward extinction.
John Burroughs found a single bluet in blossom one January, near Was.h.i.+ngton, when the clump of earth on which it grew was frozen solid. A pot of roots gathered in autumn and placed in a sunny window has sent up a little colony of star-like flowers throughout a winter.
WILD, COMMON, or CARD TEASEL; GYPSY COMBS (Dipsacus sylvestris) Teasel family
Flowers - Purple or lilac, small, packed in dense, cylindric heads, 3 to 4 in. long; growing singly on ends of footstalks, the flowers set among stiffly pointed, slender scales. Calyx cup-shaped, 4-toothed. Corolla 4-lobed; stamens 4; leaves of involucre, slender, bristled, curved upward as high as flower-head or beyond. Stems: 3 to 6 ft. high, stout, branched, leafy, with numerous short p.r.i.c.kles. Leaves: Opposite, lance-shaped, seated on stem, with bristles along the stout midrib.
Preferred Habitat - Roadsides and waste places.
Flowering Season - July-September.
Distribution - Maine to Virginia, westward to Ontario and the Mississippi. Europe and Asia.
Manufacturers find that no invention can equal the natural teasel head for raising a nap on woolen cloth, because it breaks at any serious obstruction, whereas a metal subst.i.tute, in such a case, tears the material. Accordingly, the plant is largely cultivated in the west of England, and quant.i.ties that have been imported from France and Germany may be seen in wagons on the way to the factories in any of the woolen-trade towns. After the flower-heads wither, the stems are cut about eight inches long, stripped of p.r.i.c.kles, to provide a handle, and after drying, the natural tool is ready for use.
Bristling with armor, the teasel is not often attacked by browsing cattle. Occasionally even the upper leaf surfaces are dotted over with p.r.i.c.kles enough to tear a tender tongue. This is a curious feature, for p.r.i.c.kles usually grow out of veins. In the receptacle formed where the bases of the upper leaves grow together, rain and dew are found collected - a certain cure for warts, country people say. Venus' Cup, Bath, or Basin, and Water Thistle, are a few of the teasel's folk names earned by its curious little tank. In it many small insects are drowned, and these are supposed to contribute nourishment to the plant; for Mr. Francis Darwin has noted that protoplasmic filaments reach out into the liquid.
Owing to the stiff spines which radiate from the flower cl.u.s.ter, the b.u.mblebees, which princ.i.p.ally fertilize it, can reach the florets only with their heads, and not pollenize them by merely crawling over them as in the true compositae. But by first maturing its anthers, then when they have shed their pollen, elevating its stigmas, the teasel prevents self-fertilization.
HAREBELL or HAIRBELL; BLUE BELLS of SCOTLAND; LADY'S THIMBLE (Campanula rotundifolia) Bellflower family
Flowers - Bright blue or violet blue, bell-shaped, 1/2 in. long or over, drooping from hair-like stalks. Calyx of 5-pointed, narrow, spreading lobes; slender stamens alternate with lobes of corolla, and borne on summit of calyx tube, which is adherent to ovary; pistil with 3 stigmas in maturity only. Stem: Very slender, 6 in. to 3 ft. high, often several from same root; simple or branching. Leaves: Lower ones nearly round, usually withered and gone by flowering season; stem leaves narrow, pointed, seated on stem. Fruit: An egg-shaped, pendent, 3-celled capsule with short openings near base; seeds very numerous, tiny.
Preferred Habitat - Moist rocks, uplands.
Flowering Season - June-September.