Part 13 (1/2)
Damascena), which blooms twice a year, as well as the MUSK ROSE (R. moschata), were cherished by the Semitic or Arabic stock; while the Turkish-Mongolian people planted by preference the YELLOW ROSE (R. lutea). Eastern Asia (China and j.a.pan) is the fatherland of the INDIAN and TEA ROSES.”
How fragrant are the pages of Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare with the Eglantine! This delicious plant, known here as SWEETBRIAR (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!
COMMON RED, PURPLE, MEADOW, or HONEYSUCKLE CLOVER (Trifolium pratense) Pea family
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 center; stipules egg-shaped, sharply pointed, strongly veined, over 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 gra.s.ses, daisies, and b.u.t.tercups in June resound with the murmur of unwearying industry and rapturous enjoyment. b.u.mblebees 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 quant.i.ties 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 b.u.mblebee. After her immigration the clovers multiplied prodigiously. No; the bee's happiness rests on her knowledge that only the b.u.t.terflies' long tongues can honestly share with her the br.i.m.m.i.n.g wells of nectar in each tiny floret. Children who have sucked them too appreciate her rapture. If we examine a little flower under the magnifying gla.s.s, we shall see why its structure places it in the pea family. b.u.mblebees so depress the keel either when they sip, or feed on pollen, that their heads and tongues get well dusted with the yellow powder, which they transfer to the stigmas of other flowers; whereas the b.u.t.terflies are of doubtful value, if not injurious, since their long, slender tongues easily drain the nectar without depressing the keel. Even if a few grains of pollen should cling to their tongues, it would probably be wiped off as they withdrew them through the narrow slit, where the petals nearly meet, at the mouth of the flower. Bombus terrestris delights in nipping holes at the base of the tube, which other pilferers also profit by.
Our country is so much richer in b.u.t.terflies than Europe, it is scarcely surprising that Professor Robertson found thirteen Lepidoptera out of twenty insect visitors to this clover in Illinois, whereas Muller caught only eight b.u.t.terflies on it out of a list of thirty-nine visitors in Germany. The fritillaries and the sulphurs are always seen about the clover fields among many others, and the ”dusky wings” and the caterpillar of several species feeds almost exclusively on this plant.
”To live in clover,” from the insect's point of view at least, may well mean a life of luxury and affluence. Most peasants in Europe will tell you that a dream about the flower foretells not only a happy marriage, but long life and prosperity. For ages the clover has been counted a mystic plant, and all sorts of good and bad luck were said to attend the finding of variations of its leaves which had more than the common number of leaflets. At evening these leaflets fold downward, the side ones like two hands clasped in prayer, the end one bowed over them. In this fas.h.i.+on the leaves of the white and other clovers also go to sleep, to protect their sensitive surfaces from cold by radiation, it is thought.
The ZIG-ZAG CLOVER, COW or MARL-GRa.s.s (T. Medium), a native of Europe and Asia, now naturalized in the eastern half of the United States and Canada, may scarcely be told from the common red clover, except by its crooked, angular stems - often provokingly straight - by its unspotted leaves, and the short peduncle in which its heads are elevated above the calyx.
Farmers here are beginning to learn the value of the beautiful CRIMSON, CARNATION or ITALIAN CLOVER or NAPOLEONS (T.
incarnatum), and happily there are many fields and waste places in the East already harboring the brilliant runaways. The narrow heads may be two and a half inches long. A meadow of this fodder plant makes one envious of the very cattle that may spend the summer day wading through acres of its deep bright bloom.
GOAT'S RUE; CAT-GUT; h.o.a.rY PEA or WILD SWEET PEA (Cracca Virginiana; Tephrosia Virginiana of Gray) Pea family
Flowers - In terminal cl.u.s.ter, each 1/2 in. long or over, b.u.t.terfly-shaped, consisting of greenish, cream-yellow standard, purplish-rose wings, and curved keel of greenish yellow tinged with rose; petals clawed; 10 stamens (9 and 1); calyx 5-toothed.
Stem: h.o.a.ry, with white, silky hairs, rather woody, 1 to 2 feet high. Leaves: Compounded of 7 to 25 oblong leaflets. Root: Long, fibrous, tough. Fruit: A h.o.a.ry, narrow pod, to 2 in. long.
Preferred Habitat - Dry, sandy soil, edges of pine woods.
Flowering Season - June-July.
Distribution - Southern New England, westward to Minnesota, south to Florida, Louisiana, and Mexico.
Flowers far less showy and attractive than this denizen of sandy wastelands, a cousin of the wisteria vine and the locust tree, have been introduced to American gardens. Striking its long fibrous root deep into the dry soil, the plant spreads in thrifty clumps through heat and drought - and so tough are its fibers they might almost be used for violin strings. As in the case of the lupine, the partridge pea and certain others akin to it, the leaves of the h.o.a.ry pea ”go to sleep” at night, but after a manner of their own, i.e., by lying along the stem and turning on their own bases.
In similar situations from New York south and southwestward, the MILK PEA (Galactia regularis; G. glabella of Gray) lies prostrate along the ground, the matted, usually branched stems sending up at regular intervals a raceme of rose-purple flowers in July and August from the axil of the trefoliate leaf.
TRAILING BUSH CLOVER (Lespedeza proc.u.mbens) Pea family
Flowers - Purplish pink or violet, veined, the b.u.t.terfly-shaped ones having standard petal, wings, and keel, cl.u.s.tered at end of peduncles; the minute flowers lacking a corolla, nearly sessile.
Calyx of 5 slender, nearly equal lobes. Stems: Prostrate, trailing, or sometimes ascending, woolly or downy, leafy. Leaves: Clover-like, trefoliate. Fruit: A very small, hairy, flat, rounded, acute pod.
Preferred Habitat - Dry soil open, sandy places.
Flowering Season - August-September.
Distribution - Ma.s.sachusetts to the Gulf, and westward to the Mississippi.
Springing upward from a ma.s.s of clover-like leaves, these showy little blossoms elevate themselves to arrest, not our attention, but the notice of the pa.s.sing bee. As the claw of the standard petal and the calyx are short, he need not have a long tongue to drain the nectary pointed out to him by a triangular white mark at the base of the banner. Now, as his weight depresses the incurved keel, wherein the vital organs are protected, the stigma strikes the visitor in advance of the anthers, so that pollen brought on his underside from another flower must come off on this one before he receives fresh pollen to transfer to a third blossom. At first the keel returns to its original position when depressed; later it loses its elasticity. But besides these showy flowers intended to be cross-fertilized by insects, the bush clovers bear, among the others, insignificant-looking, tightly closed, bud-like ones that produce abundant self-fertilized seed.
The petaliferous flowers are simply to counteract the inevitable evils resulting from close inbreeding. One usually finds caterpillars of the ”dusky wings” b.u.t.terfly feeding on the foliage and the similar tick trefoils which are its staple. At night the bush clover leaves turn upward, completely changing the aspect of these plants as we know them by day. Michaux named the group of flowers for his patron, Lespedez, a governor of Florida under the Spanish regime.
Perhaps the commonest of the tribe is the VIOLET BUSH CLOVER (L.