Part 47 (1/2)
When we see the honeybee or the little wild bees - Haliclus chiefly - on the flower, we may know they get pollen only.
Finally a ruby-throated hummingbird whirs into sight. Poising before a columbine, and moving around it to drain one spur after another until the five are emptied, he flashes like thought to another group of inverted red cornucopias, visits in turn every flower in the colony, then whirs away quite as suddenly as he came. Probably to him, and no longer to the outgrown b.u.mblebee, has the flower adapted itself. The European species wears blue, the bee's favorite color according to Sir John Lubbock; the nectar hidden in its spurs, which are shorter, stouter, and curved, is accessible only to the largest humblebees. There are no hummingbirds in Europe. (See jewel-weed.) Our native columbine, on the contrary, has longer, contracted, straight, erect spurs, most easily drained by the ruby-throat which, like Eugene Field, ever delights in ”any color at all so long as it's red.”
To help make the columbine conspicuous, even the sepals become red; but the flower is yellow within, it is thought to guide visitors to the nectaries. The stamens protrude like a golden ta.s.sel. After the anthers pa.s.s the still immature stigmas, the pollen of the outer row ripens, ready for removal, while the inner row of undeveloped stamens still acts as a sheath for the stigmas. Owing to the pendent position of the flower, no pollen could fall on the latter in any case. The columbine is too highly organized to tolerate self-fertilization. When all the stamens have discharged their pollen, the styles then elongate; and the feathery stigmas, opening and curving sidewise, bring themselves at the entrance of each of the five cornucopias, just the position the anthers previously occupied. Probably even the small bees, collecting pollen only, help carry some from flower to flower but perhaps the largest b.u.mblebees, and certainly the hummingbird, must be regarded as the columbine's legitimate benefactors. Caterpillars of one of the dusky wings (Papilio lucilius) feed on the leaves.
Very rarely is the columbine white, and then its name, derived from words meaning two doves, does not seem wholly misapplied.
”O Columbine, open your folded wrapper Where two twin turtle-doves dwell,”
lisp thousands of children speaking the ”Songs of Seven” as a first ”piece” at school. How Emerson loved the columbine! Dr.
Prior says the flower was given its name because ”of the resemblance of the nectaries to the heads of pigeons in a ring around a dish - a favorite device of ancient artists.”
This exquisite plant was forwarded from the Virginia colony to England for the gardens of Hampton Court by a young kinsman of Tradescant, gardener and herbalist to Charles I.
PITCHER-PLANT; SIDE-SADDLE FLOWER; HUNTSMAN'S CUP; INDIAN DIPPER (Sarracenea purpurea) Pitcher-plant family
Flower - Deep reddish purple, sometimes partly greenish, pink, or red, 2 in. or more across, globose; solitary, nodding from scape 1 to 2 ft. tall. Calyx of 5 sepals, with 3 or 4 bracts at base; 5 overlapping petals, enclosing a yellowish, umbrella-shaped dilation of the style, with 5 rays terminating in 5-hooked stigmas; stamens indefinite. Leaves: Hollow, pitcher-shaped through the folding together of their margins, leaving a broad wing; much inflated, hooded, yellowish green with dark maroon or purple lines and veinings, 4 to 12 in. long, curved, in a tuft from the root.
Preferred Habitat - Peat bogs; spongy, mossy swamps.
Flowering Season - May-June.
Distribution - Labrador to the Rocky Mountains, south to Florida, Kentucky, and Minnesota.
”What's this I hear About the new carnivora?
Can little piants Eat bugs and ants And gnats and flies? - A sort of retrograding: Surely the fare Of flowers is air Or suns.h.i.+ne sweet They shouldn't eat Or do aught so degrading!”
There must always be something shocking in the sacrifice of the higher life to the lower, of the sensate to what we are pleased to call the insensate, although no one who has studied the marvelously intelligent motives that impel a plant's activities can any longer consider the vegetable creation as lacking sensibility. Science is at length giving us a glimmering of the meaning of the word universe, teaching, as it does, that all creatures in sharing the One Life share in many of its powers, and differ from one another only in degree of possession, not in kind. The transition from one so-called kingdom into another presumably higher one is a purely arbitrary line marked by man, and often impossible to define. The animalcule and the insectivorous plant know no boundaries between the animal and the vegetable. And who shall say that the sun-dew or the bladderwort is not a higher organism than the amoeba? Animated plants, and vegetating. animals parallel each other. Several hundred carnivorous plants in all parts of the world have now been named by scientists.
It is well worth a journey to some spongy, sphagnum bog to gather clumps of pitcher-plants which will furnish an interesting study to an entire household throughout the summer while they pursue their nefarious business in a shallow bowl on the veranda. A modification of the petiole forms a deep hollow pitcher having for its spout a modification of the blade of the leaf. Usually the pitchers are half filled with water and tiny drowned victims when we gather them. Some of this fluid must be rain, but the open pitcher secretes much juice too. Certain relatives, whose pitchers have hooded lids that keep out rain, are nevertheless filled with fluid. On the Pacific Coast the golden jars of Darlingtonia Californica, with their overarching hoods, are often so large and watery as to drown small birds and field mice. Note in pa.s.sing that these otherwise dark prisons have translucent spots at the top, whereas our pitcher-plant is lighted through its open transom.
A sweet secretion within the pitcher's rim, which some say is intoxicating, others, that it is an anaesthetic, invites insects to a fatal feast. It is a simple enough matter for them to walk into the pitcher over the band of stiff hairs, pointing downward like the withes of a lobster pot, that form an inner covering, or to slip into the well if they attempt crawling over its polished upper surface. To fly upward in a perpendicular line once their wings are wet is additionally hopeless, because of the hairs that guard the mouth of the trap; and so, after vain attempts to fly or crawl out of the prison, they usually sink exhausted into a watery grave.
When certain plants live in soil that is so poor in nitrogen compounds that protein formation is interfered with, they have come to depend more or less on a carnivorous diet. The sundew (q.v.) actually digests its prey with the help of a gastric juice similar to what is found in the stomach of animals; but the bladderwort (q.v.) and pitcher-plants can only absorb in the form of soup the products of their victims' decay. Flies and gnats drowned in these pitchers quickly yield their poor little bodies; but owing to the beetle's hard-sh.e.l.l covering, many a rare specimen may be rescued intact to add to a collection.
A similar ogre plant is the YELLOW-FLOWERED TRUMPET-LEAF (S.
flava) found in bogs in the Southern States.
GROUND-NUT (Apios Apios; A. tuberosa of Gray) Pea family
Flowers - Fragrant, chocolate brown and reddish purple, numerous, about 1/2 in. long, cl.u.s.tered in racemes from the leaf-axils.
Calyx 2-lipped, corolla papilionaceous, the broad standard petal turned backward, the keel sickle-shaped; stamens within it 9 and 1. Stem: From tuberous, edible rootstock; climbing, slender, several feet long, the juice milky. Leaves: Compounded of 5 to 7 ovate leaflets. Fruit: A leathery, slightly curved pod, 2 to 4 in. long.
Preferred Habitat - Twining about undergrowth and thickets in moist or wet ground.
Flowering Season - July-September.
Distribution - New Brunswick to Ontario, south to the Gulf States and Kansas.
No one knows better than the omnivorous ”barefoot boy” that
”where the ground-nut trails its vine”
there is hidden something really good to eat under the soft, moist soil where legions of royal fern, usually standing guard above it, must be crushed before he digs up the coveted tubers.
He would be the last to confuse it with the WILD KIDNEY BEAN or BEAN VINE (Phaseolus polystachyus; P. perennis of Gray). The latter has loose racemes of smaller purple flowers and leaflets in threes; nevertheless it is often confounded with the ground-nut vine by older naturalists whose knowledge was ”learned of schools.”