Wild Flowers Worth Knowing Part 15

White Sweet Clover; Bokhara or Tree Clover; White Melilot; Honey Lotus

_Melilotus alba_

_Flowers_--Small, white, fragrant, papilionaceous, the standard petal a trifle longer than the wings; borne in slender racemes. _Stem:_ 3 to 10 ft. tall, branching. _Leaves:_ Rather distant, petioled, compounded of 3 oblong, saw-edged leaflets; fragrant, especially when dry.

_Preferred Habitat_--Waste lands, roadsides.

_Flowering Season_--June-November.

_Distribution_--United States, Europe, Asia.

Both the White and the Yellow Sweet Clover put their leaves to sleep at night in a remarkable manner: the three leaflets of each leaf twist through an angle of 90 degrees, until one edge of each vertical blade is uppermost. The two side leaflets, Darwin found, always tend to face the north with their upper surface, one facing north-northwest and the other north-northeast, while the terminal leaflet escapes the chilling of its sensitive upper surface through radiation by twisting to a vertical also, but bending to either east or west, until it comes in contact with the vertical upper surface of either of the side leaflets.

Thus the upper surface of the terminal and of at least one of the side leaflets is sure to be well protected through the night; one is "left out in the cold."

The dried branches of sweet clover will fill a room with delightful fragrance; but they will not drive away flies, nor protect woollens from the ravages of moths, as old women once taught us to believe.

The ubiquitous White or Dutch Clover (_Trifolium repens_), whose creeping branches send up solitary round heads of white or pinkish flowers on erect, leafless stems, from May to December, in fields, open waste land, and cultivated places throughout our area, Europe, and Asia, devotes itself to wooing bees, since these are the only insects that effect cross-fertilization regularly, other visitors aiding it only occasionally. Its foliage is the favorite food of very many species of caterpillars and of all grazing cattle the world around. This is still another plant frequently miscalled shamrock. Good luck or bad attends the finding of the leaves, when compounded of an even or an odd number of leaflets more than the normal count, according to the saying of many simple-minded folk.

Blue, Tufted, or Cow Vetch or Tare; Cat Peas; Tinegra.s.s

_Vicia Cracca_

_Flowers_--Blue, later purple; 1/2 in. long, growing downward in 1-sided spike, 15 to 40 flowered; calyx oblique, small, with unequal teeth; corolla b.u.t.terfly-shaped, consisting of standard, wings, and keel, all oblong; the first clawed, the second oblique, and adhering to the shorter keel; 10 stamens, 1 detached from other 9. _Stem:_ Slender, weak, climbing or trailing, downy, 2 to 4 ft. long. _Leaves:_ Tendril bearing, divided into 18 to 24 thin, narrow, oblong leaflets. _Fruit:_ A smooth pod 1 in. long or less, 5 to 8 seeded.

_Preferred Habitat_--Dry soil, fields, waste land.

_Flowering Season_--June-August.

_Distribution_--United States from New Jersey, Kentucky, and Iowa northward and northwestward. Europe and Asia.

Dry fields blued with the bright blossoms of the Tufted Vetch, and roadsides and thickets where the angular vine sends forth vivid patches of color, resound with the music of happy bees. Although the parts of the flower fit closely together, they are elastic, and opening with the energetic visitor's weight and movement give ready access to the nectary. On his departure they resume their original position, to protect both nectar and pollen from rain and pilferers whose bodies are not perfectly adapted to further the flower's cross-fertilization. The common b.u.mblebee (_Bombus terrestris_) plays a mean trick, all too frequently, when he bites a hole at the base of the blossom, not only gaining easy access to the sweets for himself, but opening the way for others less intelligent than he, but quite ready to profit by his mischief, and so defeat nature's plan. Doctor Ogle observed that the same bee always acts in the same manner, one sucking the nectar legitimately, another always biting a hole to obtain it surrept.i.tiously, the natural inference, of course, being that some bees, like small boys, are naturally depraved.

Ground-nut

_Apios tuberosa (A. Apios)_

_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_). 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."

Wild or Hog Peanut

_Amphicarpa monoica (Falcata comosa)_

_Flowers_--Numerous small, showy ones, borne in drooping cl.u.s.ters from axils of upper leaves; lilac, pale purplish, or rarely white, b.u.t.terfly-shaped, consisting of standard petal partly enfolding wings and keel. Calyx tubular, 4 or 5 toothed; 10 stamens (9 and 1); 1 pistil.

(Also solitary fertile flowers, lacking petals, on thread-like, creeping branches from lower axils or underground.) _Stem:_ Twining wiry brownish-hairy, 1 to 8 ft. long. _Leaves:_ Compounded of 3 thin leaflets, egg-shaped at base, acutely pointed at tip. _Fruit:_ Hairy pod 1 in. long. Also 1-seeded, pale, rounded, underground peanut.

_Preferred Habitat_--Moist thickets, shady roadsides.

_Flowering Season_--August-September.

_Distribution_--New Brunswick westward to Nebraska, south to Gulf of Mexico.

_Amphicarpa_ ("seed at both ends"), the Greek name by which this graceful vine is sometimes known, emphasizes its most interesting feature, that, nevertheless, seems to many a foolish duplication of energy on Nature's part. Why should the same plant bear two kinds of blossoms and seeds? Among the foliage of low shrubbery and plants in shady lanes and woodside thickets, we see the delicate, drooping cl.u.s.ters of lilac blossoms hanging where bees can readily discover them and, in pilfering their sweets, transfer their pollen from flower to flower. But in case of failure to intercross these blossoms that are dependent upon insect help to set fertile seed, what then? Must the plant run the risk of extinction? Self-fertilization may be an evil, but failure to produce seed at all is surely the greatest one. To guard against such a calamity, insignificant looking flowers that have no petals to open for the enticing of insects, but which fertilize themselves with their own pollen, produce abundant seed close to the ground or under it. Then what need of the showy blossoms hanging in the thicket above? Close inbreeding in the vegetable world, as in the animal, ultimately produces degenerate offspring; and although the showy lilac blossoms of the wild peanut yield comparatively few cross-fertilized seeds, these are quite sufficient to enable the vine to maintain those desired features which are the inheritance from ancestors that struggled in their day and generation after perfection. No plant dares depend upon its cleistogamous or blind flowers alone for offspring; and in the sixty or more genera containing these curious growths, that usually look like buds arrested in development, every plant that bears them bears also showy flowers dependent upon cross-pollination by insect aid.

The boy who:

"Drives home the cows from the pasture Up through the long shady lane"

knows how reluctantly they leave the feast afforded by the wild peanut.

Hogs, rooting about in the moist soil where it grows, unearth the hairy pods that should produce next year's vines; hence the poor excuse for branding a charming plant with a repellent folk-name.

This plant should not be confused with pig-nut (_carya porcina_), which is a species of hickory.

WOOD-SORREL FAMILY _(Oxalidaceae)_

White or True Wood-sorrel; Alleluia

_Oxalis acetosella_

_Flowers_--White or delicate pink, veined with deep pink, about 1/2 in.

long. Five sepals; 5 spreading petals rounded at tips; 10 stamens, 5 longer, 5 shorter, all anther-bearing; 1 pistil with 5 stigmatic styles.

_Scape:_ Slender, leafless, 1-flowered, 2 to 5 in. high. _Leaf:_ Clover-like, of 3 leaflets, on long petioles from scaly, creeping rootstock.

_Preferred Habitat_--Cold, damp woods.

_Flowering Season_--May-July.