Wild Flowers Worth Knowing Part 19

Evening Primrose; Night Willow-herb

_Oenothera biennis_

_Flowers_--Yellow, fragrant, opening at evening, 1 to 2 in. across, borne in terminal leafy-bracted spikes. Calyx tube slender, elongated, gradually enlarged at throat, the 4-pointed lobes bent backward; corolla of 4 spreading petals; 8 stamens; 1 pistil; the stigma 4-cleft. _Stem:_ Erect, wand-like, or branched, 1 to 5 ft. tall, rarely higher, leafy.

_Leaves:_ Alternate, lance-shaped, mostly seated on stem, entire, or obscurely toothed.

_Preferred Habitat_--Roadsides, dry fields, thickets, fence-corners.

_Flowering Season_--June-October.

_Distribution_--Labrador to the Gulf of Mexico, west to the Rocky Mountains.

Like a ball-room beauty, the Evening Primrose has a jaded, bedraggled appearance by day when we meet it by the dusty roadside, its erect buds, fading flowers from last night's revelry, wilted ones of previous dissipations, and hairy oblong capsules, all crowded together among the willow-like leaves at the top of the rank-growing plant. But at sunset a bud begins to expand its delicate petals slowly, timidly--not suddenly and with a pop, as the evening primrose of the garden does.

Now, its fragrance, that has been only faintly perceptible during the day, becomes increasingly powerful. Why these blandishments at such an hour? Because at dusk, when sphinx moths, large and small, begin to fly, the primrose's special benefactors are abroad. All these moths, whose length of tongue has kept pace with the development of the tubes of certain white and yellow flowers dependent on their ministrations, find such glowing like miniature moons for their special benefit, when blossoms of other hues have melted into the deepening darkness. If such have fragrance, they prepare to shed it now. Nectar is secreted in tubes so deep and slender that none but the moths' long tongues can drain the last drop. An exquisite, little, rose-pink twilight flyer, his wings bordered with yellow, flutters in ecstasy above the Evening Primrose's freshly opened flowers, transferring in his rapid flight some of their abundant, sticky pollen that hangs like a necklace from the outstretched filaments. By day one may occasionally find a little fellow asleep in a wilted blossom, which serves him as a tent, under whose flaps the brightest bird eye rarely detects a dinner. After a single night's dissipation the corolla wilts, hangs a while, then drops from the maturing capsule as if severed with a sharp knife. Few flowers, sometimes only one opens on a spike on a given evening--a plan to increase the chances of cross-fertilization between distinct plants; but there is a very long succession of bloom. If a flower has not been pollenized during the night it remains open a while in the morning.

b.u.mblebees now hurry in, and an occasional humming bird takes a sip of nectar. Toward the end of summer, when so much seed has been set that the flower can afford to be generous, it distinctly changes its habit and keeps open house all day.

GINSENG FAMILY (_Araliaceae_)

Spikenard; Indian Root; Spignet

_Aralia racemosa_

_Flowers_--Greenish white, small, 5-parted, mostly imperfect, in a drooping compound raceme of rounded cl.u.s.ters. _Stem:_ 3 to 6 ft. high, branches spreading. _Roots:_ Large, thick, fragrant. _Leaves:_ Compounded of heart-shaped, sharply tapering, saw-edged leaflets from 2 to 5 in. long, often downy underneath. Lower leaves often enormous.

_Fruit:_ Dark reddish-brown berries.

_Preferred Habitat_--Rich open woods, wayside thickets, light soil.

_Flowering Season_--July-August.

_Distribution_--New Brunswick to Georgia, west to the Mississippi.

A striking, decorative plant, once much sought after for its medicinal virtues--still another herb with which old women delight to dose their victims for any malady from a cold to a carbuncle. Quite a different plant, but a relative, is the one with hairy spike-like shoots from its fragrant roots, from which the "very precious" ointment poured by Mary upon the Saviour's head was made. The nard, an Indian product from that plant, which is still found growing on the distant Himalayas, could then be imported into Palestine only by the rich.

How certain of the winter birds gormandize on the resinous, spicy little berries! A flock of juncos will strip the fruit from every spikenard in the neighborhood the first day it arrives from the North.

It should be understood that the Wild Spikenard, or False Solomon's Seal, has not the remotest connection with this tribe of plants.

The Wild or False Sarsaparilla (_A. nudicaulis_), so common in woods, hillsides, and thickets, shelters its three spreading umbels of greenish-white flowers in May and June beneath a canopy formed by a large, solitary, compound leaf. The aromatic roots, which run horizontally sometimes three feet or more through the soil, send up a very short, smooth proper stem which lifts a tall leafstalk and a shorter, naked flower-stalk. The single large leaf, of exquisite bronzy tints when young, is compounded of from three to five oval, toothed leaflets on each of its three divisions.

While the true sarsaparilla of medicine should come from a quite different herb that flourishes in Mexico and South America, this one furnishes a commercial subst.i.tute enormously used as a blood purifier and cooling summer drink. Burrowing rabbits delight to nibble the long, slender, fragrant roots.

PARSLEY FAMILY (_Umbelliferae_)

Wild or Field Parsnip; Madnep; Tank

_Pastinaca sativa_

_Flowers_--Dull or greenish yellow, small, without involucre or involucels; borne in 7 to 15 rayed umbels, 2 to 6 in. across. _Stem:_ 2 to 5 ft. tall, stout, smooth, branching, grooved, from a long, conic, fleshy, strong-scented root. _Leaves:_ Compounded (pinnately), of several pairs of oval, lobed, or cut sharply toothed leaflets; the petioled lower leaves often 1-1/2 ft. long.

_Preferred Habitat_--Waste places, roadsides, fields.

_Flowering Season_--June-September.

_Distribution_--Common throughout nearly all parts of the United States and Canada. Europe.

Men are not the only creatures who feed upon such of the umbel-bearing plants as are innocent--parsnips, celery, parsley, carrots, caraway, and fennel, among others; and even those which contain properties that are poisonous to highly organized men and beasts, afford harmless food for insects. Pliny says that parsnips, which were cultivated beyond the Rhine in the days of Tiberius, were brought to Rome annually to please the emperor's exacting palate, yet this same plant, which has overrun two continents, in its wild state (when its leaves are a paler yellowish green than under cultivation) often proves poisonous. A strongly acrid juice in the very tough stem causes intelligent cattle to let it alone--precisely the object desired.

Wild Carrot; Queen Anne's Lace; Bird's-nest

_Daucus Carota_

_Flowers_--Small, of unequal sizes (polygamous), white, rarely pinkish gray, 5-parted, in a compound, flat, circular, umbel, the central floret often dark crimson; the umbels very concave in fruit. An involucre of narrow, pinnately cut bracts. _Stem:_ 1 to 3 ft. high, with stiff hairs; from a deep, fleshy, conic root. _Leaves:_ Cut into fine, fringy divisions; upper ones smaller and less dissected.

_Preferred Habitat_--Waste lands, fields, roadsides.

_Flowering Season_--June-September.

_Distribution_--Eastern half of United States and Canada. Europe and Asia.

A pest to farmers, a joy to the flower-lover, and a welcome signal for refreshment to hosts of flies, beetles, bees, and wasps, especially to the paper-nest builders, the sprangly wild carrot lifts its fringy foliage and exquisite lacy blossoms above the dry soil of three continents. From Europe it has come to spread its delicate wheels over our summer landscape, until whole fields are whitened by them east of the Mississippi. Having proved fittest in the struggle for survival in the fiercer compet.i.tion of plants in the over-cultivated Old World, it takes its course of empire westward year by year, finding most favorable conditions for colonizing in our vast, uncultivated area; and the less aggressive, native occupants of our soil are only too readily crowded out. Would that the advocates of unrestricted immigration of foreign peasants studied the parallel examples among floral invaders!

Still another fiction is that the cultivated carrot, introduced to England by the Dutch in Queen Elizabeth's reign, was derived from this wild species. Miller, the celebrated English botanist and gardener, among many others, has disproved this statement by utterly failing again and again to produce an edible vegetable from this wild root. When cultivation of the garden carrot lapses for a few generations, it reverts to the ancestral type--a species quite distinct from _Daucus Carota_.

DOGWOOD FAMILY _(Cornaceae)_

Flowering Dogwood

_Cornus florida_

_Flowers_--(Apparently) large, white or pinkish, the four conspicuous parts simulating petals, notched at the top, being really bracts of an involucre below the true flowers, cl.u.s.tered in the centre, which are very small, greenish yellow, 4-parted, perfect. _Stem:_ A large shrub or small tree, wood hard, bark rough. _Leaves:_ Opposite oval, entire-edged, petioled, paler underneath. _Fruit:_ Cl.u.s.ters of egg-shaped scarlet berries, tipped with the persistent calyx.

_Preferred Habitat_--Woodlands, rocky thickets, wooded roadsides.

_Flowering Season_--April-June.