Wild Flowers Worth Knowing Part 22

_Flowering Season_--June-August.

_Distribution_--Georgia and lllinois, north to New Brunswick.

Medieval herbalists usually recorded anything that "Plinie saieth" with profoundest respect; not always so, quaint old Parkinson. Speaking of the common _(vulgaris)_ Wild Loosestrife of Europe, a rather stout, downy species with terminal cl.u.s.ters of good-sized, yellow flowers, that was once cultivated in our Eastern states, and has sparingly escaped from gardens, he thus refers to the reputation given it by the Roman naturalist: "It is believed to take away strife, or debate between ye beasts, not onely those that are yoked together, but even those that are wild also, by making them tame and quiet ... if it be either put about their yokes or their necks," significantly adding, "which how true, I leave to them shall try and find it soe." Our slender, symmetrical, common loosestrife, with its whorls of leaves and little star-shaped blossoms on thread-like pedicels at regular intervals up the stem, is not even distantly related to the wonderful Purple Loosestrife.

Another common, lower-growing species, the Bulb-bearing Loosestrife (_L.

terrestris_), blooms from July to September and shows a decided preference for swamps and ditches throughout a range which extends from Manitoba and Arkansas to the Atlantic Ocean.

Star-flower; Chickweed Wintergreen; Star Anemone

_Trientalis americana_

_Flowers_--White, solitary, or a few rising on slender, wiry footstalks above a whorl of leaves. Calyx of 5 to 9 (usually 7) narrow sepals.

Corolla wheel-shaped, 1/2 in. across or less, deeply cut into (usually) 7 tapering, spreading, petal-like segments. _Stem:_ A long horizontal rootstock, sending up smooth stem-like branches 3 to 9 in. high, usually with a scale or two below. (_Trientalis_ = one third of a foot, the usual height of a plant.) _Leaves:_ 5 to 10, in a whorl at summit; thin, tapering at both ends, of unequal size, 1-1/2 to 4 in. long.

_Preferred Habitat_--Moist shade of woods and thickets.

_Flowering Season_--May-June.

_Distribution_--From Virginia and Illinois far north.

Is any other blossom poised quite so airily above its whorl of leaves as the delicate, frosty-white little star-flower? It is none of the anemone kin, of course, in spite of one of its misleading folk-names; but only the wind-flower has a similar lightness and grace.

Scarlet Pimpernel; Poor Man's or Shepherd's Weathergla.s.s; Red Chickweed; Burnet Rose; Shepherd's Clock

_Anagallis arvensis_

_Flower_--Variable, scarlet, deep salmon, copper red, flesh colored, or rarely white; usually darker in the centre; about 1/4 in. across; wheel-shaped; 5-parted; solitary, on thread-like peduncles from the leaf axils. _Stem:_ Delicate; 4-sided, 4 to 12 in. long, much branched, the sprays weak and long. _Leaves:_ Oval, opposite, sessile, black dotted beneath.

_Preferred Habitat_--Waste places, dry fields and roadsides, sandy soil.

_Flowering Season_--May-August.

_Distribution_--Newfoundland to Florida, westward to Minnesota and Mexico.

Tiny pimpernel flowers of a reddish copper or terra cotta color have only to be seen to be named, for no other blossoms on our continent are of the same peculiar shade.

Before a storm, when the sun goes under a cloud, or on a dull day, each little weather prophet closes. A score of pretty folk-names given it in every land it adopts testifies to its sensitiveness as a barometer.

Under bright skies the flower may be said to open out flat at about nine in the morning and to begin to close at three in the afternoon.

Shooting Star; American Cowslip; Pride of Ohio

_Dodecatheon Meadia_

_Flowers_--Purplish pink or yellowish white, the cone tipped with yellow; few or numerous, hanging on slender, _recurved_ pedicels in an umbel at top of a simple scape 6 in. to 2 ft. high. Calyx deeply 5-parted; corolla of 5 narrow lobes bent backward and upward; the tube very short, thickened at throat, and marked with dark reddish purple dots; 5 stamens united into a protruding cone; 1 pistil, protruding beyond them. _Leaves:_ Oblong or spatulate, 3 to 12 in. long, narrowed into petioles, all from fibrous roots. _Fruit:_ A 5-valved capsule on _erect_ pedicels.

_Preferred Habitat_--Prairies, open woods, moist cliffs.

_Flowering Season_--April-May.

_Distribution_--Pennsylvania southward and westward, and from Texas to Manitoba.

Ages ago Theophrastus called an entirely different plant by this same scientific name, derived from _dodeka_ = twelve, and _theos_ = G.o.ds; and although our plant is native of a land unknown to the ancients, the fanciful Linnaeus imagined he saw in the flowers of its umbel a little congress of their divinities seated around a miniature Olympus! Who has said science kills imagination? These handsome, interesting flowers, so familiar in the Middle West and Southwest, especially, somewhat resemble the cyclamen in oddity of form. Indeed, these prairie wild flowers are not unknown in florists' shops in Eastern cities.

Few bee workers are abroad at the shooting star's season. The female b.u.mblebees, which, by striking the protruding stigma before they jar out any pollen, cross-fertilize it, are the flower's chief benefactors, but one often sees the little yellow puddle b.u.t.terfly about it. Very different from the bright yellow cowslip of Europe is our odd, misnamed blossom.

GENTIAN FAMILY _(Gentianaceae)_

Bitter-bloom; Rose Pink; Square-stemmed Sabbatia; Rosy Centaury

_Sabbatia angularis_

_Flowers_--Clear rose pink, with greenish star in centre, rarely white, fragrant, 1-1/2 in. broad or less, usually solitary on long peduncles at ends of branches. Calyx lobes very narrow; corolla of 5 rounded segments; stamens 5; style 2-cleft. _Stem:_ Sharply 4-angled, 2 to 3 ft.

high, with opposite branches, leafy. _Leaves:_ Opposite, 5-nerved, oval tapering at tip, and clasping stem by broad base.

_Preferred Habitat_--Rich soil, meadows, thickets.

_Flowering Season_--July-August.

_Distribution_--New York to Florida, westward to Ontario, Michigan, and Indian Territory.

During the drought of midsummer the lovely Rose Pink blooms inland with cheerful readiness to adapt itself to harder conditions than most of its moisture-loving kin will tolerate; but it may be noticed that although we may often-times find it growing in dry soil, it never spreads in such luxuriant cl.u.s.ters as when the roots are struck beside meadow runnels and ditches. Probably the plant would be commoner than it is about populous Eastern districts were it not so much sought by herb-gatherers for use as a tonic medicine.

It was the Centaurea, represented here by the blue Ragged Sailor of gardens, and not our Centaury, a distinctly American group of plants, which, Ovid tells us, cured a wound in the foot of the Centaur Chiron, made by an arrow hurled by Hercules.

Three exquisite members of the Sabbatia tribe keep close to the Atlantic Coast in salt meadows and marshes, along the borders of brackish rivers, and very rarely in the sand at the edges of fresh-water ponds a little way inland. From Maine to Florida they range, and less frequently are met along the sh.o.r.es of the Gulf of Mexico so far as Louisiana. How bright and dainty they are! Whole meadows are radiant with their blus.h.i.+ng loveliness. Probably if they consented to live far away from the sea, they would lose some of the deep, clear pink from out their lovely petals, since all flowers show a tendency to brighten their colors as they approach the coast. In England some of the same wild flowers we have here are far deeper-hued, owing, no doubt, to the fact that they live on a sea-girt, moisture-laden island, and also that the sun never scorches and blanches at the far north as it does in the United States.

The Sea or Marsh Pink or Rose of Plymouth (_S. stellaris_), whose graceful alternate branching stem attains a height of two feet only under most favorable conditions, from July to September opens a succession of pink flowers that often fade to white. The yellow eye is bordered with carmine. They measure about one inch across, and are usually solitary at the ends of branches, or else sway on slender peduncles from the axils. The upper leaves are narrow and bract-like; those lower down gradually widen as they approach the root.

Fringed Gentian

_Gentiana crinita_

_Flowers--Deep_, bright blue, rarely white, several or many, about 2 in. high, stiffly erect, and solitary at ends of very long footstalk.

Calyx of 4 unequal, acutely pointed lobes. Corolla funnel form, its four lobes spreading, rounded, fringed around ends, but scarcely on sides. Four stamens inserted on corolla tube; 1 pistil with 2 stigmas.

_Stem:_ 1 to 3 ft. high, usually branched, leafy. _Leaves:_ Opposite, upper ones acute at tip, broadening to heart-shaped base, seated on stem. _Fruit:_ A spindle-shaped, 2-valved capsule, containing numerous scaly, hairy seeds.

_Preferred Habitat_--Low, moist meadows and woods.