Wild Flowers Worth Knowing Part 34

Chicory; Succory; Blue Sailors; Bunk

_Cichorium Intybus_

_Flower-head_--Bright, deep azure to gray blue, rarely pinkish or white, 1 to 1-1/2 in. broad, set close to stem, often in small cl.u.s.ters for nearly the entire length; each head a composite of ray flowers only, 5-toothed at upper edge, and set in a flat green receptacle. _Stem:_ Rigid, branching, 1 to 3 ft. high. _Leaves:_ Lower ones spreading on ground, 3 to 6 in. long, spatulate, with deeply cut or irregular edges, narrowed into petioles, from a deep tap-root; upper leaves of stem and branches minute, bract-like.

_Preferred Habitat_--Roadsides, waste places, fields.

_Flowering Season_--July-October.

_Distribution_--Common in eastern United States and Canada, south to the Carolinas; also sparingly westward to Nebraska.

At least the dried and ground root of this European invader is known to hosts of people who buy it undisguised or not, according as they count it an improvement to their coffee or a disagreeable adulterant. So great is the demand for chicory that, notwithstanding its cheapness, it is often in its turn adulterated with roasted wheat, rye, acorns, and carrots. Forced and blanched in a warm, dark place, the bitter leaves find a ready market as a salad known as "barbe de Capucin" by the fanciful French. Endive and dandelion, the chicory's relatives, appear on the table, too in spring, where people have learned the possibilities of salads, as they certainly have in Europe.

From the depth to which the tap-root penetrates, it is not unlikely the succory derived its name from the Latin _succurrere_ = to run under. The Arabic name _chicourey_ testifies to the almost universal influence of Arabian physicians and writers in Europe after the Conquest. As _chicoree, achicoria, chicoria, cicorea, chicorie, cich.o.r.ei, cikorie, tsikorei_, and _cicorie_ the plant is known respectively to the French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italians, Germans, Dutch, Swedes, Russians, and Danes.

On cloudy days or in the morning only throughout midsummer the "peasant posy" opens its "dear blue eyes"

"Where tired feet Toil to and fro; Where flaunting Sin May see thy heavenly hue, Or weary Sorrow look from thee Toward a tenderer blue!"

--Margaret Deland.

In his "Humble Bee" Emerson, too, sees only beauty in the

"Succory to match the sky;"

but, _mirabile dictu_, Vergil, rarely caught in a prosaic, practical mood, wrote,

"And spreading succ'ry chokes the rising field."

Common Dandelion; Blowball; Lion's-tooth; Peasant's Clock

_Taraxac.u.m officinale (T. Dens-leonis)_

_Flower-head_--Solitary, golden yellow, 1 to 2 in. across, containing 150 to 200 perfect ray florets on a flat receptacle at the top of a hollow, milky scape 2 to 18 in. tall. _Leaves:_ From a very deep, thick, bitter root; oblong to spatulate in outline, irregularly jagged.

_Preferred Habitat_--Lawns, fields, gra.s.sy waste places.

_Flowering Season_--Every month in the year.

_Distribution_--Around the civilized world.

"Dear common flower that grow'st beside the way, Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold.

"Gold such as thine ne'er drew the Spanish prow Through the primeval hush of Indian seas, Nor wrinkled the lean brow Of age, to rob the lover's heart of ease.

'Tis the spring's largess, which she scatters now To rich and poor alike, with lavish hand; Though most hearts never understand To take it at G.o.d's value, but pa.s.s by The offered wealth with unrewarded eye."

Let the triumphant Anglo-Saxon with dreams of expansion that include the round earth, the student of sociology who wishes an insight into cooperative methods as opposed to individualism, the young man anxious to learn how to get on, parents with children to be equipped for the struggle for existence, business men and employers of labor, all sit down beside the dandelion and take its lesson to heart. How has it managed without navies and armies--for it is no imperialist--to land its peaceful legions on every part of the civilized world and take possession of the soil? How can this neglected wayside composite weed triumph over the most gorgeous hothouse individual on which the horticulturist expends all the science at his command; to flourish where others give up the struggle defeated; to send its vigorous offspring abroad prepared for similar conquest of adverse conditions wherever met; to attract myriads of customers to its department store, and by consummate executive ability to make every visitor unwittingly contribute to its success? Any one who doubts the dandelion's fitness to survive should humble himself by spending days and weeks on his knees, trying to eradicate the plant from even one small lawn with a knife, only to find the turf starred with golden blossoms, or, worse still from his point of view, h.o.a.ry with seed balloons the following spring.

Deep, very deep, the stocky bitter root penetrates where heat and drought affect it not, nor nibbling rabbits, moles, grubs of insects, and other burrowers break through and steal. Cut off the upper portion only with your knife, and not one, but several, plants will likely sprout from what remains; and, however late in the season, will economize stem and leaf to produce flowers and seeds, cuddled close within the tuft, that set all your pains at naught. "Never say die" is the dandelion's motto. An exceedingly bitter medicine is extracted from the root of this dandelion. Likewise are the leaves bitter.

Although they appear so early in the spring, they must be especially tempting to grazing cattle and predaceous insects, the rosettes remain untouched, while other succulent, agreeable plants are devoured wholesale. Only Italians and other thrifty Old World immigrants, who go about then with sack and knife collecting the fresh young tufts, give the plants pause; but even they leave the roots intact. When boiled like spinach or eaten with French salad dressing, the bitter juices are extracted from the leaves or disguised--mean tactics by an enemy outside the dandelion's calculation. All nations know the plant by some equivalent for the name _dent de lion_ = lion's tooth, which the jagged edges of the leaves suggest.

After flowering, it again looks like a bud, lowering its head to mature seed un.o.bserved. Presently rising on a gradually lengthened scape to elevate it where there is no interruption for the pa.s.sing breeze from surrounding rivals, the transformed head, now globular, white, airy, is even more exquisite, set as it is with scores of tiny parachutes ready to sail away. A child's breath puffing out the time of day, a vireo plucking at the fluffy ball for lining to put in its nest, the summer breeze, the scythe, rake, and mowing machines, sudden gusts of winds sweeping the country before thunderstorms--these are among the agents that set the flying vagabonds free. In the hay used for packing they travel to foreign lands in s.h.i.+ps, and, once landed, readily adapt themselves to conditions as they find them. After soaking in the briny ocean for twenty-eight days--long enough for a current to carry them a thousand miles along the coast--they are still able to germinate.

Tall or Wild Lettuce; Wild Opium; Horse-weed

_Lactuca canadensis_

_Flower-heads_--Numerous, small, about 1/4 in. across, involucre, cylindric, rays pale yellow; followed by abundant, soft, bright white pappus; the heads growing in loose, branching, terminal cl.u.s.ters.

_Stem:_ Smooth, 3 to 10 ft. high, leafy up to the flower panicle; juice milky. _Leaves:_ Upper ones lance-shaped; lower ones often 1 ft. long, wavy-lobed, often pinnatifid, taper pointed, narrowed into flat petioles.

_Preferred Habitat_--Moist, open ground; roadsides.

_Flowering Season_--June-November.

_Distribution_--Georgia, westward to Arkansas, north to the British Possessions.

Few gardeners allow the table lettuce (_sativa_) to go to seed; but as it is next of kin to this common wayside weed, it bears a strong likeness to it in the loose, narrow panicles of cream-colored flowers, followed by more charming, bright, white little pompons. Where the garden varieties originated, or what they were, n.o.body knows. Herodotus says lettuce was eaten as a salad in 550 B.C.; in Pliny's time it was cultivated, and even blanched, so as to be had at all seasons of the year by the Romans. Among the privy-purse expenses of Henry VIII is a reward to a certain gardener for bringing "lettuze" and cherries to Hampton Court. Quaint old Parkinson, enumerating "the vertues of the lettice," says, "They all cool a hot and fainting stomache." When the milky juice has been thickened (_lactucarium_), it is sometimes used as a subst.i.tute for opium by regular pract.i.tioners--a fluid employed by the plants themselves, it is thought, to discourage creatures from feasting at their expense. Certain caterpillars, however, eat the leaves readily; but offer lettuce or poppy foliage to grazing cattle, and they will go without food rather than touch it.

"What's one man's poison, Signer, Is another's meat or drink."

Rabbits, for example, have been fed on the deadly nightshade for a week without injury.

Orange or Tawny Hawkweed; Golden Mouse-ear Hawkweed; Devil's Paint-brush

_Hieracium aurantiac.u.m_

_Flower-heads_--Reddish orange; 1 in. across or less, the 5-toothed rays overlapping in several series; several heads on short peduncles in a terminal cl.u.s.ter. _Stem_: Usually leafless, or with 1 to 2 small sessile leaves; 6 to 20 in. high, slender, hairy, from a tuft of hairy, spatulate, or oblong leaves at the base.

_Preferred Habitat_--Fields, woods, roadsides, dry places.

_Flowering Season_--June-September.

_Distribution_--Pennsylvania and Middle states northward into British Possessions.

A popular t.i.tle in England, from whence the plant originally came, is Grimm the Collier. All the plants in this genus take their name from _hierax_--a hawk, because people in the old country once thought that birds of prey swooped earthward to sharpen their eyesight with leaves of the hawkweed, hawkbit, or speerhawk, as they are variously called.

Transplanted into the garden, the orange hawkweed forms a spreading ma.s.s of unusual, splendid color.

The Rattlesnake-weed, Early or Vein-leaf Hawkweed, Snake or Poor Robin's Plantain (_H. venosum_), with flower-heads only about half an inch across, sends up a smooth, slender stem, paniculately branched above, to display the numerous dandelion-yellow disks as early as May, although October is not too late to find this generous bloomer in pine woodlands, dry thickets, and sandy soil. Purplish-veined oval leaves, more or less hairy, that spread in a tuft next the ground, are probably as efficacious in curing shake bites as those of the Rattlesnake Plantain.

When a credulous generation believed that the Creator had indicated with some sign on each plant the special use for which each was intended, many leaves were found to have veinings suggesting the marks on a snake's body; therefore, by simple reasoning, they must extract venom.

How delightful is faith cure!