Wild Flowers Worth Knowing Part 7

_Preferred Habitat_--Roadsides, banks, and waste places.

_Flowering Season_--June-September.

_Distribution_--Generally common. Naturalized from Europe.

A stout, buxom, exuberantly healthy la.s.sie among flowers is Bouncing Bet, who long ago escaped from gardens whither she was brought from Europe, and ran wild beyond colonial farms to roadsides, along which she has travelled over nearly our entire area. Underground runners and abundant seed soon form thrifty colonies. This plant, to which our grandmothers ascribed healing virtues, makes a cleansing, soap-like lather when its bruised leaves are agitated in water.

PURSLANE FAMILY _(Portulacaceae)_

Spring Beauty; Claytonia

_Claytonia virginica_

_Flowers_--White veined with pink, or all pink, the veinings of deeper shade, on curving, slender pedicels, several borne in a terminal loose raceme, the flowers mostly turned one way (secund). Calyx of 2 ovate sepals; corolla of 5 petals slightly united by their bases; 5 stamens, 1 inserted on base of each petal; the style 3-cleft. _Stem:_ Weak, 6 to 12 in. long, from a deep, tuberous root. _Leaves:_ Opposite above, linear to lance-shaped, shorter than basal ones, which are 3 to 7 in., long; breadth variable.

_Preferred Habitat_--Moist woods, open groves, low meadows.

_Flowering Season_--March-May.

_Distribution_--Nova Scotia and far westward, south to Georgia and Texas.

Very early in the spring a race is run with the hepatica, arbutus, adder's tongue, bloodroot, squirrel corn, and anemone for the honor of being the earliest wild flower; and although John Burroughs and Doctor Abbot have had the exceptional experience of finding the claytonia even before the hepatica--certainly the earliest spring blossom worthy the name in the Middle and New England states--of course the rank Skunk Cabbage, whose name is sn.o.bbishly excluded from the list of fair compet.i.tors, has quietly opened dozens of minute florets in its incurved horn before the others have even started.

WATER-LILY FAMILY _(Nymphaeaceae)_

Large Yellow Pond, or Water, Lily; Cow Lily; Spatterdock

_Nymphaea advena (Nuphar advena)_

_Flowers_--Yellow or greenish outside, rarely purple tinged, round, depressed, 1-1/2 to 3-1/2 in. across. Sepals 6, unequal, concave, thick, fleshy; petals stamen-like, oblong, fleshy, short; stamens very numerous, in 5 to 7 rows; pistil compounded of many carpels, its stigmatic disc pale red or yellow, with 12 to 24 rays. _Leaves:_ Floating, or some immersed, large, thick, sometimes a foot long, egg-shaped or oval, with a deep cleft at base, the lobes rounded.

_Preferred Habitat_--Standing water, ponds, slow streams.

_Flowering Season_--April-September.

_Distribution_--Rocky Mountains eastward, south to the Gulf of Mexico, north to Nova Scotia.

Comparisons were ever odious. Because the Yellow Water-lily has the misfortune to claim relations.h.i.+p with the sweet-scented white species must it never receive its just meed of praise? Hiawatha's canoe, let it be remembered,

"Floated on the river Like a yellow leaf in autumn, Like a yellow water-lily."

But even those who admire Longfellow's lines see less beauty in the golden flower-bowls floating among the large, l.u.s.trous, leathery leaves.

Sweet-scented White Water-lily; Pond Lily; Water Nymph; Water Cabbage

_Castalia odorata (Nymphaea odorata)_

_Flowers_--Pure white or pink tinged, rarely deep pink, solitary, 3 to 8 in. across, deliciously fragrant, floating. Calyx of 4 sepals, green outside; petals of indefinite number, overlapping in many rows, and gradually pa.s.sing into an indefinite number of stamens; outer row of stamens with petaloid filaments and short anthers, the inner yellow stamens with slender filaments and elongated anthers; carpels of indefinite number, united into a compound pistil, with spreading and projecting stigmas. _Leaves_: Floating, nearly round, slit at bottom, s.h.i.+ning green above, reddish and more or less hairy below, 4 to 12 in.

across, attached to petiole at centre of lower surface. Petioles and peduncles round and rubber-like, with 4 main air-channels. _Rootstock_: (Not true stem) thick, simple or with few branches, very long.

_Preferred Habitat_--Still water, ponds, lakes, slow streams.

_Flowering Season--_June-September.

_Distribution_--Nova Scotia to Gulf of Mexico, and westward to the Mississippi.

Sumptuous queen of our native aquatic plants, of the royal family to which the gigantic _Victoria regia_ of Brazil belongs, and all the lovely rose, lavender, blue, and golden exotic water-lilies in the fountains of our city parks, to her man, beast, and insect pay grateful homage. In Egypt, India, China, j.a.pan, Persia, and Asiatic Russia, how many millions have bent their heads in adoration of her relative the sacred lotus! From its centre Brahma came forth; Buddha, too, whose symbol is the lotus, first appeared floating on the mystic flower _(Nelumbo nelumbo)_. Happily the lovely pink or white "sacred bean" or "rose-lily" of the Nile, often cultivated here, has been successfully naturalized in ponds about Bordentown, New Jersey, and may be elsewhere.

If he who planteth a tree is greater than he who taketh a city, that man should be canonized who introduces the magnificent wild flowers of foreign lands to our area of Nature's garden.

CROWFOOT FAMILY _(Ranunculaceae)_

Common Meadow b.u.t.tercup; Tall Crowfoot; Kingcups; Cuckoo Flower; Goldcups; b.u.t.ter-flowers; Blister-flowers

_Ranunculus acris_

_Flowers_--Bright, s.h.i.+ning yellow, about 1 in. across, numerous, terminating long slender footstalks. Calyx of 5 spreading sepals; corolla of 5 petals; yellow stamens and carpels. _Stem:_ Erect, branched above, hairy (sometimes nearly smooth), 2 to 3 feet tall, from fibrous roots. _Leaves:_ In a tuft from the base, long petioled, of 3 to 7 divisions cleft into numerous lobes; stem leaves nearly sessile, distant, 3-parted.

_Preferred Habitat_--Meadows, fields, roadsides, gra.s.sy places.

_Flowering Season_--May-September.

_Distribution_--Naturalized from Europe in Canada and the United States; most common North.

What youngster has not held these s.h.i.+ning golden flowers under his chin to test his fondness for b.u.t.ter? Dandelions and Marsh Marigolds may reflect their color in his clear skin, too, but the b.u.t.tercup is every child's favorite. When

"Cuckoo-buds of yellow hue Do paint the meadows with delight,"

daisies, pink clover, and waving timothy bear them company here; not the "daisies pied," violets, and lady-smocks of Shakespeare's England.

How incomparably beautiful are our own meadows in June! But the glitter of the b.u.t.tercup, which is as nothing to the glitter of a gold dollar in the eyes of a practical farmer, fills him with wrath when this immigrant takes possession of his pastures. Cattle will not eat the acrid, caustic plant--a sufficient reason for most members of the _Ranunculaceae_ to stoop to the low trick of secreting poisonous or bitter juices.

Self-preservation leads a cousin, the garden monk's hood, even to murderous practices. Since children will put everything within reach into their mouths, they should be warned against biting the b.u.t.tercup's stem and leaves, that are capable of raising blisters. "Beggars use the juice to produce sores upon their skin," says Mrs. Creevy. A designer might employ these exquisitely formed leaves far more profitably.

By having its nourishment thriftily stored up underground all winter, the Bulbous b.u.t.tercup _(R. bulbosus)_ is able to steal a march on its fibrous-rooted sister that must acc.u.mulate hers all spring; consequently it is first to flower, coming in early May, and lasting through June. It is a low and generally more hairy plant, but closely resembling the tall b.u.t.tercup in most respects, and, like it, a naturalized European immigrant now thoroughly at home in fields and roadsides in most sections of the United States and Canada.

Commonest of the early b.u.t.tercups is the Tufted species _(R.

fascicularis)_, a little plant seldom a foot high, found in the woods and on rocky hillsides from Texas and Manitoba east to the Atlantic, flowering in April or May. The long-stalked leaves are divided into from three to five parts; the bright yellow flowers, with rather narrow, distant petals, measure about an inch across. They open sparingly, usually only one or two at a time on each plant, to favor pollination from another one.

Scattered patches of the Swamp or Marsh b.u.t.tercup _(R. septentrionalis)_ brighten low, rich meadows also with their large satiny yellow flowers, whose place in the botany even the untrained eye knows at sight. The smooth, spreading plant sometimes takes root at the joints of its branches and sends forth runners, but the stems mostly ascend. The large lower mottled leaves are raised well out of the wet, or above the gra.s.s, on long petioles. They have three divisions, each lobed and cleft. From Georgia and Kentucky far northward this b.u.t.tercup blooms from April to July, opening only a few flowers at a time--a method which may make it less showy, but more certain to secure cross-pollination between distinct plants.