Wild Flowers Worth Knowing Part 9

Doubtless the first of these folk-names refers to its use in church festivals during the Middle Ages as one of the blossoms devoted to the Virgin Mary.

"And winking Mary-buds begin To ope their golden eyes,"

sing the musicians in "Cymbeline." Whoever has seen the watery Avon meadows in April, yellow and twinkling with marsh marigolds when "the lark at heaven's gate sings," appreciates why the commentators incline to identify Shakespeare's Mary-buds with the _Caltha_ of these and our own marshes.

But we know well that not for poets' high-flown rhapsodies but rather for the more welcome hum of bees and flies intent on breakfasting, do these flowers open in the morning suns.h.i.+ne.

Some country people who boil the young plants declare these "greens" are as good as spinach. What sacrilege to reduce crisp, glossy, beautiful leaves like these to a slimy mess in a pot! The tender buds, often used in white sauce as a subst.i.tute for capers, probably do not give it the same piquancy where piquancy is surely most needed--on boiled mutton, said to be Queen Victoria's favorite dish. Hawked about the streets in tight bunches, the Marsh Marigold blossoms--with half their yellow sepals already dropped--and the fragrant, pearly, pink arbutus are the most familiar spring wild flowers seen in Eastern cities.

Gold-thread; Canker-root

_Coptis trifolia_

_Flowers_--Small, white, solitary, on a slender scape 3 to 6 in. high.

Sepals 5 to 7, petal-like, falling early; petals 5 to 6, inconspicuous, like club-shaped columns; stamens numerous; carpels few, the stigmatic surfaces curved. _Leaves:_ From the base, long petioled, divided into 3 somewhat fan-shaped, s.h.i.+ning, evergreen, sharply toothed leaflets.

_Rootstock:_ Thread-like, long, bright yellow, wiry, bitter.

_Preferred Habitat_--Cool mossy bogs, damp woods.

_Flowering Season_--May-August.

_Distribution_--Maryland and Minnesota northward to circ.u.mpolar regions.

Dig up a plant, and the fine, tangled, yellow roots tell why it was given its name. In the good old days when decoctions of any herb that was particularly nauseous were swallowed in the simple faith that virtue resided in them in proportion to their revolting taste, the gold-thread's bitter roots furnished a tea much valued as a spring tonic and as a cure for ulcerated throats and canker-sore mouths of helpless children.

Wild Columbine

_Aquilegia canadensis_

_Flower_--Red outside, yellow within, irregular, 1 to 2 in. long, solitary, nodding from a curved footstalk from the upper leaf axils.

Petals 5, funnel-shaped, but quickly narrowing into long, erect, very slender hollow spurs, rounded at the tip and united below by the 5 spreading red sepals, between which the straight spurs ascend; numerous stamens and 5 pistils projecting. _Stem_: 1 to 2 ft. high, branching, soft-hairy or smooth. _Leaves_: More or less divided, the lobes with rounded teeth; large lower compound leaves on long petioles. _Fruit_: An erect pod, each of the 5 divisions tipped with a long, sharp beak.

_Preferred Habitat_--Rocky places, rich woodland.

_Flowering Season_--April-July.

_Distribution_--Nova Scotia to the Northwest Territory; southward to the Gulf states. Rocky Mountains.

Although under cultivation the columbine nearly doubles its size, it never has the elfin charm in a conventional garden that it possesses wild in Nature's. Dancing, in red and yellow petticoats, to the rhythm of the breeze along the ledge of overhanging rocks, it coquettes with some Punchinello as if daring him to reach her at his peril. Who is he?

Let us sit a while on the rocky ledge and watch for her lovers.

Presently a big muscular b.u.mblebee booms along. Owing to his great strength, an inverted, pendent blossom, from which he must cling upside down, has no more terrors for him than a trapeze for the trained acrobat. His long tongue--if he is one of the largest of our sixty-two species of _Bombus_--can suck almost any flower unless it is especially adapted to night-flying sphinx moths, but can he drain this? He is the truest benefactor of the European Columbine _(A. vulgaris)_, whose spurs suggested the talons of an eagle _(aquila)_ to imaginative Linnaeus when he gave this group of plants its generic name. Smaller b.u.mblebees, unable through the shortness of their tongues to feast in a legitimate manner, may be detected nipping holes in the tips of all columbines, where the nectar is secreted, just as they do in larkspurs, Dutchman's breeches, squirrel corn, b.u.t.ter and eggs, and other flowers whose deeply hidden nectaries make dining too difficult for the little rogues.

Fragile b.u.t.terflies, absolutely dependent on nectar, hover near our showy wild columbine with its five tempting horns of plenty, but sail away again, knowing as they do that their weak legs are not calculated to stand the strain of an inverted position from a pendent flower, nor are their tongues adapted to slender tubes unless these may be entered from above. The tongues of both b.u.t.terflies and moths bend readily only when directed beneath their bodies. It will be noticed that our columbine's funnel-shaped tubes contract just below the point where the nectar is secreted--doubtless to protect it from small bees. When we see the honey-bee or the little wild bees--_Halictus_ chiefly--on the flower, we may know they get pollen only.

Finally a ruby-throated humming bird whirs into sight. Poising before a columbine, and moving around it to drain one spur after another until the five are emptied, he flashes like thought to another group of inverted red cornucopias, visits in turn every flower in the colony, then whirs away quite as suddenly as he came. Probably to him, and no longer to the outgrown b.u.mblebee, has the flower adapted itself. The European species wears blue, the bee's favorite color according to Sir John Lubbock; the nectar hidden in its spurs, which are shorter, stouter, and curved, is accessible only to the largest b.u.mblebees.

There are no humming birds in Europe. Our native columbine, on the contrary, has longer, contracted, straight, erect spurs, most easily drained by the ruby-throat which, like Eugene Field, ever delights in "any color at all so long as it's red."

To help make the columbine conspicuous, even the sepals become red; but the flower is yellow within, it is thought to guide visitors to the nectaries. The stamens protrude like a golden ta.s.sel. After the anthers pa.s.s the still immature stigmas, the pollen of the outer row ripens, ready for removal, while the inner row of undeveloped stamens still acts as a sheath for the stigmas. Owing to the pendent position of the flower, no pollen could fall on the latter in any case. The columbine is too highly organized to tolerate self-fertilization. When all the stamens have discharged their pollen, the styles then elongate; and the feathery stigmas, opening and curving sidewise, bring themselves at the entrance of each of the five cornucopias, just the position the anthers previously occupied. Probably even the small bees, collecting pollen only, help carry some from flower to flower; but perhaps the largest b.u.mblebees, and certainly the humming bird, must be regarded as the columbine's legitimate benefactors. Caterpillars of one of the dusky wings (_Papilio lucilius_) feed on the leaves.

Black Cohosh; Black Snakeroot; Tall Bugbane

_Cimicifuga racemosa_

_Flowers_--Foetid, feathery, white, in an elongated wand-like raceme, 6 in. to 2 ft. long, at the end of a stem 3 to 8 ft. high. Sepals petal-like, falling early; 4 to 8 small stamen-like petals 2-cleft; stamens very numerous, with long filaments; 1 or 2 sessile pistils with broad stigmas. _Leaves:_ Alternate, on long petioles, thrice compounded of oblong, deeply toothed or cleft leaflets, the end leaflet often again compound. _Fruit:_ Dry oval pods, their seeds in 2 rows.

_Preferred Habitat_--Rich woods and woodland borders, hillsides.

_Flowering Season_--June-August.

_Distribution_--Maine to Georgia, and westward from Ontario to Missouri.

Tall white rockets, shooting upward from a ma.s.s of large handsome leaves in some heavily shaded midsummer woodland border, cannot fail to impress themselves through more than one sense, for their odor is as disagreeable as the fleecy white blossoms are striking. Obviously such flowers would be most attractive to the carrion and meat flies.

_Cimicifuga_, meaning to drive away bugs, and the old folk-name of bugbane testify to a degree of offensiveness to other insects, where the flies' enjoyment begins. As these are the only insects one is likely to see about the fleecy wands, doubtless they are their benefactors. The countless stamens which feed them generously with pollen willingly left for them alone must also dust them well as they crawl about before flying to another foetid lunch.

The close kins.h.i.+p with the baneberries is detected at once on examining one of these flowers. Were the vigorous plant less offensive to the nostrils, many a garden would be proud to own so decorative an addition to the shrubbery border.

White Baneberry; Cohosh

_Actaea alba_

_Flowers_--Small, white, in a terminal oblong raceme. Calyx of 3 to 5 petal-like, early-falling sepals; petals very small, 4 to 10, spatulate, clawed; stamens white, numerous, longer than petals; 1 pistil with a broad stigma. _Stem:_ Erect, bushy, 1 to 2 ft. high. _Leaves:_ Twice or thrice compounded of sharply toothed and pointed, sometimes lobed, leaflets, petioled. _Fruit:_ Cl.u.s.ters of poisonous oval white berries with dark purple spot on end, formed from the pistils. Both pedicels and peduncles much thickened and often red after fruiting.

_Preferred Habitat_--Cool, shady, moist woods.

_Flowering Season_--April-June.

_Distribution_--Nova Scotia to Georgia and far West.

However insignificant the short fuzzy cl.u.s.ters of flowers lifted by this bushy little plant, we cannot fail to name it after it has set those curious white berries with a dark spot on the end, which Mrs. Starr Dana graphically compares to "the china eyes that small children occasionally manage to gouge from their dolls' heads." For generations they have been called "dolls' eyes" in Ma.s.sachusetts. Especially after these poisonous berries fully ripen and the rigid stems which bear them thicken and redden, we cannot fail to notice them. As the sepals fall early, the white stamens and stigmas are the most conspicuous parts of the flowers.

BARBERRY FAMILY _(Berberidaceae)_

May Apple; Hog Apple; Mandrake; Wild Lemon

_Podophyllum peltatum_

_Flowers_--White, solitary, large, unpleasantly scented, nodding from the fork between a pair of terminal leaves. Calyx of 6 short-lived sepals; 6 to 9 rounded, flat petals; stamens as many as petals or (usually) twice as many; 1 pistil, with a thick stigma. _Stem:_ 1 to 1-1/2 ft. high, from a long, running rootstock. _Leaves:_ Of flowerless stems (from separate rootstock), solitary, on a long petiole from, base, nearly 1 ft. across, rounded, centrally peltate, umbrella fas.h.i.+on, 5 to 7 lobed, the lobes 2-cleft, dark above, light green below. Leaves of flowering stem 1 to 3, usually a pair, similar to others, but smaller. _Fruit:_ A fleshy, yellowish, egg-shaped, many-seeded fruit about 2 in. long.

_Preferred Habitat_--Rich, moist woods.

_Flowering Season_--May.