long and nodding at the tip.Stamens 6 to 8, the filaments white;carpels 3 or 4, united at base, dangling.Stem: 2 to 5 ft.high, jointed, sparingly branched, leafy.Leaves: Heart-shaped, palmately ribbed, dark green, thin, on stout petioles.
Preferred Habitat - Swamps, shallow water.
Flowering Season - June-August.
Distribution - Southern New England to the Gulf, westward to Minnesota and Texas.
The fragrance arising from these curious, drooping, tail-like spikes of flowers, where they grow in numbers, must lure their insect friends as it does us, since no showy petals or sepals advertise their presence.Nevertheless they are what are known as perfect flowers, each possessing stamens and pistils, the only truly essential parts, however desirable a gaily colored perianth may be to blossoms attempting to woo such large land insects as the bumblebee and butterfly.Since flies, whose color sense is by no means so acute as their sense of smell, are by far the most abundant fertilizers of waterside plants, we can see a tendency in such to suppress their petals, for the flowers to become minute and massed in series that the little visitors may more readily transfer pollen from one to another, and to become fragrant - just what the lizard's tail has done.
SPRING BEAUTY; CLAYTONIA
(Claytonia Virginica) Purslane family.
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.
Dainty clusters of these delicate, starry blossoms, mostly turned in one direction, expand in the sunshine only, like their gaudy cousin the portulaca and the insignificant little yellow flowers of another relative, the ubiquitous, invincible "pussley"immortalized in "My Summer in a Garden." At night and during cloudy, stormy weather, when their benefactors are not flying, the claytonias economically close their petals to protect nectar and pollen from rain and pilferers.Pick them, the whole plant droops, and the blossoms close with indignation; nor will any coaxing but a combination of hot water and sunshine induce them to open again.Theirs is a long beauty sleep.They are supersensitive exquisites, however hardy.
Very early in the spring a race is run with the hepatica, arbutus, adder's tongue, blood-root, squirrel corn, and anemone for the honor of being the earliest wild flower; and although John Burroughs and Dr.Abbott 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 snobbishly excluded from the list of fair competitors, has quietly opened dozens of minute florets in its incurved horn before the others have even started.
Whether the petals of the spring beauty are white or pink, they are always exquisitely marked with pink lines converging near the base and ending in a yellow blotch to serve as pathfinders for the female bumblebees and the little brown bombylius, among other pollen carriers.A newly opened flower, with its stamens surrounding the pistil, must be in peril of self-fertilization one would think who did not notice that when the pollen is in condition for removal by the bees and flies, the stigmatic surfaces of the three-cleft style are tightly pressed together that not a grain may touch them.But when the anthers have shed their pollen, and the filaments have spread outward and away from the pistil, the three stigmatic arms branch out to receive the fertilizing dust carried from younger flowers by their busy friends.
STARRY CAMPION
(Silene stellata) Pink family Flowers - White, about 1/2 in.broad or over, loosely clustered in a showy, pyramidal panicle.Calyx bell-shaped, swollen, 5-toothed, sticky; 5 fringed and clawed petals; 10 long, exserted stamens; 3 styles.Stem: Erect, leafy, 2 to 3 1/2 ft.tall, rough-hairy.Leaves: Oval, tapering to a point, 2 to 4 in.long, seated in whorls of 4 around stem, or loose ones opposite.
Preferred Habitat - Woods, shady banks.
Flowering Season - June-August.
Distribution - Rhode Island westward to Mississippi, south to the Carolinas and Arkansas.
Feathery white panicles of the starry campion, whose protruding stamens and fringed petals give it a certain fleeciness, are dainty enough for spring; by midsummer we expect plants of ranker growth and more gaudy flowers.To save the nectar in each deep tube for the moths and butterflies which cross-fertilize all this tribe of night and day blossoms, most of them - and the campions are notorious examples - spread their calices, and some their pedicels as well, with a sticky substance to entrap little crawling pilferers.Although a popular name for the genus is catchfly, it is usually the ant that is glued to the viscid parts, for the fly that moves through the air alights directly on the flower it is too short-lipped to suck.An ant catching its feet on the miniature lime-twig, at first raises one foot after another and draws it through its mouth, hoping to rid it of the sticky stuff, but only with the result of gluing up its head and other parts of the body.In ten minutes all the pathetic struggles are ended.Let no one guilty of torturing flies to death on sticky paper condemn the Silenes!
