MILKWEED FAMILY 



are dark, tipped with a winged membrane with waxy, 

 pear-shaped pollen masses in each sac. 



Pistil. — Ovary of two carpels, with two short styles, 

 united at their summits by a five-lobed stigmatic disk. 



Fruit. — Follicle, two and a half to four inches long, 

 containing many plumy seeds. 



Pollinated by bees and bee-like flies. Nectar-bearing. 



The Milkweed stands by the roadside, sometimes a 

 solitary stem, but oftener two to five sustain and sup- 

 port one another. It is a plant of dignity rather than 

 beauty. Each flowering stem bears many large, 

 broadly oblong leaves that are of a grayish green, soft 

 to the touch above and velvety beneath, and near 

 the summit are two to five limp clusters of drooping 

 flowers, each cluster borne in the axil of a leaf. The 

 color of the clusters varies from youth to age, but this 

 is never quite pure, always more or less muddied. 



One does not pick the Milkweed for a most excellent 

 reason. A striking peculiarity of the plant is the 

 abundance of milk-white, sticky juice that pervades 

 it and which pours out of the slightest wound whether 

 this be upon stem, flower, pedicel, or leaf vein. The 

 authorities say that this is a kind of crude rubber. If 

 the stem is carefully cut and the end dried with a blotter, 

 the centre is seen to have around it a dark green ring, 

 and outside of this another pale green ring. The milk 

 exudes from the dark green ring. This milk is not the 

 sap of the plant; it is a special secretion and very 

 acrid to the taste, which is a sufficient explanation why 

 the Milkweed is immune to attacks of grazing animals. 



The Milkweed blossom is of peculiar construction 

 and almost as highly organized as an Orchid. The 

 sepals and petals, each five in number, fold back as 



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