QUEEN ANNE'S LACE; THE PAPAW TREE, AND SELF-HEAL 



BY R. W. SHUFELDT, C.M.Z.S. 



D 



hXT lo a big field of ox-eye daisies in June or 

 July, we have no wild flower display in the east- 

 ^^Jfj crn half of our country that can in any way com- 

 pare with an old pasture field, overgrown with 

 Queen Anne's Lace, or one which in reality is more 

 thoroughly picturesque (Fig. 1). Of course, our farm- 

 ers have long ago ranked the plant among the most 

 vicious of weeds and an arrant pest, and he finds no 

 trouble or lack of facts to support the execrations he is 

 ever ready to heap upon its name. In so far as his ma- 

 terial interests are concerned, he is doubtless quite cor- 

 rect. To the lover of wild flowers, however, the plant 

 has everything that is beautiful of its kind to offer — 

 everything that appeals to the lover of life out-of-doors. 

 Ages ago, it was a common plant of many parts of 

 Europe as well as of Asia; and, as Neltje Blanchan truly 

 remarks : "From Europe it has come to spread its deli- 

 cate wheels over our summer landscape, until whole 

 fields are whitened by them east of the Mississippi. 

 Having proved fittest in the struggle for survival in the 

 fiercer competition of plants in the over-cultivated Old 

 World, it takes its course of empire westward year by 

 year, finding most favorable conditions for colonizing 

 in our vast, uiicidtivatcd area ; and the less aggressive 

 native occu- 

 pants of our 

 soil are only 

 too readily 

 crowded out. 

 Would that the 

 advocates o f 

 unrestricted 

 immigration of 

 foreign peas- 

 ants studied 

 the parallel ex- 

 ample among 

 floral invad- 

 ers."' 



T h e entire 

 structure of 

 the plant makes 

 for this mar- 

 velous exten- 

 sion over vast 

 areas ; not only 

 is it hardy by 



nature, exempt as food for cattle of any kind, but nearly 

 a hundred different species of very industrious insects 

 take part in its thorough fertilization. Indeed, bloom- 

 ing as it does all the way from June to ^eptemljer, it 

 thrives during that part of the year when insect life is 



AN ARMY OF QUEEN ANNE'S LACE 



Fig. 1. — View of a meadow in August monopolized by Queen Anne's Lace, a widely known plant of the 



Parsley family {Dancus carota) . 



iiKjst abundant and varied. Thousands of the wasps 

 that construct the paper nests are among the forms that 

 may be seen in any field of Wild Carrots — as some peo- 

 ple are pleased to call them — though wild carrots they 

 surely are not, notwithstanding the fact that the big, 

 fleshy root looks like a carrot. Armies of beetles, bees 

 and many kinds of flies also do their part in fertilizing 

 the flowers of this plant ; in fact, it well repays one to 

 visit a field overgrown with Queen Anne's Lace, and, 

 magnifying glass in hand, study the remarkable struc- 

 ture of the tiny, individual flowers as well as the hosts 

 of insect forms that visit them in August. Even the 

 flower shown here in Figure 2 may be studied with profit 

 l)y the aid of a good lens — which the reader can easily 

 demonstrate by trying it. 



So well known and distinctive is this plant that it 

 (|uite obviates the necessity for giving a detailed botani- 

 cal description of it here. One may readily turn to this 

 in any reliable work on American wild flowers. It may 

 be as well to note, however, that the flowers of this con- 

 spicuous biennial are arranged in umbels ; that its stem 

 is bristly, and that its leaves are pinnately decompounded. 

 Many people call it "bird's nest" because late in the sea- 

 son the flower-stalks erect themselves to form a con- 

 cave mass, not 

 altogether un- 

 like in for in 

 the nests built 

 by some birds. 

 On one point 

 authors differ 

 with respect to 

 these flowers. 

 Xehje R 1 an - 

 eh an savs that 

 1 h e y possess 

 a "suffocating 

 odor," w h i 1 e 

 .Mice Louns- 

 berry remarks 

 that they are 

 " scentless." 

 Truly it may 

 be said that, 

 through their 

 rather strong 

 odor, a field of 

 I hem may be perceived at quite a distance, provided the 

 wind favors its conveyance to the point where you are 

 standing. It possesses a sort of wild, out-of-doors, 

 waste-field pungency that is by no means altogether dis- 

 agreeable. 



543 



