872 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



Newhall says of the alders that they bear "staminate 

 flowers, in long, drooping clusters, with three (some- 

 times six) blossoms, and four or five small bracts to 

 each shield-shaped scale. Pistillate flowers, in oval or 

 oblong clusters, with two or three blossoms to each 

 fleshy scale. Scales or bracts, woody in fruit." Further 

 on: "Fruit, in 'cones,' 

 sometimes winged, 

 scale-like, cluster. A 

 scale-like nut." These 

 woody scales and bracts 

 in threes and the "cones" 

 are shown in Figure 

 6 of the present article. 



There are over sixty 

 different kinds of as- 

 ters in the native flora 

 of the northern and 

 middle Atlantic tier of 

 States, and some of 

 them support almost 

 perfect flowers far into 

 the late autumn ; in- 

 deed, a great many of 

 them, even the north- 

 ern varieties, do not be- 

 gin to bloom until 

 October or early No- 

 vember. (Figure 7.) 

 This is the reason some 

 people have bestowed 

 the name of "Frost- 

 flower" upon them in 

 the North, while fur- 

 ther South they are 

 known as "Starworts." 

 As we know, the rays 

 of many of the species 

 are of a rich purple ; 

 but then there are oth- 

 er species in which they 

 may be white, blue, or 

 even pink. In the case 

 of the "disk," it is 

 usually yellow, but later 

 on this may change to 

 purple. Botanists have 

 long been familiar with 

 the fact that these as- 

 ters are quite prone to 

 hybridize ; and, as a 

 consequence, the limits 

 between any two spe- 

 cies is frequently but 

 poorly defined. Asters stand about in the middle of the 

 Composite family {Compositae), and are quite typical of 

 this enormous group of flowers ; in fact, it is our largest 

 family of phaenogamous plants, or plants that have 

 flowers developing both pistils and stamens, and, in 

 fruiting, produce seed. Asters, like the daisies and black- 



IIERE IS A MOST BEAUTIFUL AND. IN THE CASE OF THE MALE, 

 ELEGANTLY COLORED LITTLE LIZARD FROM FLORIDA 



Fig. 



13 — Wood's Swift (Sceloporus «. woodi), of which this is 

 very recently described. 



eyed Susans, fall in the ray-flower group of the Com- 

 positae — so called from the fact that the corolla is made 

 up of radiating "petals" springing from the periphery 

 of a central disk, which latter is composed of the true 

 flowers ; these are very small and tubular. By examin- 

 ing a daisy or an aster with a good hand lens, much of 



this will be revealed to 

 you. 



We speak of the co- 

 rolla of an aster as 

 being "strap-shaped" 

 (ligttlate), while in 

 many other kinds of 

 the Compositae it is 

 tubular, as in the case 

 of the flowers of the 

 Ironweed (Vernonia). 

 The Aster in Figure 7 

 of this article clearly 

 exhibits all the charac- 

 ters mentioned. Wild 

 Garlic (Fig. 8) is 

 a plant that may 

 persist far into the 

 autumn, and it may be 

 readily recognized — as 

 an onion — by its small 

 bulb with fibrous coats, 

 closely resembling a 

 small onion. Two of 

 these are shown in the 

 figure, which is a speci- 

 men collected along the 

 Virginia banks of the 

 Potomac River, not far 

 from Mount Vernon. 

 Like all the onion 

 group, all parts of the 

 plant are strong-scent- 

 ed and pungent. The 

 long, slender, cylindri- 

 cal stems spring direct 

 — in any single plant — 

 from the apex of the 

 bulb, as shown in the 

 cut, and its upper ex- 

 tremity supports the 

 extraordinary appear- 

 ing flower head. These 

 last are often few in 

 number and sometimes 

 even absent. There are 

 some eight or ten spe- 

 cies of the Wild 

 ( )nions, Leeks, or Wild Garlics in the northeastern United 

 States, and they are interesting plants to study. 



Of all the groups of plants in the Middle-States sec- 

 tion of our country, none brings more home the fact 

 that winter has — as yet — not fully made up its mind 

 to leave us — than the Thistles. Take, for example. 



AN 



male, has only been 



