RED 



when we chance suddenly upon a meadow bordered with these 

 the most gorgeous of our wild flowers. 



We might doubt whether our native lilies at all resembled 

 those alluded to in the scriptural passage, if we did not know 

 that a nearly allied species grew abundantly in Palestine ; for we 

 have reason to believe that lily was a title freely applied by many 

 Oriental poets to any beautiful flower. 



Perhaps this plant never attains far inland the same luxuri- 

 ance of growth which is common to it in some of the New Eng- 

 land lowlands near the coast. Its radiant, nodding blossoms 

 are seen in great profusion as we travel by rail from New York 

 to Boston. 



BUTTERFLY-WEED. PLEURISY-ROOT. 



fPI. CXXIII 

 Asclepias tuberosa. Milkweed Family. 



Stem. — Rough and hairy; one to two feet high; erect; very leafy, 

 branching at the summit ; without milky juice. Leaves. — Linear to narrow- 

 ly lance-shaped. Flozvers. — Bright orange-red; in flat-topped, terminal 

 clusters, otherwise closely resembling those of the common milkweed. Fruit. 

 — Two hoary erect pods, one of them often stunted. 



Few if any of our native plants add more to the beauty of the 

 midsummer landscape than the milkweeds, and of this family no 

 member is more satisfying to the color-craving eye than fhe 

 gorgeous butterfly-weed, whose vivid flower clusters flame from 

 the dry sandy meadows with such luxuriance of growth as to 

 seem almost tropical. Even in the tropics one hardly sees any- 

 thing more brilliant than the great masses of color made by 

 these flowers along some of our New England railways in July, 

 while farther south they are said to grow even more profuse- 

 ly. Its gay coloring has given the plant its name of butterfly- 

 weed,* while that of pleurisy-root arose from the belief that 

 the thick, deep root was a remedy for pleurisy. The Indians 

 used it as food and prepared a crude sugar from the flowers ; the 

 young seed-pods they boiled and ate with buffalo-meat. The 



* It is believed by some that the name springs from the fact that butterflies 

 visit the plant. 



262 



