24 WILD, OR NATIVE FLOWERS. 



sac-like spurs of the Corolla, give a peculiar aspect to this very attractive 

 flower, which forms one of the ornaments of the Spring. It appears early 

 in the month of May, or, in warm and genial seasons, as early as the latter 

 weeks in April. Like the Squirrel Corn, the foliage is finely dissected 

 and ample ; it blooms a week earlier however. 



Golden Fumitory — Corydalis aurca (Willd.) 



This ] retty flower is also one of our native Fumitories ; it makes 

 a good border bloomer ; is biennial in habit, seeds itself and blossoms 

 freely. It is a low i:rowing bushy plant, with pale bluish, finely disected 

 foliage, and simple racemes of golden yellow flowers ; it begins to 

 blossom very late in May, and continues all through June, and later. 

 There is a finer, larger, more compactly growing plant, with larger flowers 

 and foliage, found in rocky woods and islands in our backwoods' 

 lakes. A very pretty species is Corydalis glaiua (Pursh). This 

 is tall and branching, with delicate flowers of bright pink, yellow 

 and green, or white. The foliage is very blue in shade, not very 

 abundant ; the divisions of the leaf bluish ; pods very slender, splitting 

 and shedding bright shining seeds. It is a very pretty plant and grows 

 readily among grasses and other wayside herbage. 



Blue Cohosh, Pappoose Root — Caulophylliim thaliclroidcs (Michx). 



Though bearing the same Indian name " Cohosli " our plant has 

 bjen removed by botanists to another family, than the red and white 

 B-ineberries, or Cohoshes, which are members of the Ranunculacei^, or 

 Crowfoot family. There is no beauty in the blossoms of the Blue 

 Cohosh, yet the plant is remarkable for its medicinal uses, which are 

 ■well known among the Indians, and herbalists of the United States 

 medical schools. 



The round, rather large, blue berries are not the portion of the 

 the plant that is used, but the thick knotted root-stock. The leaves are 

 of a dull bluish green, the fl'r.vcrs dark purplish green, lurid in colour ; 

 the leaves are closely folded about the thick fleshy stem when they first 

 appear. The whole plant unpresses one with the conviction that it is 

 poisonous in its nature ; there is something that looks uncanny about it. 

 Nature stampsa warning on many of our herbs by unmistakeable tokens : 

 the glaring inharmonious colouring of some ; the rank odours e.xhaled 

 by others ; the acrid biting- taste in the leaves and juices of some are 

 safe guards if we would but heed them as warnings. The conipound 

 leafage of the Blue Cohosh Ijreaks the ground in .Vpril, with the 

 immature flowers- after a while the leaf spreads out, and lurid blossoms 



