White and Greenish 



Fleecy white plumes of meadow-sweet, the "spires of closely 

 clustered bloom " sung by Dora Read Goodale, are surely not 

 frequently found near dusty "waysides scorched with barren 

 heat," even in her Berkshires ; their preference is for moister soil, 

 often in the same habitat with a first cousin, the pink steeple-bush. 

 But plants, like humans, are capricious creatures. If the meadow- 

 sweet always elected to grow in damp ground whose rising mists 

 would clog the pores of its leaves, doubtless they would be pro- 

 tected with a woolly absorbent, as its cousins are. 



Inasmuch as perfume serves as an attraction to the more 

 highly specialized, aesthetic insects, not required by the spiraeas, 

 our meadow-sweet has none, in spite of its misleading name. 

 Small bees (especially Audrenidae), flies (Syrph/dae), and beetles, 

 among other visitors, come in great numbers, seeking the accessible 

 pollen, and, in this case, nectar also, secreted in a conspicuous 

 orange-colored disk. When a floret first opens, or even before, the 

 already mature stigmas overtop the incurved, undeveloped sta- 

 mens, so that any visitor dusted from other clusters cross-fertilizes 

 it ; but as the stigmas remain fresh even after the stamens have 

 risen and shed their abundant pollen, it follows that in long-con- 

 tinued stormy weather, when few insects are flying, the flowers 

 fertilize themselves. Self-fertilization with insect help must often 

 occur in the flower's second stage. The fragrant yellowish-white 

 English Meadow-sweet (S. ulmaria), often cultivated in old- 

 Hishioned gardens here, has escaped locally. 



In long, slender, forking spikes the Goat's-beard {Anincus 

 Arunc^is) — Spiraea aruncvs of Gray — lifts its graceful panicles of 

 minute whitish flowers in May and June from three to seven feet 

 above the rich soil of its woodland home. The petioled, pinnate 

 leaves are compounded of several leaflets like those on its relative 

 the rose-bush. From New York southward and westward to 

 Missouri, also on the Pacific Coast to Alaska, is its range on this 

 Continent. Very many more beetles than any other visitors transfer 

 pollen from the staminate flowers on one plant to the pistillate 

 ones on another; other plants produce only perfect flowers — the 

 reason different panicles vary so much in appearance. 



Another herbaceous perennial once counted a spiraea is the 

 common Indian Physic or Bowman's-root {Portcranthus trifoli- 

 atus) — Gillensia trifoliata of Gray — found blooming in the rich 

 woods during June and July from western New York southward 

 and westward. Two to four feet high, it displays its very loose, 

 pretty clusters of white or pale pink flowers, comparatively few 

 in the whole panicle, each blossom measuring about a half inch 

 across and borne on a slender pedicel. A tubular, s-toothed calyx 

 has the long slender petals inserted within. Owing to the depth 

 and narrowness of the tube, the small, long-tongued bees cannot 



198 



