^|:^i 



White and Greenish 



ously called Woodbine {Parthenocisstis quinquefolia) — formerly 

 Ampelopsis quinquefolia — is far more charming in its glorious 

 autumnal foliage, when its small dark blue berries hang from red 

 peduncles, than when its insignificant greenish flower clusters ap- 

 pear in July. The leaves, compounded of five leaflets, should 

 sufficiently distinguish the harmless vine from the three-leaved 

 poison ivy, sometimes confounded with it. From Manitoba and 

 Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean, and even in Cuba, the Virginia 

 creeper rambles over thickets, fences, and walls, ascends trees, 

 festoons rocky woodlands, drapes our verandas, making its way 

 with the help of modified flower-stalks that are now branching 

 tendrils, each branch bearing an adhesive disk at the end. "In 

 the course of about two days after a tendril has arranged its 

 branches so as to press upon any surface," says Darwin, "its 

 curved tips swell, become bright red, and form on their under 

 sides little disks or cushions with which they adhere firmly." 

 It is supposed that these disks secrete a cement. At any rate, we 

 know that they have a very tenacious hold, because often one con- 

 tracting tendril, as elastic as a steel spring, sup^fiorts, by means of 

 these little disks, the entire weight of the branch it lifts up. Dar- 

 win concluded that a tendril with five disk-bearing branches, on 

 which he experimented, would stand a strain of ten pounds, even 

 after ten years' exposure to high winds and softening rains. 



White Violets 



(l^io/a) Violet family 



Three small-flowered, white, purple-veined, and almost beard- 

 less species which prefer to dwell in moist meadows, damp, 

 mossy places, and along the borders of streams, are the Lance- 

 leaved Violet (K lanceolata), the Primrose-leaved Violet (K 

 primulaefolia), and the Sweet White Violet (K. blanda), whose 

 leaves show successive gradations from the narrow, tapering, 

 smooth, long-petioled blades of the first to the oval form of the 

 second and the almost circular, cordate leaf of the delicately 

 fragrant, little white blanda, the dearest violet of all. Inasmuch 

 as these are short-spurred species, requiring no effort for bees to 

 drain their nectaries, no footholds in the form of beards on the 

 side petals are provided for them. The purple veinings show the 

 stupidest visitor the path to the sweets. (See pp. 29-31.) 



The sprightly Canada Violet (K. Canadensis), widely distribu- 

 ted in woodlands, chiefly in hilly and mountainous regions, rears 

 tall, leafy stems terminated by faintly fragrant white or pale lavender 

 blossoms, purple-tinged without and purple-veined, the side 

 petals bearded, the long sepals tapering to sharp points. Here 

 we see a violet in the process of changing from the white ances- 



218 



