Minnesota Plant Life. 269 



flowers and slender, bright yellow rootstocks, by which they 

 may be recognized. They are abundant in tamarack swamps. 

 The baneberries are erect herbs with large compound leaves. 

 The flowers are small, white and arranged in terminal racemes. 

 One variety produces red berries and the other white. The 

 columbines are particularly abundant upon rocky hillsides, on 

 cliffs and along river gorges. The flowers are recognized at 

 once by the spurs on the petals, and stand with their mouths 

 directed downward. The spurs are supplied with honey glands 

 at the tip, and the whole contrivance is a machine for obtaining 

 cross-pollination through the agency of insects. 



Larkspurs. The larkspurs are the first type of two-sided 

 flowers that have been encountered in the discussion of plants 

 with pairs of seed-leaves. Their flowers stand in terminal clus- 

 ters, are loosely arranged and shaped so that there is no diffi- 

 culty, even when they are separated, in determining how they 

 stood upon the stem. One of the petals is provided with a spur 

 as in the columbines. This again is an apparatus to utilize some 

 insect for the advantage of the plant. 



Anemones and Hepaticas. Anemones are herbs with rather 

 characteristic flowers and fruit-bodies. In one type the nutlets 

 of the fruit are massed in cylindrical clusters, clothed with 

 woolly hairs. In others the clusters of nutlets are more nearly 

 spherical. Closely related to the anemones are the Hepaticas, 

 known by their three-lobed, shining leaves and their purplish 

 flowers put forth in early spring. One kind of Hcpatica has its 

 leaves rather round-pointed while the other shows much sharper 

 lobes. Akin to the Hepaticas is the rue-anemone, which devel- 

 ops three-parted leaves, each lobe of which is again divided into 

 three. The stem, four to seven inches in height, arises from a 

 little cluster of small tuberous roots shaped like diminutive beets. 

 This plant may be distinguished from the false rue-anemone, 

 which resembles it superficially to a marked degree, by the 

 character of the tuberous roots. In the false rue-anemones the 

 tubers do not form a little cluster near the base of the stem, but 

 develop, in many instances, two or three of them on the same 

 root and often some distance from the base of the stem. Be- 

 sides, the fruits of the true rue-anemone are aggregated as 

 nutlets at the tip of the fruiting stem, while in the false the 



