Minnesota Plant Life. 



271 



Pasque flowers and clematis. The pasqne flower or gosling 

 is known to the children of Minnesota as the first flower to 

 bloom in early spring. There are several kinds of flowers which 

 really open before the pasque-flower, but they are either rare 

 or inconspicuous, so that the pasque flower may be popularly 

 regarded as the earliest flower of the year. The sepals are of 

 a pretty light purple color, and the whole flower is an inch or 

 more across. Around its base is a group of hairy involucral 

 leaves. At the center is a circle of separate carpels which ma- 

 ture into a head of nutlets, each 

 of which has a long plume-like 

 appendage, recalling the similar 

 structures in the fruiting heads 

 of clematis. In this latter plant, 

 which in Minnesota occurs as a 

 climbing vine, the same general 

 appearance of the fruiting heads 

 is to be observed, and conse- 

 quently the pasque flower is also 

 termed the ground-clematis. The 

 true clematises are not always 

 climbing vines throughout the 

 United States, but the Minnesota 

 varieties both belong to the vfne 

 division of the genus. They have 

 an odd way of climbing, for, not 

 being provided with true ten- 

 drils, they twine their leaves 

 around such supports as come in 



their way, thus using the stems of the leaves just as a squash 

 vine uses its tendrils. This habit of the clematis gives an idea 

 of how, in some instances, tendrils may have originated. After 

 the leaves of a plant acquired the habit of turning themselves 

 about twigs or other supports that came in their way, there 

 arose a division of labor, in consequence of which some leaves 

 devoted themselves to their new function and gradually aban- 

 doned their starch-making, thus becoming converted into true 

 tendrils, while others assumed no tendril functions, but contin- 

 ued as the starch-makers of the plant. 



Fig. 128. White water-buttercup. 

 Britton and Brown. 



After 



