Minnesota Plant Life. 



273 



their fruits under less dangerous conditions. Thus the flowers 

 of the water-lilies, of the pondweeds, or of the eel-grass are in 

 a variety of ways retracted. What the eel-grass secured by a 

 spiral contraction of the flowering stem is accomplished by the 

 water-buttercup through an automatic curvature. Such curv- 

 atures are sometimes employed by terrestrial varieties for the 

 insertion of their fruits into the soil. Thus the peanut plant 

 flowers above the ground and then thrusts its young pods into 

 the soil, where they mature underground. 



Meadow-rues. The meadow-rues are robust perennial herbs 

 with leaves compounded repeatedly on the plan of three. The 

 flowers are small, whitish-green and aggregated in large pan- 

 icles or racemes. In one variety, the most common in Minne- 

 sota, there are two sorts of flowers, staminate and pistillate, 

 borne on different plants, so that all the flowers on a plant will 

 be of one kind or the other. The other two species have each 

 on the same plant three kinds of flowers, some producing only 

 stamens, others producing only pistils, and others in which 

 both stamens and pistils occur. One variety is often glandular 

 or waxy in the texture of its leaves, while the other is smooth or 

 slightly hairy, but not glandular or waxy. The former blooms 

 earlier than the latter and is usually shorter, reaching in favor- 

 able positions three to seven feet in height, while the latter 

 attains a height of from ten to eleven feet. Although the 

 species in which the flowers are always separated, and a single 

 plant produces only one kind, is easily identified, the other two 

 are hard to distinguish. 



Most of the plants in the crowfoot family have pungent 

 juices, and from some of them highly poisonous substances, such 

 as aconite, are obtained. 

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