Minnesota Plant Life. •^oi 



spike-like purple racemes of flowers from three to six inches 

 in length. The pods are short, usually with two seeds, and the 

 surfaces are covered with little oil glands. It is common along 

 the shores of lakes. The low false indigo is a smooth shrub, 

 not over a foot in height. The flowers are arranged in spicate 

 racemes, usually solitary. They are of a purple color and sweet- 

 scented. The plant is at home in the southwestern districts, 

 preferring the ])rairie to the forest. 



The lead-plant, which is one of the most abundant prairie 

 shrubs in the Minnesota valley, is covered with white hairs and 

 averages from one to three feet in height. The leaves develop 

 twice as many leaflets as in the other varieties, sometimes twenty 

 or more on each side of the common midrib. Several blue 

 racemes of flowers generally occur close together. The pods 

 are hairy and not markedly glandular. 



Prairie-clovers. Of the true prairie-clovers there are three 

 Minnesota species, — the purple, the white, and the silky. These 

 plants have lea\'es made up, in the silky variety, of from ten to 

 twenty leaflets, and in the other two, of from five to nine. The 

 purple prairie-clover has commonly from three to five leaflets 

 and in all the varieties they are small and slender. The flowers 

 are arranged in dense spikes, and very often such spikes will 

 be found with girdles of flowers blooming around their middles, 

 while above the buds are still unopened and below the fruits 

 have set and the petals withered. By this habit, together with 

 their other characters, they may be recognized. 



Locust-trees. The locust, or false acacia, is a handsome tree 

 and is noted for its beautiful pendulous racemes of large white 

 flowers, very fragrant and opening in the late spring. The 

 trunk, farther south, is sometimes three or four feet in diameter, 

 but rarely exceeds a foot in the colder climate of Minnesota. 

 The leaves are made up of from eleven to fifteen leaflets pin- 

 nately arranged. The pods are much flattened, with winged 

 edges, and the seeds ripen in separate chambers, and, when the 

 pod opens, remain adherent, some of them to one side of the 

 pod and others to the other. The halves of the thin pod serve 

 the seeds as wings for their distribution by the wind. Young 

 twigs of the locust tree have thorns at the bases of the leaves, 

 but the older branches are unarmed. 



