Minnesota Plant Life. 



303 



pieces, each pod appearing to be made up of joints. One kind, 

 rare in JMinnesota, and limited to the north shore of Lake 

 Superior, has the flowers in rather dense, violet-colored, ter- 

 minal racemes. The pod consists of from three to five smooth 

 joints shaped somewhat like eggs. The other tick-trefoils, of 

 which there are eight or nine reported to grow within the con- 

 fines of the state, have much less noticeable flower clusters, and 

 the flowers are small and loosely arranged on their axes. Some- 

 times they are terminal and sometimes produced in the angle 



above the leaves. The pod is 

 very flat and usually separat- 

 ed into a number of joints. 

 Sometimes the pod is 

 straight along one edge, 

 while the other edge is in- 

 dented like the teeth of a saw ; 

 but in other instances both 

 sides of the pod are indent- 

 ed. The different kinds of 

 tick-trefoils cannot be dis- 

 tinguished from each other 

 without a critical examina- 

 tion ; but it may be said that 

 their principal differences 

 are in the shapes of the leaf- 

 lets, the arrangements of the 

 pods in clusters, the surfaces 

 of the pods and their methods of jointing. They are found for 

 the most part in woodlands and usually stand up from two to 

 six feet in height. In most of them the pods are provided with 

 hooked bristles, by means of which they cling, either as a whole, 

 or broken up into their joints, upon the fur of passing animals, 

 or upon the clothing of their human visitors. 



Bush clovers. Seven species of bush clovers are reported 

 from Minnesota. Several of these are known as wand plants; 

 that is, plants which stand up slim and tall without any lateral 

 branches. One of them, the bushy headed or round headed 

 bush clover, is a conmion object with its. brown, pod-bearing 



Fig. 149. Tick-trefoil. After Britton and Brown. 



