394 Minnesota Plant Life. 



yellowish-white color and are often separated. The root of 

 this plant is edible. The swamp valerian has flowers of a pink 

 or whitish color and the stem-leaves consist of a larger number 

 of leaflets than in the tobacco-root. Valerian fiowers are, in 

 structure, very similar to those of honeysuckles, from which 

 they can be known by their slight irregularity and by their 

 stamens, from one to four in number. The fruit also contains 

 but a single seed and is not, as in honeysuckles, a stone-fruit 

 with pulpy exterior. 



The two corn-salads are rather low herbs, from one to two 

 feet in height, with opposite, smooth-margined leaves and small 

 flowers, clustered in heads that are loosely arranged on the 

 forked, flat top of the main axis. The fruits are somewhat 

 triangular in outline, smooth and enclosed by the calyx, grow- 

 ing closely around the fruit-rudiment. There are three sta- 

 mens and the stigma is three-lobed. These plants can be dis- 

 tinguished from members of the honeysuckle family by the 

 number of their stamens, and from the valerians by the absence 

 of feathery appendages on the top of the fruit. 



The thirty-fourth and highest order of plants comprises the 

 gourd family, to which belong such common garden plants as 

 melons, citrons, cucumbers, squashes, pumpkins and bottle- 

 gourds. Only two varieties, the wild cucumber and the star- 

 cucumber, are native to Minnesota. In this thirty-fourth order 

 are grouped also the bluebells and lobelias, three small families 

 not represented in the United States by native species, and the 

 large and important sunflower family, to which a great variety 

 of herbs known as -'Composites' belong. The three IMinnesota 

 families of the thirty-fourth order are known by the fusion, or 

 close approximation to each other, of their stamens. In the 

 gourd family the flowers are for the most part regular — as they 

 are also in the bluebells. In the lobelias the flowers are strongly 

 two-lipped, reminding one of mint or snapdragon flowers, while 

 in the sunflower family the flowers are always aggregated in 

 dense, flat-topped, spherical or cylindrical heads and are either 

 all tubular like honeysuckle flowers, all two-sided and strap- 

 shaped like dandelion flowers, or partly tubular and partly strap- 

 shaped in the same head, as is the case in sunflowers. In the 

 latter installer llic tubular flowers are eentrall_\- disposed in the 



