WILLOW AMSONIA 



Amsonia tabernaemontana Walt. 



Summer Tall, rather weedy-looking as a plant, with narrow, 



Bottomlands willow-like leaves, the Amsonia stands in the river- 

 bottom ])nstnre or in the waste land where no crops are 

 planted because of annual floods. The Amsonia is a plant of the river 

 bottomlands, one with Clematis pitcheri and the trumpet creeper, the 

 nests of field sparrows and indigo buntings, the songs of the yellowthroat, 

 and the imminence of the river which, in a rainy summer, may flood 



again. 



The flower cluster of willow Amsonia is a surprise when one finds 

 it for the first time. Instead of a milkweed flower, which the milky juice 

 of the plant might lead one to suspect, or instead of a nondescript flower 

 such as the weediness of the plant might suggest, here is a delicate cluster 

 of star-shaped, pale porcelain blue flowers with a slight fragrance. Some 

 of the flowers are five-petaled, others six, tubular, paler in the throat 

 and darker on the outside of the tul^e. The silk-tufted seeds are packed 

 into a long, narrow seed pod )nuch like that of Indian hemp, in which 

 family the Amsonia is found. 



Willow amsonia is a plant more commonly found in the middle west 

 and southwest than in the east, yet its name is derived from that of 

 Dr. Amson, a physician of Gloucester, Virginia, in 17 GO, who was a 

 friend of the botanist, John Clayton. Linnaeus, in searching for enough 

 names to go around to all the plants in the New World as well as the 

 old, used Dr. Amson's name to designate the ])al(' blue blossoms of willow 

 Amsonia in an Illinois river bottomland. 



123 



