HONEWORT 



Cryptotaenia canadensis (L.) DC. 



June 



Woods, bottoms 



It comes when the woods of Illinois long since have 

 been given over to the weedier plants and the lush 

 growth of summer. The oak woods are dense and 

 rank with harsh plants and stinging nettles, v.dth horseweeds and mos- 

 quitoes and poison ivy. Contrasting with the neatness and orderly growth 

 of leaf and flower in the spring woods, the woods of sunmier in Illinois 

 are overgrown, for the most part unpleasant to penetrate. 



Yet even this period of growth and time is important in the eco- 

 logical scheme of this particular region. The humidity and heat of sum- 

 mer, in which the hon:eweeds attain a height ranging from ten to fourteen 

 feet in a good season, is the same heat and humidity which makes the 

 remarkable corn crop of Illinois develop to its fidlest extent. 



There in the woods where the shadows are deep, the honewort blooms 

 inconspicuously and makes its seeds. The leaves usually are borne in 

 threes or fives, are of varying sizes, shar])ly saw-toothed and dark green. 

 The plant is somewhat aromatic. The flowers are sparsely produced on 

 scanty, delicate umbels. 



In late summer and autumn when hikers again find their way into 

 a woods in which frost has laid low many of the objectionable ])lants. the 

 honewort seeds are dis])ersed. Lightly they are attached to clothing which 

 brushes past them, or they cling to tlic (nr of a dog, or to a cow's tail, 

 and drop off elsewhere. And in the passing of the autumn and winter 

 and with the coming of another s})ring, new honewort ])lants s]u-ing up 

 from the places where the seeds came to rest. 



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