BUTTER-AND-EGGS (Wild Snapdragon. Toadflax) 



Linaria vulgaris Hill 



June - October Comparatively few of the native summer flowers of 

 Roadsides, sands America will bloom along roads and in vacant lots, 



in waste places and dumps and edges of fields. It is, 

 oddly enough, the plants brought over accidentally from Europe and 

 Asia which are the flowers known most familiarly as sunnner blossoms 

 around towns and habitations. Among them is butter-and-eggs, Linaria, 

 the wild yellow toadflax. 



It might just as well ])e a uative flower : it is elegant enough to 

 belong among American flora. It is closely related to snapdragons and 

 plainly shows the family resemblance in the complicated flower with its 

 snap-shut mouth. The butter and eggs flower is constructed so that no 

 insect may get inside unless it is heavy enough and strong enough to 

 force open the flower. The weight of a bee on the bright, orange-yellow 

 padded lip will force it open. The bee dives hoad-first insido to get the 

 nectar which has been kept safe from rain and marauding insects, and 

 at the same time the bee with its hind feet holds o\h'u tbc lip of the 

 flower. 



The flower is pale yellow, the lip l)right orange — color and shape so 

 much like that of an egg yolk that the connnon name of butter-and-eggs 

 long ago was given to it. Ernest Thompson Seton, the naturalist, tells a 

 story of a little yellow dragon which died when a fried egg — always death 

 to dragons — became stuck in its throat, and he was transformed into the 

 butter-and-eggs plant. 



The leaves and stem of this ])lant are smooth and thin. ])ale grey- 

 green. It grows in waste places and sandy soil over much of the eastern 

 part of the continent and is commonly found in Illinois. 



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