WEEDS OP THE PLANTAIN FAMILY. 135 



Where kept within bounds the trumpet-creeper is queen of all 

 our twining or trailing shrubs. When in the prime of the bloom- 

 ing period its large pinnate leaves out-rival the emerald in their 

 shade of green. Then, as one drives along some country lane or 

 roadway, high in air it can be seen, clambering over fence stake 

 and bushy shrub, its great orange and scarlet flowers conspicuous 

 for rods away and attracting unto themselves many a humming- 

 bird and bumble-bee. 'Tis in the angles of old rail fences that it 

 finds a home most congenial to its taste. There rail and bush and 

 shrub furnish a ready support to which its aerial rootlets freely 

 cling, and there it forms many a snug retreat in which the nest 

 of woodland songster is securely hidden. 



THE PLANTAIN FAMILY. PLANTAGINACE^E. 



Chiefly stemless herbs with basal leaves in clumps, and small, in- 

 conspicuous flowers in dense terminal spikes or heads on leafless 

 flower-stalks. Calyx 4-parted, persistent ; corolla 4-lobed, thin, dry, 

 membranous, withering but remaining on the spike; stamens 4, 

 rarely 2, inserted on the tube of the corolla ; ovary 2-celled. Fruit 

 a 2-celled several seeded capsule, which opens by the top falling 

 away as a lid. (Figs. 13, a; 14, c.) 



A family of about 200 species, represented in Indiana by 8 

 species of plantain or ribwort belonging to the genus Plant ago. 

 All have the leaves strongly ribbed and the small whitish flowers 

 borne in a bracted spike or head on a leafless stalk which springs 

 from the center of the basal tuft of leaves. Among the 8 two are 

 weeds of the first class, while a third promises as bad. The stems 

 of all are invisible, being short and underground, and as the flowers 

 of all depend upon the wind to carry the pollen, the corolla is 

 therefore almost useless and has lost whatever color it may have 

 once possessed. The seeds of all plantains are more annoying than 

 the weeds themselves, causing much extra expense in cleaning the 

 seeds of grasses and clover, with which they are very common. 



To bring about that cross-fertilization so necessary to the suc- 

 cess of plant life, the plantains have during the ages past evolved 

 an ingenious method. Each plantain flower has both stamens and 

 pistils but the pistils mature first and are fertilized by pollen 

 blown to them from some neighboring plant. After the pistils 

 have matured the stamens ripen, the anthers hanging out on their 

 long slender filaments or stalks so as to have their pollen discharged 

 by every passing breeze. On each spike the lower flowers open 



