CROWFOOT FAMILY. Ranunculaceae. 



Rue Anemone 



Anemonella 

 thalictroides 

 White, or 

 pink tinned 

 March-May 



Early Meadow 

 Rue 



Thalictrum 

 dioicum 

 Qreen, terra- 

 cotta 

 April May 



A frail and delicate spring flower, 

 usually white but rarely magenta-pink- 

 tinged, which often blooms in company 

 with Anemone quinqui folia, but readily 

 distinguished from it by the 2-3 flowers 

 in a cluster, the other bearing a solitary 

 blossom. The deep olive green leaves in groups of 

 three closely resemble those of the meadow rue ; they 

 are long-stemmed. The flower with usually six delicate 

 white petallike sepals, but there are variations of from 

 5-10. The flowers are perfect (with orange-yellow 

 anthers), and are probably cross-fertilized largely by the 

 early bees and beelike flies. 5-9 inches high. Common 

 everywhere in thin woodlands. 



A beautiful but not showy, slender 

 meadow rue with the staminate and pistil- 

 late flowers on separate plants. The 

 bluish olive green leaves lustreless, com- 

 pound, and thinly spreading ; the droop- 

 ing staminate flowers with generally four 

 small green sepals, and long stamens tipped with terra- 

 cotta, and finally madder purple. The pistillate flowers 

 inconspicuously pale green. An airy and graceful 

 species, common in thin woodlands. 1-2 feet high. 

 Me., south to Ala., and west to Mo., S. Dak., and Kan. 

 The commonest species, remarkable for 

 its starry plumy clusters of white* flowers, 

 lacking petals, but with many conspicuous 

 threadlike stamens. The flowers are 

 polygamous, that is, with staminate, 

 pistillate, and perfect ones on the same or 

 different plants. The leaves are com- 

 pound, with lustreless blue-olive green leaflets ; the 

 stout stem light green or magenta-tinged at the branches. 

 The decorative, misty white flower-clusters are often a 

 foot long ; the delicate-scented staminate flowers are a 

 decided tone of green- white. This species is an especial 

 favorite of many bees, moths, and smaller butterflies, by 

 which it is cross-fertilized. 3-10 feet high. Common 

 in wet meadows from Me., west to Ohio, and south. 



Tall Meadow 

 Rue 



Thalictrum 



polygamum 



White 



July-Septem 



ber 



136 



