From Blue to Purple 



pared with its gorgeous sister the cardinal flower, suffers un- 

 fairly. When asked what his favorite color was, Eugene Field 

 replied: "Why, I like any color at all so long as it's red!" Most 

 men, at least, agree with him, and certainly humming-birds do; 

 our scarcity of red flowers being due, we must believe, to the 

 scarcity of humming-birds, which chiefly fertilize them. But how 

 bees love the blue blossoms! 



There are many cases where the pistil of a flower necessarily 

 comes in contact with its own pollen, yet fertilization does not 

 take place, however improbable this may appear. Most orchids, 

 for example, are not susceptible to their own pollen. It would 

 seem as if our lobelia, in elevating its stigma through the ring 

 formed by the united anthers, must come in contact with some of 

 the pollen they have previously discharged from their tips, not 

 only on the bumblebee that shakes it out of them when he jars 

 the flower, but also within the tube. But when the anthers are 

 mature, the two lobes of the still immature stigma are pressed 

 together, and cannot be fertilized. Nevertheless, the hairy tips of 

 some of the anthers brush off the pollen grains that may have 

 lodged on the stigma as it passes through the ring in its ascent, 

 thus making surety doubly sure. Only after the stigma projects 

 beyond the ring of anthers does it expand its lobes, which are now 

 ready to receive pollen brought from another later flower by the 

 incoming bumblebee to which it is adapted. 



Linnaeus named this group of plants for Matthias de l'Obel, a 

 Flemish botanist, or herbalist more likely, who became physician 

 to James I. of England. 



Preferably in dry, sandy soil or in meadows, and over a wide 

 range, the slender, straight shoots of Pale Spiked Lobelia (L. spi- 

 cata) bloom early and throughout the summer months, the in- 

 florescence itself sometimes reaching a height of two feet. At 

 the base of the plant there is usually a tuft of broadly oblong 

 leaves; those higher up narrow first into spoon-shaped, then into 

 pointed, bracts, along the thick and gradually lengthened spike of 

 scattered bloom. The flowers are often pale enough to be called 

 white. Like their relatives, they first ripen their anthers to prevent 

 self-fertilization. 



The lithe, graceful little Brook Lobelia (L. Kalmii), whose 

 light-blue flowers, at the end of thread-like footstems, form a loose 

 raceme, sways with a company of its fellows among the grass on 

 wet banks, beside meadow runnels and brooks, particularly in 

 limestone soil, from Nova Scotia to the Northwest Territory and 

 southward to New Jersey. It bears an insignificant capsule, not 

 inflated like the Indian tobacco's; and long, narrow, spoon-shaped 

 leaves. Twenty inches is the greatest height this little plant may 

 hope to attain. 



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