Magenta to Pink 



stamens, 5 longer, 5 shorter, all anther-bearing; 1 pistil with 

 5 stigmatic styles. Scape : Slender, leafless, i-flowered, 2 to 

 5 in. high. Leaf: Clover-like, of 3 leaflets, on long petioles 

 from scaly, creeping rootstock. 



Preferred Habitat — Cold, damp woods. 



Flowering Season — May — July. 



Vis tribution— -Nova Scotia and Manitoba, southward to North Caro- 

 lina. Also a native of Europe. 



Clumps of these delicate little pinkish blossoms and abundant 

 leaves, cuddled close to the cold earth of northern forests, usually 

 conceal near the dry leaves or moss from which they spring blind 

 flowers that never open — cleistogamous the botanists call them — 

 flowers that lack petals, as if they were immature buds; that lack 

 odor, nectar, and entrance; yet they are perfectly mature, self-fer- 

 tilized, and abundantly fruitful. Fifty-five genera of plants con- 

 tain one or more species on which these peculiar products are 

 found, the pea family having more than any other, although vio- 

 lets offer perhaps the most familiar instance to most of us. Many 

 of these species bury their offspring below ground ; but the wood- 

 sorrel bears its blind flowers nodding from the top of a curved 

 scape at the base of the plant, where we can readily find them. 

 By having no petals, and other features assumed by an ordinary 

 flower to attract insects, and chiefly in saving pollen, they produce 

 seed with literally the closest economy. It is estimated that the 

 average blind flower of the wood-sorrel does its work with four 

 hundred pollen grains, while the prodigal peony scatters with the 

 help of wind and insect visitors over three and a half millions! 



Yet no plant, however economically inclined, can afford to 

 deteriorate its species through self-fertilization ; therefore, to over- 

 come the evils of in-breeding, the wood-sorr-el, like other plants 

 that bear cleistogamous flowers, takes special pains to produce 

 showy blossoms to attract insects, on which they absolutely de- 

 pend to transfer their pollen from flower to flower. These have 

 their organs so arranged as to make self-fertilization impossible. 



Every child knows how the wood-sorrel " goes to sleep " by 

 drooping its three leaflets until they touch back to back at even- 

 ing, regaining the horizontal at sunrise — a performance most scien- 

 tists now agree protects the peculiarly sensitive leaf from cold by 

 radiation. During the day, as well, seedling, scape, and leaves go 

 through some interesting movements, closely followed by Darwin 

 in his " Power of Movement in Plants," which should be read by 

 all interested. 



Oxalis, the Greek for sour, applies to all sorrels because of 

 their acid juice; but acetosella — vinegar salt, the specific name 

 of this plant, indicates that from it druggists obtain salt of lemons. 

 Twenty pounds of leaves yield between two and three ounces of 

 oxalic acid by crystallization. Names locally given the plant in 



