White and Greenish 



American Spikenard; Indian Root; Spignet 



{Aralia racemosa) Ginseng family 



Flowers — Greenish white, small, 5-parted, mostly imperfect, in a 

 drooping compound raceme of rounded clusters. Stem: 3 to 

 6 ft. high, branches spreading. Roots: Large, thick, fra- 

 grant. Leaves : Compounded of heart-shaped, sharply 

 tapering, saw-edged leaflets from 2 to s in. long, often 

 downy underneath. Lower leaves often enormous. Fruit : 

 Dark reddish-brown berries. 



Preferred Habitat — Rich open woods, wayside thickets, light soil. 



Flowering Season — July — August. 



Distribution — New Brunswick to Georgia, west to the Mississippi. 



A striking, decorative plant, once much sought after for its 

 medicinal virtues — still another herb with which old women de- 

 light to dose their victims for any malady from a cold to a car- 

 buncle. Quite a different plant, but a relative, is the one with 

 hairy, spike-like shoots from its fragrant roots, from which the 

 " very precious " ointment poured by Mary upon the Saviour's 

 head was made. The nard, an Indian product from that plant, 

 which is still found growing on the distant Himalayas, could 

 then be imported into Palestine only by the rich. 



The wild spikenard, or false Solomon's seal (p. 139), has not 

 the remotest connection with this tribe of plants. Inasmuch as 

 some of the American spikenard's tiny flowers are staminate and 

 some pistillate, while others again are perfect, they depend upon 

 flies chiefly — but on some wasps and beetles, too — to transfer 

 pollen and enable the fertile ones to set seed. How certain of the 

 winter birds gormandize on the resinous, spicy little berries! A 

 flock of juncos will strip the fruit from every spikenard in the 

 neighborhood the first day it arrives from the North. 



The Wild or False Sarsaparilla {A. nUdicaulis), so common 

 in woods, hillsides, and thickets, shelters its three spreading um- 

 bels of greenish-white flowers in May and June beneath a canopy 

 formed by a large, solitary, compound leaf. The aromatic roots, 

 which run horizontally sometimes three feet or more through the 

 soil, send up a very short, smooth proper stem which lifts a tall 

 leaf-stalk and a shorter, naked flower-stalk. The single large 

 leaf, of exquisite bronzy tints when young, is compounded of from 

 three to five oval, toothed leaflets on each of its three divisions. 

 The tiny five-parted flowers have their petals curved backward 

 over the calyx to make their refreshments more accessible for the 

 flies, on which they chiefly rely for aid in producing those close 

 clusters of dark-purple berries on which migrating birds feast in 



