Yellow and Orange 



Ficaria), one of the Crowfoot family, whose larger solitary 

 satiny yellow flowers so commonly star European pastures, was 

 Wordsworth's special delight — a tiny, turf-loving plant, about 

 which much poetical association clusters. Having stolen passage 

 across the Atlantic, it is now making itself at home about College 

 Point, Long Island; on Staten Island; near Philadelphia, and 

 maybe elsewhere. Doubtless it will one day overrun our fields, 

 as so many other European immigrants have done. 



The generic Greek name of the greater celandine, meaning a 

 swallow, was given it because it begins to bloom when the first 

 returning swallows are seen skimming over the water and freshly 

 ploughed fields in a perfect ecstasy of flight, and continues in flower 

 among its erect seed capsules until the first cool days of autumn 

 kill the gnats and small winged insects not driven to cover. Then 

 the swallows, dependent on such fare, must go to warmer climes 

 where plenty still fly. Quaint old Gerarde claims that the swal- 

 low-wort was so called because "with this herbe the dams re- 

 store eye-sight to their young ones when their eye be put out" 

 by swallows. Coles asserts "the swallow cureth her dim eyes 

 with celandine." 



There can be little satisfaction in picking a weed which 

 droops immediately, poppy fashion, and whose saffron juice 

 stains whatever it touches. A drop of this acrid fluid on the tip 

 of the tongue is not soon forgotten. The luminous experiments 

 of Darwin, Lubbock, Wallace, Muller, and Sprengel, among 

 others, have proved that color in flowers exists for the purpose 

 of attracting insects. But how about colored juices in the blood- 

 roots' and poppies' stems, for example ; the bright stalk of the 

 pokeweed, the orange-yellow root of the carrot, the exquisite 

 tints of autumn leaves, fungi, and sea-weed ? Besides the green 

 color (chlorophyll), the most necessary of all ingredients to a 

 plant (see p. 234) are the lipochromes, which vary from yellow 

 to red. These are most conspicuous when they displace the 

 chlorophyll in autumn foliage. Then there are the anthocyans, 

 ranging from magenta to blue and violet. These vary according 

 to the amount of acid or alkali in the sap. Try the effect of 

 immersing a blue morning glory in an acid solution, or a deep 

 pink one in an alkaline solution. One theory to account for the 

 presence of color is that it exists to screen the plant's protoplasm 

 from light ; that it has a physiological function with which 

 insects have nothing whatever to do ; and that by its presence 

 the temperature is raised and the plant is protected from cold. 

 Every one who has handled the colorless Indian pipe knows 

 how cold and clammy it is. 



The Yellow or Celandine Poppy {Stylophorum diphyllum), 

 with shining yellow flowers double the size of the greater celan- 



299 



