YELLOW 



their destiny in making one's clothes a means of conveyance to 

 1 ( fresh woods and pastures new " as to cause all wayfarers 

 heartily to detest them. " How surely the desmodium growing 

 on some cliff -side, or the bidens on the edge of a pool, prophesy 

 the coming of the traveller, brute or human, that will transport 

 their seeds on his coat," writes Thoreau. But the plant is so 

 constantly encountered in late summer, and yet so generally un- 

 known, that it can hardly be overlooked. 



The larger bur marigold, B. chrysanthemoides, does its best 

 to retrieve the family reputation for ugliness, and surrounds its 

 dingy disk-flowers with a circle of showy golden rays which 

 are strictly decorative, having neither pistils nor stamens, and 

 leaving all the work of the household to the less attractive but 

 more useful disk-flowers. Their effect is pleasing, and late into 

 the autumn the moist ditches look as if sown with gold through 

 their agency. The plant varies in height from six inches to two 

 feet. Its leaves are opposite, lance-shaped, and regularly toothed. 



SMOOTH FALSE FOXGLOVE. 



Gerardia quercifolia. Figwort Family. 



Stem. Smooth, three to six feet high, usually branching. Leaves. The 

 lower usually deeply incised, the upper narrowly oblong, incised, or entire. 

 Flowers. Yellow, large, in a raceme or spike. Calyx. Five-cleft. Co- 

 rolla. Two inches long, somewhat tubular, swelling above, with five more 

 or less unequal, spreading lobes, woolly within. Stamens. Four, in pairs, 

 woolly. Pistil. One. 



These large pale yellow flowers are very beautiful and strik- 

 ing when seen in the dry woods of late summer. They are all 

 the more appreciated because there are few flowers abroad at 

 this season save the Composites, which are decorative and radiant 

 enough, but usually somewhat lacking in the delicate charm we 

 look for in a flower. 



The members of this genus, which is named after Gerarde, 

 the author of the famous " Her ball," are supposed to be more 

 or less parasitic in their habits, drawing their nourishment from 

 the roots of other plants. 



The downy false foxglove, G. flava, is usually a somewhat 



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