Minnesota Plant Life. 



289 



of the apple. They may be distinguished from all the other 

 apple-like plants by their compound leaves. The American 

 mountain-ash is discriminated from the western mountain-ash 

 by the shape of the leaflets. In the first named species they 

 are slender and willow-like, while in the other they are elon- 

 gated-oblong and not so sharply pointed. The fruits in the two 

 varieties are very similar but average larger in the western 

 mountain-ash. Both varieties are very ornamental as lawn 

 trees, but the western mountain-ash is more desirable for culti- 

 vation in Minnesota than the other, on account of the larger 

 and handsomer flat-topped 

 clusters of fruits. 



Strawberries and fivefingers. 

 A group of herbs, including 

 the strawberries, fivefingers 

 and avens, should be men- 

 tioned here. There are a num- 

 ber of varieties of them, some 

 sorts abundant in meadows 

 and fields, others distributed 

 in swamps and along the 

 shores of lakes. The straw- 

 berries in particular are abun- 

 dant and easily recognized by 

 their three-compounded leaves, 

 by their habit of producing 

 runners for propagation and 

 by their clusters of little seed- 

 like fruits upon the swollen 



conical axis of the flower. This axis becomes red and fleshy as 

 it matures, and is the edible portion of the strawberry. The 

 other herbs, such as the fivefingers, closely resemble the straw- 

 berries in the character of the flower, but do not form fleshy 

 axes for their fruits. The avens is an erect herb, rather easily 

 mistaken by the casual observer for some kind of anemone in 

 fruit. One sort which is common in Minnesota produces fruit 

 clusters quite similar in appearance to those of the clematis, 

 having the same plumy appendages on the nutlets. None of 

 these herbs, except the strawberry, is of any particular economic 

 importance. They are all, however, throughout the state, com- 



FIG. 141. Marsh fivefinger. After Britton 

 and Brown. 



