298 



Minnesota Plant Life. 



and tick-trefoils, the wild licorices, the ground-plums, locust 

 trees, pommes de terre, sweet clovers, lucernes, alfalfas, red, 

 white and yellow clovers, lupines and rattle-boxes. Most of 

 these are herbs. A few, like the false indigos or lead-plants, 

 are shrubs, and one, the locust, is a well-known tree. 



Herbaceous false indigos and rattle-boxes. There are two 

 different kinds of plants belonging to different genera, known 

 under the general name of false indigo. Some of them are herbs 

 with creamy or white flowers in conspicuous racemes. Three 

 kinds of herbaceous false indigos are known to occur in Min- 

 nesota. The pods in these 

 plants are inflated and ovoid 

 in shape. The flowers of the 

 white false indigo turn black 

 in drying. The leaves consist 

 for the most part of three leaf- 

 lets and the plants are large, 

 averaging from two to four 

 feet in height. Related to 

 these false indigos are the rat- 

 tle-boxes. The Minnesota 

 species has apparently simple 

 leaves with prominent stipules 

 at the base of some. The 

 pods are ovoid and inflated 

 and the seeds rattle in them, 

 giving the occasion for the 

 common name. 



Lupines, sweet clovers and clovers. Lupines, of which 

 one species is common in Minnesota, have the flowers arranged 

 in terminal, conspicuous racemes like the herbaceous false 

 indigo flowers. The leaflets, however, are seven to eleven in 

 number, growing out in radial fashion from the tip of their 

 common stem. The flowers are generally blue and the whole 

 plant is of an erect habit, from one to two feet in height. The 

 pods are not much inflated, but flattened and leathery. By 

 means of the leaves there is no difficulty in distinguishing these 

 plants from other pulses. The lucerne, or alfalfa, has violet 

 or purple flowers aggregated in loose clover-like heads or 

 racemes. The pod in this variety is twisted up like a snail shell. 



FIG. 146. Wild lupine. After Britton and 

 Brown. 



