Minnesota Plant Life. 



36? 



The green milkweeds may be distinguished by this character: 

 The hoods of the corona do not inclose spur-like projections. 

 Otherwise the flowers, flower-clusters and pods are very much 

 like those of the true milkweeds. Here are classified the broad- 

 leafed green milkweeds, with lance-shaped or broad willow- 

 shaped leaves; the Florida milkweed, with slender, willow- 

 shaped leaves, difficult to distinguish from the two varieties of 

 the broad-leafed form in one of which the leaves are really 

 grass-shaped, while in the other they are lance-shaped. The 

 broad-leafed milkweed and its varieties have, however, sessile 

 umbels of flowers, while the Florida milkweed displays each 

 umbel on a stem of its own. Besides the varieties of green 

 milkweed which have been mentioned, there is another known 

 as the woolly green milkweed. It is characterized by a solitary 

 terminal umbel and woolly or hairy leaves, and is found on 

 prairies. 



The thirty-first order includes a number of families, most 

 of which are represented in Minnesota. Here are the morning- 

 glory family, to which the morning-glories, sweet potatoes and 

 dodders belong ; the phloxes ; the waterleafs ; the borages ; the 

 verbenas; the mints; the nightshades, including the ground- 

 cherries, capsicums, potatoes, tomatoes, tobaccos and petunias ; 

 the figworts, with the snapdragons, mulleins, hyssops and fox- 

 gloves ; the bignonias, with the catalpa trees ; the broom-rapes, 

 a curious group of parasitic plants ; the Gesneras, to which the 

 Gloxinias belong; the bladderworts ; the Acanthuses; and the 

 lopseeds. Several families, including some of those mentioned, 

 have no species native to Minnesota. The following, however, 

 present Minnesota forms : The morning-glories, phloxes, wa- 

 ter-leafs, borages, verbenas, mints, nightshades, figworts, broom- 

 rapes, bladderworts and lopseeds. 



Morning-glories. The morning-glory family is represented 

 in Minnesota by three species of morning-glory or bindweeds 

 and five species of dodder. The morning-glories are recog- 

 nized at once by their familiar funnel-shaped flowers. In two 

 of the varieties the stem is twining or trailing, while in the erect 

 morning-glory it stands independently and does not twine. 

 except sometimes very slightly at the tip. One of the climb- 

 ing morning-glories has arrow-head-shaped leaves and pink 



