Minnesota Plant Life. 



373 



fruits, four white, hard, smooth and shining nutlets are pro- 

 duced, protected by the five-lobed, green and hairy calyx. The 

 yellow puccoon, a form that is abundant on prairies, has trum- 

 pet-shaped flowers of a lemon or bright yellow color. Its leaves 

 are slenderer than those of the hoary puccoon and have not 

 the same white-hairy appearance, though they are rough to the 

 touch. This plant, later in the season, produces much smaller, 

 pale yellow, closed flowers, which, after pollination by their own 

 pollen, mature fruits. The broad-leafed puccoon has ovate or 

 ovate-lanceolate leaves and may be thus distinguished. Its 

 flowers are yellowish-white or 

 yellow. The European puc- 

 coon has yellowish-white flow- 

 ers scattered along the ends of 

 its branches, but it matures 

 the same white hard nutlets 

 that characterize its American 

 relatives. 



False gromwells. The two 

 species of false gromwell may 

 be known by their extra- 

 ordinarily rough and hairy 

 foliage, strong-veined leaves 

 and inconspicuous white or 

 greenish flowers, produced in 

 leafy one-sided racemes. There 

 are four nutlets begun in the 

 flowers of the false gromwell, but only one of them is 

 likely to mature, so that if ripened fruiting specimens alone 

 were at hand, it would be difficult, at first sight, to include these 

 plants in the borage family. The nutlets are white and hard, 

 like those of the puccoons. 



Bonesets. The comfrey or boneset has purple or yellow flow- 

 ers, brown nutlets, lance-shaped leaves, hairy foliage and thick 



roots. 



Verbenas. The verbena family includes, in Minnesota, six 

 varieties of wild verbena and one variety of fogfruit, or 

 These are all herbs, with, ordinarily, opposite leaves and 

 very much like those of the borages, but collected in spikes or 



FIG. 177. Blue verbena. After Britton and 

 Brown. 



