WILD FLOWERS THAT BOYS AND GIRLS SHOULD KNOW 



477 



Iteeps on blooming all suinnier into the early autumn ; this is the 

 Field or Corn Mustard (Fig. 7), and its yellow flowers are so strik- 

 ing that, with the aid of the picture here given, you can hardly make 

 a mistake about it. Near the city it may be seen growing on tlie 

 waste heaps or in unoccupied lots. Birds are very fond of its ])ale, 

 peppery seeds as winter comes on : this is especially true of tame 

 pigeons, and they will eat quantities of them if they get the chance. 

 Sometime, when you get along a little further in your studies, you 

 must read up about the Carrion l-'lower shown in Figure 8. It smells 

 just like a piece of meat that has been kept too long in a warm place. 

 This is for a very im])ortant puqiose to the flower, and it is quite as 

 important that in the fall its leaves should turn a brilliant red and 

 green, for these colors attract many small birds on their way south- 

 ward ; as the seeds in the berries are then ripe, the birds come after 

 them, and help scatter them, in one way or another, far and wide. The 

 Carrion Flower is but another species of the Smilax or Catbrier, and 

 every boy who goes into the woods knows what the Catbrier or (jreen- 



brier is, with its 

 smooth, glos.sy, and 

 i)right green leaves. 

 Our wild Pink 

 .\zalea (Fig 9), 

 which we all know 

 so well, and love 

 as one of the most 

 Ijeautiful of Amer- 

 ica's flowers, is the 

 shrub from which 

 the fine azaleas we 

 see in the flower- 

 stores came. About 

 two himdred years 

 ago, tlie Belgian 

 florists received the 

 wild one from the 

 colonists here, and 

 by cross - breeding 

 proauced the su- 

 ])erb plant that you 

 now see ornament- 

 ing our homes al- 

 most everywhere, 

 I'nhappy Belgium! 

 .She is not thinking 

 nnich about azaleas 

 now, with her love- 

 ly lands all devas- 

 tated and ruined. 

 You must re- 

 member that many 

 flowers have, as the years liavn gone by, escaped from gardens, and arc- 

 now found growing wild in all sorts of places. This is the case with a 

 very large number of our eastern wild flowers, and it is true of the 

 Day Lily shown in Figure 10. Through one way or another, a whole 

 lot of our wild flowers have spread from Europe, and not a few from 

 Asia and Africa. Naturally, as you will know from your geography, 

 we find the.se first in eastern United States, but then, too, many of them 

 have already spread far toward our Western States. Ages ago, whe!i 

 people were so superstitious and only too many are so yet it was 



rOLORED LIKE LEMONS 



Fig, 12. That i.s a Black Swallr;w-tail Butterfly which has just 

 lit on the side of the bunch of huds of the Evening I'rimrose. 

 Note the one in full flower down to the right. Those flowers 

 are bright lemon yellow and very handsome. 



THIS HAS MANY NAMES 



Fig. 11. Some plants have very beautiful leaves, 

 and this is .one of them. Like most of its kind, it 

 has a whole lot of names, as the Rattlesnake-weed, 

 Early or Vein-leaf Hawkweed, Snake Plantain, and 

 so on. 



Fig. 



HERE IS A QUESTION 



13. Why they call these Common Burdock 



burrs "Beggar's Buttons" it is hard to tell; but that 

 is one of their names surely they would make very 

 sticky old buttons. 



