MARSH LAND AND OTHER AQUATIC PLANTS 



613 



made hundreds of such experiments, 

 all with the same patient care and 

 thoroughness, describing them with 

 marvelous lucidity and point. Little 

 wonder that when his life ended Eng- 

 land found a place for him in West- 

 minster Abbey. 



Growing with the pickerel weed, 

 we frequently find another famous 

 aquatic plant, the arrow-head, a speci- 

 men of which is shown in one of the 

 accompanying figures ; the fertiliza- 

 tion of its flowers, too, is a story most 

 wonderful in all its details, but it 

 would occupy too much space to give 

 m detail here. There is but one thing 

 to do : "Get your botany," and bring 

 your compound microscope into play. 

 Although a thousand cannon are 

 barking away as these lines are 

 i)eing written, we must not overlook 

 the fact that the war must come to 

 an end some day ; the far-seeing wise 

 ones will not put entirely aside scien- 

 tific research until it is over. When 

 the upbuilding and the uplifting 

 again fills the room of killing 



THE ELEGA.N'T SPIKE OF THE 

 PICKEREL WEED 

 This gives the purplish-hluc (lowers full size, in 

 that their great beauty may be the better appre- 

 ciated. The distal portion of a leaf of this plant 

 is shown below, with a young, sheathed spike just 

 ready to burst open. Each plant has several 

 leaves, and they sheathe the main stems as shown 

 in one of the ngures. They appear truly gorgeous 

 in the bright sunlight of summer; and they are 

 not only beautiful hut extremely picturesque as 

 they line, in thousands, our river '^anks at this 

 cason. 



ONE OF OUR MOST CONSPICUOUS 

 AQUATIC PLANTS 

 This, the common large Yellow Pond or Water 

 Lily, ahso called the Cow Lily or Spatter-dock 

 (Nymphaea advena) , is another strictly aquatic 

 plant of our Hora of very wide distribution. It 

 prefers the shallow shore-stretches of slow streams, 

 and less frequently extensive ponds or standing 

 Ircsh water anywhere. In suitable localities it 

 may be found from Nova Scotia to the Gulf, and 

 westward to the Rockies. This species is almost 

 entirely scentless, while its beautiful relative, the 

 g.eat white water lily, has a flower that is ex- 

 tremely fragrant indeed, so much so that it has 

 l.ecn called Castalia odorata. 



and destruction, no one of the 

 many departments of biology 

 must be utterly dead as has 

 previously happened in the 

 world's history. 



There are a good many sjje- 

 cies of Sagittaria, but they all 

 belong, with numerous other 

 genera, in the water plantain 

 family {Alismaceae). The one 

 tu be described here is the 

 Broad-leaved Arrow-head {S. 

 latifolia) (see figure). It is 

 well named, for sagitta is an ar- 

 row, while the specific name re- 

 fers to its broad leaves. One of 

 its chief charms is its decora- 

 tiveness, and hardly any one can 

 pass the plant in nature, where 

 it is growing luxuriantly, with- 

 out being struck by its peculiar 

 beauty. Its flowers are arranged 

 in groups of three, and are very 

 striking from the fact that they 

 are so glistening white. Below 

 them, also arranged in groups 



of three, we find the inconspicuous 

 pistils, hardly entitled to be called 

 flowers. The two sex-elements fre- 

 quently occur on separate plants ; but 

 this does not prevent cross-fertiliza- 

 tion through the agency of visiting 

 bees and flies, so the plant is sure of 

 perpetuation. 



One of the most remarkable things 

 about this arrow-head is the fact that 

 the plant frequently develops two 

 kinds of leaves a character often to 

 be observed in other aquatic plants. 

 The broad, arrow-head shaped ones 

 are grown above the surface of the 

 water, where they are exposed to the 

 air, and can assimilate from it the 

 maximum amount of carbonic acid, as 

 well as release the greatest amount of 

 oxygen. These leaves are shiny and 

 more or less thick and tough ; they 

 also endure should the water dry up 

 where the plant is growing. Now 

 those below the surface of the water 

 are like long, narrow ribbons, so 

 formed in order that the river current 

 may not destroy or even mutilate 



THE SNOW FLAKES OF THE MARSH 

 LANDS AND RIVER BANKS 



In shallow water and muddy tracts, this, the 

 Uroad-leavcd Arrow-head (Sagittaria latifolia) 

 nourishes, in its chosen localities, from the sub- 

 polar regions to the Rio Grande and the Mexican 

 boundary westward. As we flounder through a 

 marsh where thousands of its kind grow in 

 crowded masses, we are sure to be struck by its 

 glistening white flowers, with their brilliant golden 

 centers, as they peep out here and there among 

 the army of broad, sagittate leaves that surround 

 them upon all sides. 



