FROM WILD TO GARDEN FLOWERS 



353 



in the garden species. Neltje Blanchan tells us that "chil- 

 dren know the live-forever, not so well by the variable 

 flower for it is a niggardly bloomer as by the thick 

 leaf that they delight to hold in the mouth until, having 

 loosened the membrane, they are able to inflate it like a 

 paper bag. Sometimes dull, sometimes bright, the flower 

 clusters never fail to attract many insects to their feast, 

 which is accessible even to those of short tongues. Each 

 blossom is perfect in itself, i. e., it contains both stamens 

 and pistils ; but to guavd against self-fertilization it rij)- 

 ens its anthers and sheds its pollen on the nisects that 

 carry it away to other flowers before its own stigmas 

 mature and become susceptible to imported pollen. After 

 the seedcases take on color, they might be mistaken for 

 blossoms. Rooting freely from the joints, our plant 

 forms thrifty tufts where there is little apparent nourish- 

 ment ; yet its endurance 

 through prolonged drought 

 is remarkable. Long after 

 the farmer's scythe, sweep- 

 ing over the roadside, has 

 laid it low, it thrives on 

 the juices stored up in 

 fleshy leaves and stem un- 

 til it proves its title to the 

 most lusty of all folk 

 names." 



Botanists tell us that 

 this plant originally es- 

 caped from gardens ; and 

 if this be true, the cuts here 

 presented of the wild and 

 garden forms come to be 

 all the more interesting 

 upon careful comparison. 

 (Figs. 9 and 10). In the 

 middle Atlantic States we 

 meet with it growing in va- 

 rious localities along the 

 roadside and in old fields, 

 but far more commonly in 

 rocky soil, beneath the 

 spreading limbs of the tall 

 trees of the forest. It would seem that the authoress of 

 Nature's Garden and other popular American botanists 

 have, in their works, almost entirely overlooked the most 

 attractive plant of the entire Sedum or Orpine group 

 the Stonecrop, Sedum ternatum of Gray. Last sum- 

 mer the writer obtained a beautiful negative of this, tak- 

 ing the plant in situ. It grew luxuriantly in the little 

 rich earth that had accumulated upon the surface of a 

 great rock found in the woods not far from Washington. 

 In Figure 11 it is shown in full flower, with all of its 

 interesting characters in plain view. This stonecrop 

 occurs in similar locations from Connecticut to Georgia, 

 and from thence westward to Michigan, Indiana and 

 Tennessee. It has flat leaves which are arranged in 

 whorls of three, and the flowers, complicated in struc- 

 ture, are glistening white or sometimes very faintly 



cream-tinged. On one occasion the writer found a speci- 

 men of this plant that grew over an old, rotten log which 

 leaned among the ferns that partly hid a great rock in 

 the woods. The plant covered a space of fully a square 

 yard, and presented, with its many white flowers and 

 glistening green leaves, a sight long to be remembered. 



Of all the plants of the woods, however, none can vie 

 with our Hepatica or Liverwort as a favorite. Hardly 

 has the snow melted away before the flowers of this 

 hardy little champion of the plant world are seen peep- 

 ing up among its own leaves of the previous season. It 

 has received many vernacular names, and among them 

 we hear it referred to as Squirrel Cup; Liver-leaf; Noble 

 Liverwort, and so on. The writer has often made life- 

 size photographs of this pretty little plant, and one of 

 his best results is here seen in Figure 12. It is putting 



forth over a dozen flowers, 

 and the form of last year's 

 leaves is very well shown. 

 It is useless to look for this 

 flower beyond where it 

 grows in the loose earth of 

 the more or less heavily 

 timbered hillsides of its 

 range ; the plants are usu- 

 ally single, and grow some 

 distances apart. The old 

 leaves persist all winter, 

 while the new leaves, which 

 appear after the flowers, 

 are very beautiful indeed, 

 being closed, curved down- 

 wards and folded, and pre- 

 senting a furry growth on 

 both stems and leaves. As 

 stated, the leaves are ever- 

 green and three-lobed ; 

 some are more or less mot- 

 tled, the color being rusty- 

 red or purplish. What 

 may appear to be the pet- 

 als of this flower are, in 

 reality, the sepals, and next 

 to them, directly beneath, are three sessile leaves, green 

 like the stems, and furry. Sometimes the flowers of He- 

 patica are quite fragrant, but often entirely odorless, and 

 the petal-like sepals run all the way from a pale blue to 

 white, the intermediate colors being pale pink, lavender 

 and a fine shade of purple. Gibson, the poet, left us these 

 lines on the Hepatica : 



"Blue as the heaven it gazes at, 

 Startling the loiterer in the naked groves 

 With unexpected beauty ; for the time 

 Of blossoms and green leaves is yet afar." 

 "What an individuality it has I" said John Burroughs, 

 "No two clusters alike ; all shades and sizes .... A 

 solitary blue-purple one, fully expanded and rising over 

 the brown leaves or the green moss, its cluster of minute 

 anthers showing like a group of pale stars on its little 



{Cont'd on page 365.) 



HEPATICA OR LIVERWORT 



Fig. 12. The trilobed leaves of this plant are responsible for its 

 scientific name of triloba, while it has many common names, 

 such as liver-leaf, squirrel cup, kidney liver-leaf, noble liverwort, 

 and others. 



