WILD FLOWERS red 



scattered along the ascending branches. They emit 

 a very unpleasant odour. The lower flowers are seed- 

 bearing and, bud-like, they never open. Cancer- 

 root is found from August to October, from New 

 Brunswick to Florida, and west to Ontario, Michigan, 

 Missouri, and Louisiana. 



CARDINAL FLOWER. RED LOBELIA 



Lobelia cardinalis. Lobelia Family. 



The Cardinal Flower is one of the most striking and 

 attractive of our showy flowers. It possesses the 

 most gorgeous, glowing red colouring imaginable, 

 and because of its unsurpassing vividness and bril- 

 liancy, its beauty is its undoing. It is a target for every 

 ruthless, clasping hand that can reach it, and for this 

 reason it is rapidly becoming exterminated. In 

 intensity of colouring it is the Scarlet Tanager of 

 the wild flowers. The usually single, rather large, 

 slightly angular, smoothish stalk is leafy and hollow, 

 and grows from two to four and a half feet high, from 

 perennial off-shoots. The thin, smooth, or slightly 

 hairy leaves are oblong to lance-shaped. They are 

 irregularly toothed, and the upper ones clasp the stalk. 

 The colour is dark green. The numerous, deep car- 

 dinal flowers are gathered in a loose and often one- 

 sided terminal spike. The tube-like corolla, which is 

 an inch long, is split down the upper side, and has five 

 narrow, pointed, flaring, velvety lobes. These lobes 

 are bent at right angles, the three central ones set 

 together, and partly separated from the other twoj 



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