THE DUNES AND THEIR PLANTS 



137 



is one of the milkweeds, although it does not have a milky juice. 

 The clustered blossoms are brilliant orange and shaped like 

 those of the common field 

 milkweed (Fig. 130). Wild 

 bergamot (Fig. 133) has a char- 

 acteristic odor. The corolla is 

 long, violet or pink, and hairy 

 in the throat. The blossoms 

 are clustered and the cluster 

 is subtended by bracts, the 

 upper ones of which are col- 

 ored white or purplish. Louse- 

 wort (Fig. 132) is a low hairy 

 plant with pinnately parted 

 leaves and yellow flowers 

 crowded by a spike at the top 

 of the stem. The blazing stars 

 (Fig. 134) are tall, slender, 

 unbranched composite plants 

 with small narrow leaves. 

 They are so slender they look 

 like fuzzy green stakes set in 

 the ground. The two common 

 species in the black oak area 

 are Liatris cylindrica and L. 

 scariosa. The former has only 

 a few heads and reddish- 

 purple flowers, the latter many 

 heads on the stalk and these 

 good sized. 



The mixed oak association 

 (Fig. 135) is characterized by 

 black, chestnut, white, and red oaks (Fig. 136), with a mixture 

 of slippery or red elms and basswoods, while among the smaller 

 trees water beech and hop hornbeam are peculiar. Yellow 



Fig. 134, — Blazing star, Liatris spicala 



