From Blue to Purple 



Not only beside water, and in it, but often totally immersed, 

 grows the Water Lobelia or Gladiole (L. Dortmanna). The slender, 

 hollow, smooth stem rises from a submerged tuft of round, hol- 

 low, fleshy leaves longitudinally divided by a partition, and bears 

 at the top a scattered array of pale-blue flowers from August to 

 September. 



Indian or Wild Tobacco; Gag-root; Asthma- 

 weed ; Bladder-pod Lobelia 



(Lobelia inflata) Bellflower family 



Flowers Pale blue or violet, small, borne at short intervals in 

 spike-like leafy racemes. Calyx 5-parted, its awl-shaped lobes 

 % in. long, or as long as the tubular, 2-lipped, 5-cleft, corolla 

 that opens to base of tube on upper side. Stamens, 5 united 

 by their hairy anthers into a ring around the 2-lobed style. 

 Stem : From i to 3 feet high, hairy, very acrid, much branched, 

 leafy. Leaves : Alternate, oblong or ovate, toothed, the upper 

 ones acute, seated on stem ; lower ones obtuse, petioled, I to 

 2^2 in. long. Fruit: A much inflated, rounded, ribbed, many 

 seeded capsule. 



Preferred Habitat Dry fields and thickets ; poor soil. 



Flowering Season July November. 



Distribution Labrador westward to the Missouri River, south to 

 Arkansas and Georgia. 



The most stupid of the lower animals knows enough to let 

 this poisonous, acrid plant alone; but not so man, who formerly 

 made a quack medicine from it in the days when a drug that set 

 one's internal organism on fire was supposed to be especially 

 beneficial. One taste of the plant gives a realizing sense of its 

 value as an emetic. How the red man enjoyed smoking and 

 chewing the bitter leaves, except for the drowsiness that followed, 

 is a mystery. 



On account of the smallness of its flowers and their scanti- 

 ness, the Indian tobacco is perhaps the least attractive of the lobe- 

 lias, none of which has so inflated a seed vessel, the distinguish- 

 ing characteristic of this common plant. 



Chicory; Succory; Blue Sailors; Bunk 



(Cichorium Intybus) Chicory family 



Flower-head Bright, deep azure to gray blue, rarely pinkish or 

 white, i to \Yz in. broad, set close to stem, often in small 

 clusters for nearly the entire length ; each head a composite 



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