White and Greenish 



flowers, its less sharply pointed leaves, and, above all, by its rigid 

 clusters of oval red berries on slender pedicels, so conspicuous in 

 the woods of late summer. 



Black Cohosh ; Black Snakeroot; Tall Bug- 

 bane 



(Cimicifuga racemosa) Crowfoot family 



Flowers Fetid, feathery, white, in an elongated wand-like raceme, 

 6 in. to 2 ft. long, at the end of a stem 3 to 8 ft. high. Sepals 

 petal-like, falling early ; 4 to 8 small stamen-like petals 2-cleft ; 

 stamens very numerous, with long filaments ; i or 2 sessile 

 pistils with broad stigmas. Leaves : Alternate, on long peti- 

 oles, thrice compounded of oblong, deeply toothed or cleft 

 leaflets, the end leaflet often again compound. Fruit: Dry. 

 oval pods, their seeds in 2 rows. (Illustration facing p. 192.) 



Preferred Habitat Rich woods and woodland borders, hillsides. 



Flowering Season june August. 



Distribution Maine to Georgia, and westward from Ontario to 

 Missouri. 



Tall white rockets, shooting upward from a mass of large 

 handsome leaves in some heavily shaded midsummer woodland 

 border, cannot fail to impress themselves through more than one 

 sense, for their odor is as disagreeable as the fleecy white blossoms 

 are striking. Obviously such flowers would be most attractive 

 to the carrion and meat flies. Cimicifuga, meaning to drive away 

 bugs, and the old folk-name of bugbane testify to a degree of of- 

 fensiveness to other insects, where the flies' enjoyment begins. 

 As these are the only insects one is likely to see about the fleecy 

 wands, doubtless they are their benefactors. The countless sta- 

 mens which feed them generously with pollen willingly left for 

 them alone must also dust them well as they crawl about before 

 flying to another fetid lunch. 



The close kinship with the baneberries is detected at once on 

 examining one of these flowers. Were the vigorous plant less 

 offensive to the nostrils, many a garden would be proud to own 

 so decorative an addition to the shrubbery border. 



Wood Anemone; Wind Flower 



(Anemone quinquefolia) Crowfoot family 



Flowers Solitary, about I in. broad, white or delicately tinted 

 with blue or pink outside. Calyx of 4 to 9 oval, petal-like 

 sepals ; no petals ; stamens and carpels numerous, of indefinite 



179 



