White and Greenish 



helps us no more to see what Linnaeus saw in the one case 

 than the fact that the papal mitre is encircled by three crowns helps 

 in the other. And as for the lofty, two-peaked cap worn by 

 bishops in the Roman Church, a dozen plants, with equal pro- 

 priety, might be said to wear it. 



Carolina Grass of Parnassus 



(Parnassia Caroliniana) Saxifrage family 



Flowers Creamy white, delicately veined with greenish, solitary, 

 i in. broad or over, at the end of a scape 8 in. to 2 ft. high, 

 i ovate leaf clasping it. Calyx deeply 5-lobed ; corolla of 

 5 spreading, parallel veined petals ; 5 fertile stamens alternat- 

 ing with them, and 3 stout imperfect stamens clustered at 

 base of each petal ; i very short pistil with 4 stigmas. 

 Leaves : From the root, on long petioles, broadly oval or 

 rounded, heart-shaped at base, rather thick. 



Preferred Habitat Wet ground, low meadows, swamps. 



Flowering Season July September. 



Distribution New Brunswick to Virginia, west to Iowa. 



What's in a name? Certainly our common grass of Par- 

 nassus, which is no grass at all, never starred the meadows round 

 about the home of the Muses, nor sought the steaming savannas 

 of the Carolinas. The European counterpart (P. palustris), fabled 

 to have sprung up on Mount Parnassus, is at home here only in 

 the Canadian border States and northward. 



At first analysis one is puzzled by the clusters of filaments 

 at the base of each petal. Of what use are they ? We have 

 seen in the case of the beard-tongue and the turtle-head that 

 even imperfect stamens sometimes serve useful ends, or they 

 would doubtless have been abolished. A fly or bee mistaking, 

 as he well may, the abortive anthers for beads of nectar on this 

 flower, alights on one of the white petals, a convenient, spreading 

 landing place ; but finding his mistake, and guided by the green- 

 ish lines, the pathfinders to the true nectaries situated on the 

 other side of the curious fringy structures, he must, because of 

 their troublesome presence, climb over them into the centre of the 

 flower to suck its sweets from the point where he will dust him- 

 self with pollen in young blossoms. Of course he will carry some 

 of their vitalizing powder to the late maturing stigmas of older 

 ones. Without the fringe of imperfect stamens, that serves as a 

 harmless trellis easily climbed over, the visitor might stand on the 

 petals and sip nectar without rendering any assistance in cross- 

 fertilizing his entertainers. 



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