Yellow and Orange 



them from its native prairies beyond the Mississippi a plant whose 

 stalks furnished them with a textile fibre, its leaves fodder, its flow- 

 ers a yellow dye, and its seeds, most valuable of all, food and hair- 

 oil ! Early settlers in Canada were not slow in sending home to 

 Europe so decorative and useful an acquisition. Swine, poultry, 

 and parrots were fed on its rich seeds. Its flowers, even under 

 Indian cultivation had already reached abnormal size. Of the sixty 

 varied and interesting species of wild sunflowers known to scien- 

 tists, all are North American. 

 Moore's pretty statement, 



" As the sunflower turns on her god when he sets 

 The same look which she turn'd when he rose," 



lacks only truth to make it fact. The flower does not travel daily 

 on its stalk from east to west. Often the top of the stem turns 

 sharply toward the light to give the leaves better exposure, but 

 the presence or absence of a terminal flower affects its action not 

 at all. 



Formerly the garden species was thought to be a native, not 

 of our prairies, but of Mexico and Peru, because the Spanish con- 

 querors found it employed there as a mystic and sacred symbol, 

 much as the Egyptians employed the lotus in their sculpture. In 

 the temples the handmaidens wore upon their breasts plates of 

 gold beaten into the likeness of the sunflower. But none of the 

 eighteen species of helianthus found south of our borders produces 

 under cultivation the great plants that stand like a golden-hel- 

 meted phalanx in every old-fashioned garden at the North. Many 

 birds, especially those of the sparrow and finch tribe, come to feast 

 on the oily seeds; and where is there a more charming sight than 

 when a family of goldfinches settle upon the huge, top-heavy 

 heads, unconsciously forming a study in sepia and gold ? 



On prairies west of Pennsylvania to South Dakota, Missouri, 

 and Texas, the Saw-tooth Sunflower (H. grosse-serratus) is com- 

 mon. Deep yellow instead of pale rays around a yellowish disk 

 otherwise resemble the tall sunflower's heads in appearance as in 

 season of bloom. The smooth stalk, with a bluish-hoary bloom 

 on its surface, may have hairs on the branches only. Long, lance- 

 shaped, pointed leaves, the edges of lower ones especially sharply 

 saw-toothed, their upper surface rough, and underneath soft- 

 hairy, are on slender, short petioles, the lower ones opposite, the 

 upper ones alternate. Honey-bees find abundant refreshment in 

 the tubular disk florets in which many of their tribe may be 

 caught sucking ; brilliant little Syrphidae, the Bombilius cheat, and 

 other flies come after pollen ; butterflies feast here on nectar, top ; 

 and greedy beetles, out for pollen, often gnaw the disks with 

 their pinchers. 



357 



