From Blue to Purple 



Fruit : Erect, smooth pod tipped with a short beak; open 

 on one side. 



Preferred Habitat Roadsides and fie'ds. 



Flowering Season June August. 



Distribution Naturalized from Europe; from New Jersey south- 

 ward, occasionally escaped from gardens farther north. 



Keats should certainly have extolled the larkspurs in his 

 sonnet on blue. No more beautiful group of plants contributes to 

 the charm of gardens, woods, and roadsides, where some have 

 escaped cultivation and become naturalized, than the delphinium, 

 that take their name from a fancied resemblance to a dolphin (del- 

 phiri), given them by Linnaeus in one of his wild flights of imagina- 

 tion. Having lost the power to fertilize themselves, according to 

 Muller, they are pollemzed by both bees and butterflies, insects 

 whose tongues have kept pace with the development of certain 

 flowers, such as the larkspur, columbine, and violet, that they may 

 reach into the deep recesses of the spurs where the nectar is 

 hidden from all but benefactors. 



The Tall Wild Larkspur (D. urceolatum, or D. exaltatum of 

 Gray) waves long, crowded, downy wands of intense purplish 

 blue in the rich woods of Western Pennsylvania, southward to 

 the Carolinas and Alabama, and westward to Nebraska. Its spur 

 is nearly straight, not to increase the difficulty a bee must have in 

 pressing his lips through the upper and lower petals to reach the 

 nectar at the end of it. First, the stamens successively raise them- 

 selves in the passage back of the petals to dust his head ; then, 

 when each has shed its pollen and bent down again, the pistil 

 takes its turn in occupying the place, so that a pollen-laden bee, 

 coming to visit the blossom from an earlier flower, can scarcely 

 help fertilizing it. It is said there are but two insects in Europe 

 with lips long enough to reach the bottom of the long horn of 

 plenty hung by the Bee Larkspur (D. elatum), that we know only 

 in gardens here. Its yellowish bearded lower petals readily de- 

 ceive one into thinking a bee has just alighted there. 



From April to June the Dwarf Larkspur or Stagger-weed (D. 

 tricorne), which, however, may sometimes grow three feet high, 

 lifts a loose raceme of blue, rarely white, flowers an inch or more 

 long, at the end of a stout stem rising from a tuberous root. Its 

 slightly ascending spur, its three widely spreading seed vessels, 

 and the deeply cut leaf of rrom five to seven divisions are 

 distinguishing characteristics. From Western Pennsylvania and 

 Georgia to Arkansas and Minnesota it is found in rather stiff soil. 

 Butterflies, which prefer erect flowers, have some difficulty to cling 

 while they drain the almost upright spurs, especially the Papilios, 

 which usually suck with their wings in motion. But the bees, to 



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