the trefoliate barren strawberry (see p. 203). Both have flowers like 

 miniature wild yellow roses. During the Middle Ages, when mis- 

 directed zeal credited almost any plant with healing virtues for 

 every ill that flesh is heir to, the cinquefoils were considered most 

 potent remedies, hence their generic name. 



The Shrubby Cinquefoil, or Prairie Weed (P. fructicosa), be- 

 comes fairly troublesome in certain parts of its range, which ex- 

 tends from Greenland to Alaska, and southward to New Jersey, 

 Arizona, and California, as well as over northern Europe and Asia. 

 It is a bushy, much branched, and leafy shrub, six inches to four 

 feet high, with bright yellow, five-parted flowers an inch across, 

 more or less, either solitary or in cymes at the tips of the branches. 

 They appear from June to September. The honey-bee, alighting 

 in the centre of a blossom and turning around, passes its tongue 

 over the entire nectar-bearing ring at the base of the stamens, then 

 proceeding to another flower to do likewise, effects cross-fertiliza- 

 tion regularly. On a sunny day the bright blossoms attract many 

 visitors of the lower grade out after nectar and pollen, the beetles 

 often devouring the anthers in their greed. The leaves on this 

 cinquefoil are usually compounded of one terminal and four side 

 leaflets that are narrowly oblong, an inch or less in length, and 

 silky hairy. Sometimes there may be seven leaflets pinnately, not 

 digitately, arranged. Although the shrubby cinquefoil prefers 

 swamps and moist, rocky places to dwell in, it wisely adapts itself, 

 as globe-trotters should, to whatever conditions it meets. 



Silvery or Hoary Cinquefoil (P. argentea), found in dry soil, 

 blooming from May to September from Canada to Delaware, 

 Indiana, Kansas, and Dakota, also in Europe and Asia, has yellow 

 flowers only about a quarter of an inch across, but foliage of special 

 beauty. From the tufted, branching, ascending stems, four to 

 twelve inches long, the finely cleft, five-foliate leaves are spread 

 on foot stems that diminish in size as they ascend, not to let the 

 upper leaves shut off the light from the lower ones. These leaves 

 are smooth and green above, silvery on the under side, with fine 

 white hairs, adapted for protection from excessive sunlight and 

 too rapid transpiration of precious moisture. They entirely con- 

 ceal the sensitive epidermis from which they grow. 



Yellow Avens ; Field Avens 



(Geum strictum) Rose family 



Flowers Golden yellow, otherwise much resembling the lower 



growing white avens (page 204). 



Preferred Habitat Low ground, moist meadows, swamps. 

 flowering Season June August. 



Distribution Pennsylvania, Missouri, and Arizona, far northward. 

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