Downy False Foxglove 



(Dasystoma flava) Figwort family 

 (Gerardia flava of Gray) 



Flowers Pale yellow, i % to 2 in. long ; in showy, terminal, leafy- 

 bracted racemes. Calyx bell-shaped, 5-toothed; corolla fun- 

 nel form, the 5 lobes spreading, smooth outside, woolly 

 within; 4 stamens in pairs, woolly; i pistil. Stem: Grayish, 

 downy, erect, usually simple, 2 to 4 ft. tall. Leaves: 

 Opposite, lower ones oblong in outline, more or less irregu- 

 larly lobed and toothed; upper ones small, entire. 



Preferred Habitat Gravelly or sandy soil, dry thickets, open woods. 



Flowering Season July August. 



Distribution " Eastern Massachusetts to Ontario and Wisconsin, 

 south to southern New York, Georgia, and Mississippi." 

 (Britton and Brown.) 



In the vegetable kingdom, as in the spiritual, all degrees of 

 backsliding sinners may be found, each branded with a mark 

 of infamy according to its deserts. We have seen how the 

 dodder vine lost both leaf and roots after it consented to live 

 wholly by theft of its hard-working host's juices through suckers 

 that penetrate to the vitals; how the Indian pipe's blanched face 

 tells the story of guilt perpetrated under cover of darkness in the 

 soil below; how the broom-rape and beech-drops lost their 

 honest green color; and, finally, the foxgloves show us plants 

 with their faces so newly turned toward the path of perdition, 

 their larceny so petty, that only the expert in criminal botany 

 cases condemns them. Like its cousins the gerardias (p. 146), 

 the downy false foxglove is only a partial parasite, attaching its 

 roots by disks or suckers to the roots of white oak or witch 

 hazel (p. 302); not only that, but, quite as frequently, groping 

 blindly in the dark, it fastens suckers on its own roots, actually 

 thieving from itself ! It is this piratical tendency which makes 

 transplanting of foxgloves into our gardens so very difficult, even 

 when lifted with plenty of their beloved vegetable mould. The 

 term false foxglove, it should be explained, is by no means one of 

 reproach for dishonesty; it was applied simply to distinguish this 

 group of plants from the true foxgloves cultivated, not wild, here, 

 which yield digitalis to the doctors. 



But if these foxgloves live at others' expense, there are 

 creatures which in turn prey upon them. Caterpillars of a peacock 

 butterfly, known as the buckeye (Junonia coenia), with eye-like 

 spots on its tawny, reddish-gray wings, divide their unwelcome 

 attentions between various species of plantain, the snapdragon 

 in the garden, gerardias, and foxgloves. 



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