From Blue to Purple 



Preferred Habitat — Dry soil, gravel, or sand. 



Flowering Season — May — October. 



Distribution — North, Central, and South Americas. 



Sometimes lying prostrate in the dust, sometimes erect, the 

 linaria's delicate spikes of bloom wear an air of injured innocence; 

 yet the plant, weak as it looks, has managed to spread over three 

 Americas from ocean to ocean. More beautiful than the rather 

 scrawny flowers are the tufts of cool green foliage made by the 

 sterile shoots that take complete possession of a wide area around 

 the parent plants. 



Unlike its relative butter-and-eggs, the corolla of this toadflax 

 is so contracted that bees cannot enter it; but by inserting their 

 long tongues, they nevertheless manage to drain it. Small, short- 

 tongued bees contrive to reach only a little nectar. The palate, 

 so valuable to the other linaria, has in this one lost its function; 

 and the larger flies, taking advantage of the flower's weakness, 

 pilfer both sweets and pollen. Butterflies, to which a slender- 

 spurred flower is especially attractive, visit this one in great num- 

 bers, and as they cannot regale themselves without touching the 

 anthers and stigma, they may be regarded as the legitimate visitors. 



Wolf, rat, mouse, sow, cow, cat, snake, dragon, dog, toad, are 

 among the many animal prefixes to the names of flowers that the 

 English country people have given for various and often most in- 

 teresting reasons. Just as dog, used as a prefix, expresses an 

 idea of worthlessness to them, so toad suggests a spurious plant; 

 the toadflax being made to bear what is meant to be an odious 

 name because before flowering it resembles the true flax, linum, 

 from which the generic title is derived. 



Maryland Figwort; Bee Plant; Knotted Fig- 

 wort; Heal-all; Pilewort 



{Scrophitlaria Marylandica) Figwort family 



(5. nodosa of Gray.) 



Flowers — Very small, dull green on outside ; vivid, shining brown- 

 ish purple within ; borne in almost leafless terminal clusters 

 on slender stems. Calyx 5-parted ; corolla of 5 rounded 

 lobes, the 2 upper ones erect, side ones ascending, lower 

 one bent downward ; 5 stamens, 4 of them twin-like and 

 bearing anthers, the fifth sterile, a mere scale on roof of 

 the globular corolla tube ; style with knot-like stigma. 

 Stem: From 3 to 10 ft. high, square, with grooved sides, 

 widely branching. Leaves: From 3 to 12 in. long, oblong, 

 pointed, coarsely toothed, on slender stems, strong smelling. 



52 



