Magenta to Pink 



Leaves: Clover-like, trefoliate. Fruit: A very small, hairy, 

 flat, rounded, acute pod. 



Preferred Habitat — Dry soil ; open, sandy places. 



Floivering Season — August — September. 



Distribution — Massachusetts to the Gulf, and westward to the Mis- 

 sissippi. 



Springing upward from a mass of clover-like leaves, these 

 showy little blossoms elevate themselves to arrest, not our atten- 

 tion, but the notice of the passing bee. As the claw of the stan- 

 dard petal and the calyx are short, he need not have a long tongue 

 to drain the nectary pointed out to him by a triangular white 

 mark at the base of the banner. Now, as his weight depresses 

 the incurved keel, wherein the vital organs are protected, the 

 stigma strikes the visitor in advance of the anthers, so that pollen 

 brought on his underside from another flower must come off on 

 this one before he receives fresh pollen to transfer to a third blos- 

 som. At first the keel returns to its original position when de- 

 presssed ; later it loses its elasticity. But besides these showy 

 flowers intended to be cross-fertilized by insects, the bush clovers 

 bear, among the others, insignificant-looking, tightly closed, bud- 

 like ones that produce abundant self-fertilized seed. The petal- 

 iferous flowers are simply to counteract the inevitable evils result- 

 ing from close inbreeding. One usually finds caterpillars of the 

 "dusky wings" butterfly feeding on the foliage and the similar 

 tick trefoils which are its staple. At night the bush clover leaves 

 turn upward, completely changing the aspect of these plants as 

 we know them by day. Michaux named the group of flowers for 

 his patron, Lespedez, a governor of Florida under the Spanish 

 regime. 



Perhaps the commonest of the tribe is the Violet Bush Clover 

 (L. violacea), a variable, branching, erect, or spreading plant, 

 sometimes only a foot high, or again three times as tall. Its thin 

 leaves are more elliptic than the decidedly clover-like ones of the 

 preceding species ; its rose-purple flowers are more loosely clus- 

 tered, and the stems are only sparingly hairy, never woolly. 



On the top of the erect, usually unbranched, but very leafy 

 stem of the Wand-like Bush Clover {L. frutescens), the two 

 kinds of flowers grow in a crowded cluster, and more sparingly 

 from the axils below. The clover-like leaflets, dark green and 

 smooth above, are paler and hairy below. Like the rest of its 

 kin, this bush clover delights in dry soil, particularly in open, 

 sandy places near woods of pine and oak. One readily distin- 

 guishes the Slender Bush Clover (L. Kirg/nira) by the very nar- 

 rowly oblong leaves along its wand, which bears two kinds of 

 bright rose flowers, clustered at the top chiefly, and in the axils. 



Yellowish-white flowers, about a quarter of an inch long, 

 and with a purplish-rose spot on the standard petal to serve as a 



104 



