Yellow and Orange 



they come in contact with any pollen that has been carried out of 

 the tube by the sweeping brushes on their tips. Occasional self- 

 fertilization is surely better than setting no seed at all when insects 

 fail. Not a chance does the dandelion lose to " get on." 



After flowering, it again looks like a bud, lowering its head 

 to mature seed unobserved. Presently rising on a gradually 

 lengthened scape to elevate it where there is no interruption for 

 the passing breeze from surrounding rivals, the transformed head, 

 now globular, white, airy, is even more exquisite, set as it is with 

 scores of tiny parachutes ready to sail away. A child's breath 

 puffing out the time of day, a vireo plucking at the fluffy ball for 

 lining to put in its nest, the summer breeze, the scythe, rake, and 

 mowing machines, sudden gusts of winds sweeping the country 

 before thunderstorms — these are among the agents that set the 

 flying vagabonds free. In the hay used for packing they travel to 

 foreign lands in ships, and, once landed, readily adapt themselves 

 to conditions as they find them. After soaking in the briny ocean 

 for twenty-eight days — long enough for a current to carry them 

 a thousand miles along the coast — they are still able to germinate. 



The Dwarf Dandelion, Cynthia, or Virginia Goatsbeard {Ado- 

 pogon l^irginiciu)i) — formerly Krigia yirginica — with from two to 

 six long-peduncled, flat, deep yellow or reddish-orange flower 

 heads, about an inch and a half across, on the summit of its stem 

 from May to October, elects to grow in moist meadows, wood- 

 lands, and shady rocky places. How it glorifies them! From a 

 tuffet of spatulate, wavy-toothed or entire leaves, the smooth, 

 shining, branching stem arises, bearing a single oblong, clasping 

 leaf below the middle. Particularly beautiful is its silvery seed- 

 ball, the pappus consisting of about a dozen hairlike bristles inside 

 a ring of small oblong scales, on which the seed sails away. Range, 

 from Massachusetts to Manitoba, south to Georgia and Kansas. 



• •••••••••* 



A charming little plant, the Carolina Dwarf Dandelion or 

 Krigia {A. Carolinianum), once confounded with the above, 

 sends up several unbranched scapes from the same tuffet. It 

 blooms in dry, sandy soil from April to August, from Maine and 

 Minnesota to the Gulf Sta,tes. 



Like a small edition of Lowell's "dear common flower" is 

 the Tall Dandelion, or Autumnal Hawkbit {Leontodon autumnale), 

 its slender, wiry, branching scape six inches to two feet high, 

 terminated by several flower-heads, each on a separate peduncle, 

 which is usually a little thickened and scaly just below it. Only 

 forty to seventy five-toothed ray florets spread in a flat golden 

 disk from an oblong involucre. They close in rainy weather and 

 at night. From June to November, iii spite of its common name, 



343 



