From Blue to Purple 



Distribution — United Stales east of Kansas, north of New Jersey. 

 Canada, Europe, and Asia. 



More beautiful than the graceful flowers are the drooping 

 cymes of bright berries, turning from green to yellow, then to 

 orange and scarlet, in the tangled thicket by the shady roadside in 

 autumn, when the unpretending, shrubby vine, that has crowded 

 its way through the rank midsummer vegetation, becomes a joy 

 to the eye. Another bittersweet, so-called, festoons the hedge- 

 rows with yellow berries which, bursting, showtheirscarlet-coated 

 seeds. Rose hips and mountain-ash berries, among many other 

 conspicuous bits of color, arrest attention, but not for us we're they 

 designed. Now the birds are migrating, and, hungry with their 

 long flight, they gladly stop to feed upon fare so attractive. Hard, 

 indigestible seeds traverse the alimentary canal without alteration 

 and are deposited many miles from the parent that bore them. 

 Nature's methods for widely distributing plants cannot but stir 

 the dullest imagination. 



The purple pendent llowers of this nightshade secrete no 

 nectar, therefore many insects let them alone; but it is now be- 

 lieved that no part of the plant is poisonous. Certainly one that 

 claims the potato, tomato, and egg-plant among its kin has no 

 right to be dangerous. The Black, Garden, or Deadly Nightshade, 

 also called Morel (S. nigrum), bears jet-black berries that are alleged 

 to be fatal. Nevertheless, female bumblebees, to which its white 

 flowers are specially adapted, visit them to draw out pollen from 

 the chinks of the anthers with their jaws, just as they do in the 

 case of the wild, sensitive plant, and with no more disastrous 

 result. It has been well said that the nightshades are a blessing 

 both to the sick and to the doctors, the present species takes 

 its name from diticis, sweet, and aiimras, bitter, referring to 

 the taste of the juice; the generic name is derived from solamcn. 

 solace or consolation, referring to the relief afforded by the nar- 

 cotic properties of some of these plants. 



Blue or Wild Toadflax; Blue Linaria 



{Liiiaria Cnimdciisis) Figwort family 



Flotuers — Pale blue to purple, small, irregular, in slender spikes. 

 Calyx s-pointed; corolla 2-lipped, with curved spur longer 

 than its tube, which is nearly closed by a white, 2-ridged pro- 

 jection or palate; the upper lip erect', 2-lobed; lower lip 3- 

 lobed, spreading. Stamens 4, in pairs, in throat; i pistil. 

 Stem: Slender, weak, of sterile shoots, prostrate; flowering 

 stem, ascending or erect, 4 in. to 2 ft. high. Leaves .■ Small, 

 linear, alternately scattered along stem, or oblong in pairs or 

 threes on leafy sterile shoots. 



51 



