Yellow and Orange 



both smelling and looking like the same thing — a piece of raw 

 meat past its prime. Bees and butterflies, with their highly de- 

 veloped aesthetic sense, ever delighting in beautiful colors, perfume, 

 and nectar, naturally let such flowers as these alone — another ob- 

 ject aimed at by them, for then the flies get all the pollen they can 

 eat. Some they transfer, of course, from the larger staminate 

 flowers to the smaller pistillate ones as they crawl over one umbel 

 of the carrion-flower, then alight on another. 



Presently fruit begins to set, and we can approach the luxu- 

 riant vine without offence to our noses. The beautiful glossy 

 green foliage takes on resplendent tints in early autumn — again 

 with interested motives, l^or are there not seeds within the little 

 bluish-black berries, waiting for the birds to distribute them dur- 

 ing their migration ? 



The vicious Catbrier, Greenbrier, or Horsebrier (S. rotiniJi- 

 folia), similar to the preceding, except that its four-angled stem 

 is well armed with green prickles, its beautiful glossy, iJecorative 

 leaves are more rounded, and its greenish flower umbels lack 

 foul odor, scarcely needs description. Who has not encountered 

 it in the roadside and woodland thickets, where it defiantly bars 

 the way ? 



In the most inaccessible part of such a briery tangle, that rol- 

 licking polyglot, the yellow-breasted chat, loves to hide its nest. 

 Indeed, many birds can say with Brer Rabbit that they were 

 "bred en bawn in a brier-patch." Throughout the eastern half 

 of the United States and Upper Canada the catbrier displays its 

 insignificant little blossoms from April to June for a miscellaneous 

 lot of flies — insects which are content with the slightest floral 

 attractions offered. The florist's staple vine popularly known as 

 "Smilax" (Myrsiphylliiin asparagoides), a native of the Cape of 

 Good Hope, is not even remotely connected with true Smilaceae. 



Yellow Star-grass 



{Hypoxis hirsuta) Amaryllis family 

 {H. erecta of Gray) 



Flowers — Bright yellow within, greenish and hairy outside, about 

 y^ in. across, 6-parted; the perianth divisions spreading, nar- 

 rowly oblong; a few flowers at the summit of a rough, hairy 

 scape 2 to 6 in. high. Leaves: All from an egg-shaped 

 corm; mostly longer than scapes, slender, grass-like, more 

 or less hairy. 



Preferred Habitat — Dry, open woods, prairies, grassy waste places, 

 fields. 



283 



