HONEYSUCKLE FAMILY 



CAPRIFOLIACEAE 



HORSE GENTIAN. WILD COFFEE 



Triosteum perfoliatum L. 



This interesting plant has various other names, such as Fever- 

 wort and Tinker's Weed. Formerly it was much used in medi- 

 cine, and it is said that Indians made a beverage from the fruits. 



It is found in rich, 

 low open woods from 

 Massachusetts to 

 Illinois and Nebraska, 

 south to Albama and 

 Missouri. 



The stout stem is 

 2-4 feet high and cov- 

 ered with fine gland- 

 ular hairs. Leaves, 

 calyx, corolla and the 

 filaments are also 

 somewhat hairy. The 4-9-inch leaves are 

 acute or acuminate, entire or wavy mar- 

 gined, soft hairy beneath and somewhat 

 hairy above, and are abruptly or gradu- 

 ally narrowed into clasping bases that join around the stem. 

 The plant blooms in May and June and the fruits ripen in 

 August and September. Perfect, sessile and 2-bracted flowers are 

 solitary or clustered in the leaf axils. The corolla is purplish 

 brown. The berries are orange-yellow, densely covered with fine 

 hairs, about one-half inch long, flat globular, and contain usually 

 3 single-seeded nutlets. 



The Scarlet-fruited Horse Gentian, Triosteum aurantiacum Bick- 

 nell, is a tall, coarse, open woodland perennial that flowers i-3 weeks 

 earlier and is to be found locally. The lower of the large broad leaves 

 are sessile by narrowly winged bases that do not clasp the stem. The 

 corolla is dull red with more spreading lobes than in the Horse 

 Gentian, and the half-inch fruit is a bright orange-red ellipsoid drupe. 



Another shrub of the Honeysuckle family is the Indian Currant 

 or Coralberry, Symphoricarpos orbiculatus Moench, uncommon or 

 absent in the extreme northern part of the state but abundant in 

 open woodland pastures and along roadsides farther south. It is 

 2-5 feet high, the branches light brown and soft hairy, and has 

 opposite, oval or ovate, entire leaves 1-2 inches long and very short 

 petioled. Pinkish flowers are produced in dense axillary spikes in 

 July. In fall the twigs are loaded with the purplish red berries, 

 which hang on and retain their color until late winter. 



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