From Blue to Purple 



;'s abruptly dilated above the calyx, measures nearly two inches 

 long. Its sterile filament, curved over at the summit, is bearded 

 there only. 



Handsomest of all is the Cobea Beard-tongue, a native of the 

 Southwest, with a broadly rounded, bell-shaped corolla, hairy 

 without, like the leaves, but smooth within. The pale purple 

 blossom, delicately suffused with yellow, and pencilled with red 

 lines — pathfinders for the bees — has the base of its tube creamy 

 white. Few flowers hang from each stout clammy spike. 



The more densely crowded spikes of the large Smooth 

 Beard-tongue {P. glaber), a smaller blue or purple flowered, 

 narrower-leaved species, that shows an unusual preference for 

 moist soil throughout its range, is, like the other beard-tongues 

 mentioned, better known to the British gardener, perhaps, than 

 to Americans, who have yet to learn the value of many of their 

 wild flowers under cultivation. 



The tall Foxglove Beard-tongue {P. digitalis), with large, 

 showy white blossoms tinged with purple, the one most com- 

 monly grown in gardens here, escapes on the slightest encourage- 

 ment to run wild again from Maine to Virginia, west to Illinois 

 and Arkansas. Small bees crawl into the broad tube, and butter- 

 flies drain the nectar evidently secreted for long-tongued bees, 

 but without certainly transferring pollen. To insure cross-fertili- 

 zation, the flower first develops its anthers, whose saw-edges 

 grating against the visitor's thorax, aid in sifting out the dry 

 pollen; and later the style, which when immature clung to the 

 top of the corolla, lowers its receptive stigma to oppose the bee's 

 entrance. Professor Robertson has frequently detected the com- 

 mon wasp nipping holes with her sharp jaws in the base of the 

 tube. With remarkable intelligence she invariably chose to insert 

 her tongue at the precise spots where the nectar is stored on 

 either side of the sterile filament. 



Blue-eyed Mary; Innocence; Broad-leaved 



Colllnsia 



{ColUnsia verna) Figwort family 



Plowers— On slender, weak stalks ; whorled in axils of upper leaves. 

 Blue on lower lip of corolla, its middle lobe folded lengthwise 

 to enclose 4 adhering stamens and i pistil ; upper lip white, 

 with scalloped margins; corolla from J^ to % in. long, its 

 throat about equalling the deeply 5-cleft calyx. Stem : Hoary, 



55 



