From Blue to Purple 



Preferred Habitat^yiohi ground, hills, banks, grassy fields. 



Flowering Season — A p ri 1 — J u n e . 



Distribution — United States and Canada, east of the Mississippi. 



Like an aster blooming long before its season, Robin's plantain 

 wears a finely cut lavender fringe around a yellow disk of minute 

 florets ; but one of the first, not the last, in the long procession of 

 composites has appeared when we see gay companies of these 

 flowers nodding their heads above the grass in the spring breezes 

 as if they were village gossips. 



Doubtless it was the necessity for attracting insects which 

 led the Robin's plantain and other composites to group a quantity 

 of minute florets, each one of which was once an independent^ 

 detached blossom, into a common head. In union there is 

 strength. Each floret still contains, however, its own tiny drop 

 of nectar, its own stamens, its own pistil connected with em- 

 bryonic seed below ; therefore, when an insect alights where he 

 can get the greatest amount of nectar for the least effort, and turns 

 round and round to exhaust each nectary, he is sure to dust the 

 pistils with pollen, and so fertilize an entire flower-head in a trice. 

 The lavender fringe and the hairy involucre and stem serve the 

 end of discouraging crawling insects, which cannot transfer pollen 

 from plant to plant, from pilfering sweets that cannot be properly 

 paid for. Small wonder that, although the composites have 

 attained to their socialistic practices at a comparatively recent 

 day as evolutionists count time, they have become as individuals 

 and as species the most numerous in the world ; the thistle family, 

 dominant everywhere, containing not less than ten thousand 

 members. (Illustration, p. 40.) 



Common or Philadelphia Fleabane, or Skevish (£. Philadel- 

 phicus), a smaller edition of Robin's plantain, with a more finely 

 cut fringe, its reddish-purple ray florets often numbering one hun- 

 dred and fifty, may be found in low fields and woods throughout 

 North America, except in the circumpolar regions. 



Thistles 



(Carduus) Thistle family 



Is land fulfilling the primal curse because it brings forth 

 thistles ? So thinks the farmer, no doubt, but not the goldfinches 

 which daintily feed among the fluffy seeds, nor the bees, nor the 

 "painted lady," which may be seen in all parts of the world 

 where thistles grow, hovering about the beautiful rose-purple 

 flowers. In the prickly cradle of leaves, the caterpillar of this 

 thistle butterfly weaves a web around its main food store. 



76 



