Magenta to Pink 



hairs. Leaves: Opposite, seated on stem, long, narrow, 

 pointed, erect. Fruit: a i -celled, many-seeded capsule. 



Preferred Habitat — Wheat and other grain fields ; dry, waste places. 



Flowering Season — ^July — September. 



Distribution — United States at large; most common in Central 

 and Western States. Also in Europe and Asia. 



"AUons! aliens! sow'd cockle, reap'd no corn," exclaims 

 Biron in "Love's Labor Lost." Evidently the farmers even in 

 Shakespeare's day counted this brilliant blossom the pest it has 

 become in many of our own grain fields just as it was in ancient 

 times, when Job, after solemnly protesting his righteousness, 

 called on his own land to bear record against him if his words 

 were false. "Let thistles grow instead of wheat, and cockle 

 instead of barley," he cried, according to James the First's trans- 

 lators ; but the "noisome weeds" of the original text seem to 

 indicate that these good men were more anxious to give the 

 English people an adequate conception of Job's willingness to 

 suffer for his honor's sake than to translate literally. Possibly 

 the cockle grew in Southern Asia in Job's time : to-day its range 

 is north. 



Like many another immigrant to our hospitable shores, this 

 vigorous invader shows a tendency to outstrip native blossoms 

 in life's race. Having won in the struggle for survival in the old 

 country, where the contest has been most fiercely waged for 

 centuries, it finds life here easy, enjoyable. What are its methods 

 for insuring an abundance of fertile seed ? We see that the tube 

 of the flower is so nearly closed by the stamens and five-styled 

 pistil as to be adapted only to the long, slender tongues of moths 

 and butterflies, for which benefactors it became narrow and deep 

 to reserve the nectar. A certain night-flying moth (one of the 

 Dianthcecia) fertilizes flowers of this genus exclusively, and its 

 larvae feed on their unripe seeds as a staple. Bees and some 

 long-tongued flies seen about the corn cockle doubtless get pollen 

 only; but there are few flowers so deep that the longest-tongued 

 bees cannot sip them. Butterflies, attracted by the bright color 

 of the flower — and to them color is the most catchy of advertise- 

 ments — are guided by a few dark lines on the petals to the nectary. 



Soon after the blossom opens, five of the stamens emerge from 

 the tube and shed their pollen on the early visitor. Later, the 

 five other stamens empty the contents of their anthers on more 

 tardy comers. Finally, when all danger of self-fertilization is 

 past, the styles stretch upward, and the butterfly, whose head is 

 dusted with pollen brought from earlier flowers, necessarily leaves 

 some on their sticky surfaces as he takes the leavings in the 

 nectary. 



So much cross-fertilized seed as the plant now produces and 

 scatters through the grain fields may well fill the farmer's prosaic 



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