Magenta to Pink 



Preferred Habitat — Dry soil, fields, roadsides, especially in burnt- 

 over districts. 



Flowering Season — June — September. 



Distribution — From Atlantic to Pacific, with few interruptions ; 

 British Possessions and United States southward to the Caro- 

 linas and Arizona. Also Europe and Asia. 



Spikes of these beautiful brilliant flowers towering upward 

 above dry soil, particularly where the woodsman's axe and forest 

 fires have devastated the landscape, illustrate Nature's abhorrence 

 of ugliness. Other kindly plants have earned the name of fire- 

 weed, but none so quickly beautifies the blackened clearings of 

 the pioneer, nor blossoms over the charred trail in the wake of the 

 locomotive. Beginning at the bottom of the long spike, the 

 flowers open in slow succession upward throughout the summ.er, 

 leaving behind the attractive seed-vessels, which, splitting length- 

 wise in September, send adrift white silky tufts attached to seeds 

 that will one day cover far distant wastes with beauty. Almost 

 perfect rosettes, made by the young plants, are met with on one's 

 winter walks. 



Epi, upon, and lohos, a pod, combine to make a name ap- 

 plicable to many flowers of this family. In general structure the 

 fire-weed closely resembles its relative the evening primrose. 

 Bees, not moths, however, are its benefactors. Coming to a 

 newly opened flower, the bee finds abundant pollen on the an- 

 thers and a sip of nectar in the cup below. At this stage the 

 flower keeps its still immature style curved downward and back- 

 ward lest it should become self-fertilized — an evil ever to be 

 guarded against by ambitious plants. In a few days, or after the 

 pollen has been removed, up stretches the style, spreading its 

 four receptive stigmas just where an in-coming bee, well dusted 

 from a younger flower, must certainly leave some pollen on their 

 sticky surfaces. (Illustration, p. 132.) 



The Great Hairy Willow-herb {Epilobium hirsutum), whose 

 white tufted seeds came over from Europe in the ballast to be 

 blown over Ontario and the Eastern States, spreads also by 

 underground shoots, until it seems destined to occupy wide 

 areas. In these showy magenta flowers, about one inch across, 

 the stigmas and anthers mature simultaneously ; but cross-fertili- 

 zation is usually insured because the former surpass the latter, 

 and naturally are first touched by the insect visitor. In default 

 of visits, however, the stigmas, at length curling backward, come 

 in contact with the pollen-laden anthers. The fire-weed, on the 

 contrary, is unable to fertilize itself 



A pale magenta-pink or whitish, very small-flowered, branch- 

 ing species, one to two feet high, found in swamps from New 



"9 



