White and Greenish 



fact that from its wild varieties the famous Lawton and Kitta- 

 tinny blaclcberries have been derived. The late Peter Henderson 

 used to tell how the former came to be introduced. A certain 

 IVIr. Secor found an unusually fine blackberry growing wild in a 

 hedge at New Rochelle, New York, and removed it to his gar- 

 den, where it increased apace. But not even for a gift could he 

 induce a neighbor to relieve him of the superfluous bushes, so lit- 

 tle esteemed were blackberries in his day. However, a shrewd 

 lawyer named Lawton at length took hold of it, exhibited the 

 fruit, advertised it cleverly, and succeeded in pocketing a snug 

 little fortune from the sale of the prolific plants. Another fine 

 variety of the common wild blackberry, which was discovered by 

 a clergyman at the edge of the woods on the Kittatinny Moun- 

 tains in New Jersey, has produced fruit under skilled cultivation 

 that still remains the best of its class. When clusters of blos- 

 soms and fruit in various stages of green, red, and black hang on 

 the same bush, few ornaments in Nature's garden are more 

 decorative. 



Because bramble flowers show greater executive ability than 

 the raspberries do, they flaunt much larger petals, and spread 

 them out flat to attract insect workers as well as to make room 

 for the stamens to spread away from the stigmas — an arrange- 

 ment which gives freer access to the nectar secreted in a fleshy 

 ring at the base. Heavy bumblebees, which require a firm sup- 

 port, naturally alight in the centre, just as they do in the wild 

 roses (p. 98), and deposit on the early maturing stigmas some 

 imported pollen. They may therefore be regarded as the truest 

 benefactors, and it will be noticed that for their special benefit the 

 nectar is rather deeply concealed, where short-tongued insects 

 cannot rob them of it. Small bees, which come only to gather 

 pollen from first the outer and then the inner rows of stamens, 

 and a long list of other light-weight visitors, too often alight on 

 the petals to effect cross-fertilization regularly, but they usually 

 self-fertilize the blossoms. Competition between these flowers 

 and the next is fierce, for their seasons overlap. 



The Dewberry or Low Running Blackberry (/?. Canadensis), 

 that trails its woody stem by the dusty roadside, in dry fields, 

 and on sterile, rocky hillsides, calls forth maledictions from the 

 bare-footed farmer's boy, except during June and July, when its 

 prickles are freely forgiven it in consideration of the delicious, 

 black, seedy berries it bears. He is the last one in the world to 

 confuse this vine with the Swamp Blackberry {R. hispidus), a 

 smaller flowered runner, slender and weakly prickly as to its 

 stem, and insignificant and sour as to its fruit. Its greatest 

 charm is when we come upon it in some low meadow in winter, 

 when its still persistent, shining, large leaves, that have taken 

 on rich autumnal reds, glow among the dry, dead weeds and 

 grasses. 



201 



