YelloTiir and Orange 



Dark grayish green, clover-Iike leaves, and small, bright 

 yellow flowers growing in loose clusters at the ends of the 

 branches of a bushy little plant, are so commonly met with they 

 need little description. A relative, the true indigo-bearer, a 

 native of Asia, once commonly grown in the Southern States 

 when slavery made competition with Oriental labor possible, has 

 locally escaped and become naturalized. But the false species, 

 although, as Dr. Gray says, it yields "a poor sort of indigo," 

 yields a most valuable medicine employed by the homoeopathists 

 m malarial fevers. The plant turns black in drying. As in the 

 case of other papilionaceous blossoms, bees are the visitors best 

 adapted to fertilize the flowers. When we see the little, sleepy, 

 dusky- winged butterfly (r^anaos bri^o) around the plant we may 

 know she is there only to lay eggs, that the larvae and caterpillars 

 may find their favorite food at hand on waking into life. 



Rattle- Box 



{Crotalaria sagittalts) Pea family 



Flowers — Yellow, % in. long or less, usually only 2 or 3 on a long 

 peduncle. Calyx 5-toothed, slightly 2-lipped ; corolla papili- 

 onaceous. Stem: 3 to 10 in. high, weak, hairy. Leaves: 

 Alternate, simple, oval to lance-shaped ; stipules arrow- 

 shaped above and running along stem. Fruit: An inflated 

 oblong pod I in. long, blackish, seedy. 



Preferred Habitat— Dry , sandy, open situations. 



Flowering Season — June — September. 



Distribution — New England and Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico. 



These insignificant little yellow flowers attract scant notice 

 from human observers accustomed to associate their generic name 

 with some particularly beautiful relatives from the West Indies 

 grown in hothouses here. But did not small bees alight on the 

 keel and depress it, as in the lupine, next of kin (see p. 22), there 

 might be no seeds to rattle in the dark inflated pods that so de- 

 light children. (Krotalon—a castanet.) 



Yellow Sweet Clover; Yellow Melllot 



{Melilotus officinalis) Pea family 



Resembling the white sweet clover, except in color. (See 

 p. 208.) 



310 



