Rea and Indefinites 



of cattle by a disagreeable odor suggesting a nest of mice, and 

 foliage that tastes even worse than it smells ; by hairs on its stem 

 that act as a light screen as well as a stockade against pilfering 

 ants ; by humps on the petals that hide the nectar from winged 

 trespassers on the bees and butterflies' preserves, the hound's tongue 

 goes into the battle of life further armed with barbed seeds that sheep 

 must carry in their fleece, and other animals, including most unwill- 

 ing humans, transport to fresh colonizing ground. For a plant to 

 shower its seeds beside itself is almost fatal ; so many offspring im- 

 poverish the soil and soon choke each other to death, if, indeed, ants 

 and such crawlers have not devoured the seeds where they lie on the 

 ground. Some plants hke the violet, jewel-weed, and witch-hazel 

 forcibly eject theirs a few inches, feet, or yards. The wind blows 

 millions about with every gust. Streams and currents of water 

 carry others ; ships and railroads give free transportation to quanti- 

 ties among the hay used in packing ; birds and animals lift many on 

 their feet — Darwin raised 537 plants from a ball of mud carried be- 

 tween the toes of a snipe ! — and such feathered and furred agents as 

 feed on berries and other fruits sometimes drop the seeds a thousand 

 riiiles from the parent. But it will be noticed that such vagabonds 

 as travel by the hook or by crook method, getting a lift in the 

 world from every passer-by — burdocks, beggar-ticks, cleavers, 

 pitchforks, Spanish needles, and scores of similar tramps that we 

 pick off our clothing after every walk in autumn — make, perhaps, 

 the most successful travellers on the globe. The hound's tongue's 

 four nutlets, grouped in a pyramid, and with barbed spears as grap- 

 pling-hooks, imbed themselves in our garments until they pucker 

 the cloth. Wool growers hurl anathemas at this whole tribe of 

 plants. 



A near relative, the common Virginia Stickseed {^Lappula 

 Virginiana) — C Morisoni of Gray — produces similar little barbed 

 nutlets, following insignificant, tiny, palest blue or white flowers 

 up the spike. These bristling seeds, shaped like sad-irons, reflect 

 in their title the ire of the persecuted man who named them Beg- 

 gar's Lice. If, as Emerson said, a weed is a plant whose virtues 

 have not yet been discovered, the hound's tongue, the similar 

 but blue-flowered Wild Comfrey (C. Virginicum), next of kin, and 

 the stickseed are no weeds ; forages ago the caterpillars of certain 

 tiger moths learned to depend on their foliage as a food store. 



Oswego Tea; Bee Balm; Indian's Plume; 

 Fragrant Balm; Mountain Mint 



(Monarda didyma) Mint family 



Flowers— Scarlet., clustered in a solitary, terminal, rounded head of 

 dark-red calices, with leafv bracts below it. Calyx narrow, 



25 i^S 



