Yellow and Orange 



along fences, by roadsides, and in forgotten corners, — redroot, 

 ragweed, vervain, golden-rod, burdock, elecampane, thistles, 

 teasels, nettles, asters, etc., — hov/ they lift themselves up as if not 

 afraid to be seen now ! They are all outlaws ; every man's hand 

 is against them ; yet how surely they hold their own ! They love 

 the roaside, because here they are comparatively safe ; and ragged 

 and dusty, like the common tramps that they are, they form one 

 of the characteristic features of early fall." 



Yet the elecampane has not always led a vagabond existence. 

 Once it had its passage paid across the Atlantic, because special 

 virtue was attributed to its thick, mucilaginous roots as a horse- 

 medicine. For over two thousand years it has been employed b^ 

 home doctors in Europe and Asia ; and at first Old World immi- 

 grants thought they could not live here without the plant on their 

 farms. Once given a chance to naturalize itself, no composite is 

 slow in seizing it. The vigorous elecampane, rearing its fringy, 

 yellow disks above lichen-covered stone walls in New England, the - 

 Virginia rail fence, and the rank weedy growth along barbed- wire 

 barriers farther west, now bids fair to cross the continent. 



Cup-plant; Indian-cup; Ragged Cup; Rosin- 

 plant 



{Silphium perfoliatum) Thistle family 



Flower-heads — Yellow, nearly flat, 2 to ^ in. across ; 20 to 30 nar- 

 row, pistillate ray florets, about i m. long, overlapping in 2 

 or 3 series around the perfect but sterile disk florets. Stem : 

 4 to 8 ft. tall, square, smooth, usually branched above. 

 Leaves: Opposite, ovate, upper ones united by their bases to 

 form a cup ; lower ones large, coarsely toothed, and narrowed 

 into margined petioles ; all filled with resinous juice. 



Preferred Habitat— mo\%\. soil, low ground near streams. 



Flowering Season — July — September. 



Distribution — Ontario, New York, and Georgia, westward to 

 Minnesota, Nebraska, and Louisiana. 



It behooves a species related to the wonderful compass-plant 

 (see p. 346) to do something unusual with its leaves ; hence this 

 one makes cups to catch rain by uniting its upper pairs. Darwin's 

 experiments with infinitesimal doses of ammonia in stimulating leaf 

 activity may throw some light on this singular arrangement. So 

 many plants provide traps to catch rain, although fourteen gallons 

 of it contain only one grain of ammonia, that we must believe there 

 is a wise physiological reason for calling upon the leaves to assist 

 the roots in absorbing it. A native of Western prairies, the cup- 

 plant has now become naturalized so fer east as the neighbor- 

 hood of New York City. 



83 353 



