Red and Indefinites 



pitcher over the band of stiff hairs, pointing downward like the 

 withes of a lobster pot, that form an inner covering, or to slip into 

 the well if they attempt crawling over its polished upper surface. 

 To fly upward in a perpendicular line once their wings are wet 

 is additionally hopeless, because of the hairs that guard the mouth 

 of the trap ; and so, after vain attempts to fly or crawl out of the 

 prison, they usually sink exhausted into a watery grave. 



When certain plants live in soil that is so poor in nitrogen 

 compounds that proteid formation is interfered with, they have 

 come to depend more or less on a carnivorous diet. The sundew 

 (see p. 192) actually digests its prey with the help of a gastric 

 juice similar to what is found in the stomach of animals ; but the 

 bladderwort (p. 335) and pitcher-plants can only absorb in the 

 form of soup the products of their victims' decay. Flies and gnats 

 drowned in these pitchers quickly yield their poor little bodies ; 

 but owing to the beetle's hard-shell covering, many a rare speci- 

 men may be rescued intact to add to a collection. 



A similar ogre plant is the yellow-flowered Trumpet-leaf 

 (S. flava) found in bogs in the Southern States. 



Ground-nut 



{Apios Apios) Pea family 

 {A. tuberosa of Gray) 



Flowers — Fragrant, chocolate brown and reddish purple, numerous, 

 about % in. long, clustered in racemes from the leaf-axils. 

 Calyx 2-lipped, corolla papilionaceous, the broad standard 

 petal turned backward, the keel sickle-shaped ; stamens within 

 it 9 and i. Stem: From tuberous, edible rootstock ; climbing, 

 slender, several feet long, the juice milky. Leaves: Com- 

 pounded of 5 to 7 ovate leaflets. Fruit: A leathery, slightly 

 curved pod, 2 to 4 in. long. 



Preferred Habitat— "X-^xmag about undergrowth and thickets in 

 moist or wet ground. 



Flowering Season — July — September. 



Distribution — ^New Brunswick to Ontario, south to the Gulf States 

 and Kansas. 



No one knows better than the omnivorous "barefoot boy " that 



" Where the ground-nut trails its vine " 



there is hidden something really good to eat under the soft, moist 

 soil where legions of royal fern, usually standing guard above it, 

 must be crushed before he digs up the coveted tubers. He would 

 be the last to confuse it with the Wild Kidney Bean or Bean Vine 



381 



