COMPOSITE FAMILY 



Receptacle. — Convex, beset with linear chaff. 



Pappus. — Many soft bristles. 



Akenes. — Oblong, slightly compressed. 



The Centaureas are known as Hard-heads or Knapweeds, due 

 to the compact involucre that surrounds the head of florets. 

 Bachelor's Button is a name shared with several flowers, notably 

 the double buttercup, RanHnculus dcris, and Gomphrena globdsa, 

 but Cornflower and Kaiserblume are personal. The herb is a 

 weed infesting the wheat fields of central Europe; one often sees 

 on the Continent, as the wind waves sweep over the growing wheat, 

 a mist of blue showing at every depression. The well-known 

 incident of Queen Louise of Prussia, flying with her children 

 before the advancing armies of Napoleon, and upon some delay 

 keeping the little ones good and happy by playing with the blue 

 blossoms of the field, has endeared this flower to the German 

 people. For one of those little boys became the old Kaiser, 

 William I, Emperor of Germany, and in memory of that day the 

 Cornflower was ever his favorite blossom, and to his people it has 

 become the Kaiserblume. 



The starry heads fairly twinkle as the wind stirs their long, sway- 

 ing stems, for the showy outer florets are tiny cornucopias set on a 

 circle around the disk. The inner florets are much smaller, have 

 slender linear lobes, and may be the same color as the outer florets 

 or different; in the type they are usually the same. The five 

 stamens may likewise be the color of the floret; all this re-enforces 

 the prevailing color. 



By midsummer the bloom is past and the bed a desolation, but 

 that is true of poppies, sweet-williams, and all the bulbs. It cannot 

 be required of any flower that it should live forever, and if the bed 

 is properly picked the blooming season is lengthened. If it should 

 chance to be undisturbed, in late September there will be a plentiful 

 crop of seedlings, and if undisturbed until the following spring 

 there will be blooming plants in May. 



The Mountain Cornflower, Centaurea montana, is a perennial 

 species from Austria. The leaves are cottony; the flower-heads 



SCO 



