CROWFOOT FAMILY 41 
mone but it may easily be distinguished by its 
roots, which are fibrous rather than tuberous, and 
by its branching stems from which the flowers 
arise in different places. The plant is five to ten 
inches high. The blossoms expand nearly an 
inch, being white, often slightly tinged with pink, 
with five petal-like sepals, many stamens and 
three to seven pistils. Mr. Charles Robertson . 
has found fifty species of insects visiting these 
blossoms in Illinois. He concludes that the flower 
is especially adapted to short-tongued insects, 
which get both honey and pollen from it. In view 
of these numerous visitors the blossom must be 
generally cross-pollenized. 
Witp CotumsBine. The Daisy was the flower 
James Montgomery had in mind when he wrote: 
But this bold floweret climbs the hill, 
Hides in the forest, haunts the glen, 
Plays on the margins of the rill, 
Peeps round the fox’s den. 
But the lines might well have been written of 
the lovely Wild Columbine. Along the rocky 
shores of the New England coast its nodding blos- 
soms color the hillsides in May, the scant soil yield- 
‘ing only sufficient nourishment for a growth of a 
foot or eighteen inches, while here and there in the 
richer margin of the rilloralong the borders of the 
forest, scattered plants reach a height of two feet 
