Valuable Honey Plants. 255 



June, 'white clover, Alsike clover, and raspberries yield large- 

 ly of the most attractive honey, both as to appearance and 

 flavor. In July, the incomparable basswood makes both bees 

 and apiarist jubilant. In August, buckwheat offers a tribute, 

 which we -welcome, though it be dark and pungent in flavor, 

 while with us in Michigan, August and September give us a 

 profusion of bloom which yields to no other in the richness 

 of its capacity to secrete honey, and is not cut off till the au- 

 tumn frosts — usually about September 15. 



Thousands of acres of golden rod, boneset, asters, and 

 other autumn flowers of our new northern counties, as yet 

 have blushed unseen, with fragrance wasted. This unoccn- 

 pied territory, unsurpassed in its capability for fruit produc- 

 tion, covered with grand forests of maple and basswood, and ■ 

 spread with the richest of autumn bloom, offers opportunities 

 to the practical apiarist rarely equaled except in Texas and the 

 Pacific States. In these localities one or two hundred pounds 

 a season to the colony and its increase, is no surprise to the 

 apiarist, while even four or five hundred are not isolated 

 cases. 



In the following table will be found a list of valuable honey 

 plants. Those in the first column are annual, biennial, or 

 perennial ; the annual being enclosed in a parenthesis thus : ( ); 

 the biennial enclosed in brackets thus: [] ; while those in the 

 second column are shrubs or trees ; the names of shrubs being 

 enclosed in a parenthesis. The date of the commencement of 

 bloom is, of course, not invariable. The one appended, in 

 ease of plants which grow in our State, is about average for 

 Central Michigan. Those plants whose names appear in small 

 capitals yield very superior honey. Those with (a) are use- 

 ful for other purposes than honey secretion. All but those 

 with a * are native or very common in Michigan. Those writ- 

 ten in the plural re,fer to more than one species. Those fol- 

 lowed by a f are very numerous in species. Of course I have 

 not named all, as that would include some hundreds which 

 have been observed at the college, taking nearly all of the two 

 great orders, Compositse and Eosacese. T have only aimed 

 to give the most important, omitting many foreign plants of 

 notoriety, as I have had no personal knowledge of them. 



