Aug^ist and September Plants. 



289 



are at home on upland, prairie and morass. These abound in 

 all_ parts of the United States. They yield abundance of rich, 

 golden honey, with flavor that is unsurpassed by any other. 

 Fortunate the apiarist who can boast of a thicket of Solida-- 

 goes in his locality. 



The many plants usually styled sun-flowers, because of their 

 resemblance to our cultivated plants of that name, which 

 deck the hill-side, meadow, and marsh-land, now unfurl their 

 Fig. 160. 



Golden-Eod. 



Aster. 



showy involucres, and open their modest corollas, to invite 

 the myriad insects to sip the precious nectar which each of the 

 clustered flowers secretes. Our cultivated sunflowers, I think, 

 are indiflferent honey plants, though some think them big with 

 beauty, and their seeds are relished by poultry. But the asters 

 (Fig. 161), so wide-spread, the beggar-ticks, Bidens, and Span- 

 ish-needles of our marshes, the tick-seed. Coreopsis, also, of the 

 low, marshy places, with hundreds more of the great family 

 Compositse, are replete with precious nectar, and with favor- 

 able seasons make the apiarist who dwells in their midst jubi- 



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