
130 PLANTS GROWING IN MOIST SOIL. 
Its colour and setting are lovely, and one cannot but fancy it 
might open its petals and be pleasant and chatty if it would. 
But it won’t ; its mood is selfish and its lobes are not fashioned 
in the orthodox way. Of course there is a great deal of theory 
in its closed corolla ; it protects its delicate organs from the 
cold of the late season, and all other evils to which they might 
be exposed, Happily, we can turn to the fringed gentian, 
which is more considerate of our feelings. A strong suspicion 
is afloat that if the closed gentiandid let out its petals they 
would not be so beautifully fringed as those of its relative, and 
this is the reason, perhaps, that it is so sulky. 
SNEEZEWEED. SWAMP SUNFLOWER. (Pilate LXVZ) 
Heléenzum autumnatle. 
FAMILY COLOUR ODOUR RANGE TIME OF BLOOM 
Composite. Yellow. Scentless. General. Late summer and autumn. 
Flower-heads: growing singly, or clustered loosely in a corymb and com- 
posed of both ray and disk flowers ; the rays three to five-cleft at the summit. 
Leaves: alternate; lanceolate ; thick. Stem: one to six feet high ; smooth ; 
angled ;_ branched. 
The swamp sunflower, while greatly pleasing the eye by 
illuminating the low fields and swamps in the autumn, is on the 
high road to making itself a most disagreeable member of the 
floral world. The flowers of the older plants are very poison- 
ous to animals. Usually their instinct prevents them from eat- 
ing of them; but the plant is one of those insidious things for 
which a taste can be cultivated. Cows have been known to — 
cultivate this fatal taste, when their milk and meat were made 
bitter. If the plant be eaten in great quantities the animal 
dies. Ina dried and powdered form it causes violent sneezing, 
for which purpose it is well known in medicine. Once that it 
has established itself in a field it is most difficult to exterminate 
and adds one more to the trials of the poor farmer. 
HT, nudiflorum, purple-head sneezeweed, grows in the south 
and west. It blossoms from June until October. The name 
purple-head alludes to the disk flowers, as the rays are yellow 
with a brownish base. 

