HARPER'S GUIDE TO WILD FLOWERS 



are often caught and drowned in the accumulation of rain- 

 water within the channels of the leaf-stalks. 



Sweet Flag 



Acorus Calamus. — Family, Arum. The flowers are borne on 

 a spadix which emerges from one side of a leaf-like scape. They 

 consist of stamens and pistils, with 6 sepals. The scape is much 

 prolonged beyond the flowers, and answers to the spathe in our 

 Jack-in-the-pulpit. Leaves, ribbon - like, sharp on both edges. 

 May and June. 



Every boy knows that sweet flag root is good to eat, es- 

 pecially when boiled, cut in slices, and dried in sugar. It is 

 the creeping rootstock which is edible. 



Duckweed 



Spirodela polyrhtza. — Family, Duckweed. Flowers seldom 

 seen. Leaves and whole plant very small, floating free on water 

 without stems and true leaves, the latter being loosely cellular 

 bodies, two or three together, dark green above, sometimes pur- 

 plish beneath. 



This family comprises our smallest flowering plants. The 

 tiny growths cover the top of the water at the time of their 

 vegetating, in spring and summer. Each flower consists of 

 a single stamen or pistil, springing from the edge or upper 

 surface of the plant. In nearly all our pools and ponds. 



Ivy-leaved Duckweed 



Lemna trisutca. — Family, Duckweed. The leaf (here called a 

 frond) has a little cleft in its margin from which the small flowers 

 spring. Generally there are three flowers, two of them consisting 

 of a stamen only, one of a pistil only. The fronds taper to a 

 point, and often several are connected in a sort of chain. Com- 

 mon in shallow ponds, ditches, and springs. 



Bunch-flower 



Melanthiam <virginicum. — Family, Lily. Flowers crowded or 

 bunched at the end of a tall, unbranched, leafy stem. They form 

 a large panicle of which the lower flowers are staminate, the upper 

 pistillate. The 6 divisions of the perianth are raised on claws, at 

 the summit of which is a large double gland. After blossoming 

 the flowers become brownish. Leaves, narrow and grass-like, the 

 lower ones clasping the stem, often a foot long, growing small 

 toward the top. June to August. 



Wet meadows and woods, beside banks of streams, from 

 New England to Florida and Texas. 



