CHAPTER V 



YELLOW, PALE YELLOW. ORANGE 



Golden Club 



Orontium aquaticum. — Family, Arum. Color, yellow. A scape 

 i foot or so tall rises out of the water terminated by a nar- 

 row leafless spadix of rich yellow color, covered with small, per- 

 fect, yellow flowers. The lower flowers contain 6 sepals and 

 stamens, the upper, 4 of each. The spathe which incloses the 

 very young spadix, after a time, becomes bract-like, imperfect, 

 remaining merely as a sheath at the base of the scape, or it 

 wholly drops off. Leaves, lance-shaped or oblong, on long petioles, 

 varying with the depth of the water, dark green and velvet-like 

 above, pale underneath, all from root. Floating on top of the 

 water. Scape reaches beyond the flowering spadix. May. 



An aquatic perennial. Massachusetts to Florida, in ponds 

 and sluggish streams not far from the coast. 



Yellow-eyed Grass 

 Xyris flexudsa. — Family, Yellow-eyed Grass. Color, yellow. 

 Flowers, attended by a bract, crowded into a cone-like, small 

 head. Sepals and petals, 3. Stamens, 3 fertile, 3 sterile alter- 

 nating with the fertile. Style, 3 -cleft. Leaves, grass-like, twisted. 

 Summer. 



In the sandy marshes, with cranberry, sundew, and 

 marsh St. John's-wort, the little yellow dots of xyris are 

 everywhere. It rises tall, a foot or more, with a somewhat 

 flattened stem, bearing at the top a small, brownish, nearly 

 round head of scales. If we call it a tiny pine-cone, no 

 bigger than a small pea, we give it as the naked eye sees it. 

 From the top of this cone, or a little to one side, spring 1,2, 

 or 3 flowers, each showing just 3 wide-open golden petals. 

 There are also 3 small sepals, one larger than the others, 

 fringed with short hairs. The stem, and often the leaves, are 

 twisted. Botanically the little cone is a head of bracts, 



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