MIDSUMMER WILD FLOWERS 



59 



A dainty and delicate perennial is this mod- 

 est flower, but with enough strength to climb 

 5,000 feet without turning a leaf. 



Another name of the bluebell is harebell, a 

 survival of the days of poor spellers, who 

 spelled hair with an "e." It was known^ in 

 Scotland as the "hairbell" because of the fila- 

 mental nature of its branches. Other old 

 English names for the bluebell were "ladies' 

 thimble" and "witch's thimble." 



The flowering season of the bluebell is from 

 June to September. 



TANSY OR BITTER BUTTON 



Tanacetum vulgare L. [Plate XV, left] 



The tansy is an example of a flower that has 

 not yet learned the art of display in advertis- 

 ing. By an effective use of white or colored 

 rays or petals, the ox-eye daisy, the black-eyed- 

 susan, and other flowers can accomplish more 

 with one head on a branch than the tansy does 

 with a dozen. Many plants have forty of these 

 heads, and each head contains some 400 florets, 

 16,000 florets to a plant. 



This plant grows from eighteen to forty 

 inches tall, loves the roadsides, and ranges 

 from Nova Scotia to North Carolina and Mis- 

 souri. It blooms from July to September. 



Like many another plant, the tansy came to 

 America as a cultivated herb. The colonists 

 thought they could not do without their tansy 

 herbs and bitters, and least of all without their 

 tansy tea. But, once here, the tansy got tired 

 of the coddling of the garden and gave ear to 

 the call of the wild. 



Under a lens the leaves are seen to be dotted 

 with glands containing the oil that gives the 

 plant its strongly aromatic flavor and scent. It 

 is this oil that has given the tansy its value in 

 medicine and cookery. 



SILVER ASTER 



Aster concolor L. [Plate XV, middle] 



Growing in dry, sandy soil near the coast, in 

 Massachusetts and southward, this attractive 

 member of the aster branch of the composite 

 family has a stem from two to three feet tall, 

 unbranched below the flower, and with leaves 

 crowded and pressed close to it. 



Sir John Lubbock was of the opinion that all 

 flowers originally were merely pistils and sta- 

 mens surrounded by green leaves. Blue has 

 been shown to be the favorite color of bees, 

 and in their efforts to please, the flowers have 

 first produced either white or yellow petals and 

 rays, and then have become red, as a rule, be- 

 fore being able to stand among the elite blues. 



EARLY GOLDENROD 



Solidago juncea Ait. [Plate XV, right] 



As was related in the biography of the field 

 goldenrod, which appeared in the June, 1917, 

 number of The Geographic, the goldenrods 

 have representatives in almost every month of 

 the floral calendar, in almost every kind of 

 soil, and in almost every locality. The sub- 

 ject of this sketch comes into bloom by the 



end of June and remains until the end of Sep- 

 tember. It grows from two to four feet tall 

 on dry, rocky banks and along roadsides from 

 Maine to North Carolina and westward to 

 Missouri. 



W 7 ith their wealth of blossoms the golden- 

 rods are indeed the merchant princes of flower- 

 land. Their showy display advertising catches 

 the eyes of innumerable hosts of insects, and 

 they do a land-office business in the distribu- 

 tion of their pollen. 



ORANGE MILKWORT 

 Polygala lutea L. [Plate XVI, left] 



Rejoicing in its bucolic name of wild bach- 

 elor's button, the orange milkwort, or wild 

 bachelor's button, has clover-like heads closely 

 packed with small florets. The plant grows 

 from 6 to 12 inches tall. Polygala s flowering 

 season is from June to October, and it is 

 equally at home in the swamps of Long Is- 

 land, the pine barrens of New Jersey, the 

 coasts of Florida, and the lowlands of Louisi- 

 ana. 



Some of the milkwort species have two sets 

 of flowers, "one for beauty and one for use, 

 one playful for the world and one serious for 

 posterity." 



In truth, however, such milkworts, afraid 

 that their fine flowers may fail to set seed, 

 because the rains keep the bees indoors, or 

 some other catastrophe occurs, have another 

 set, much less showy, whose development was 

 arrested in the bud. Without petals, nectaries, 

 or fragrance, their stamens are small, their 

 pistils immature, and they have nothing to 

 offer the bee. But if their showy sisters fail 

 to perpetuate the family, they step in, self- 

 fertilized, and save the family from extinc- 

 tion. 



COMMON DODDER 

 Cuscuta gronovii Willd. [Plate XVI, right] 



Cousin of the bindweeds and the morning- 

 glories, the common dodder is a black sheep of 

 a proud family. Early in life it is well-behaved, 

 getting its living from the soil in an orthodox 

 fashion. But just as soon as it finds a suitable 

 plant upon which to attach itself, it sends out 

 innumerable tiny suckers that gradually exhaust 

 the juices of the plant upon which it makes 

 its parasitic attack. While it is drinking the 

 life sap of its unwilling host it forgets to 

 maintain its connection with the soil, the stem 

 from the ground wasting away, and if its host 

 perishes it must die also. 



Living off of juices other plants have drawn 

 out of the soil, it loses its chlorophyll and be- 

 comes a leafless, scale-bearing plant. 



The dodder develops an abundant supply of 

 globular seed-vessels. These either fall to the 

 ground and sink into the soil or float off in the 

 water to found new colonies. 



Known in some places as the "love vine" 

 and elsewhere as "angel's hair," the dodder 

 flowers from July to September and finds its 

 preferred habitat in moist soil, meadows, 

 ditches, and beside streams. Its range is from 

 Nova Scotia and Manitoba to the Gulf States. 



