THE SPIDER FLOWER 



By Willard N. Clute. 



"V T/\TURE must have been in a jesting mood when she made 

 ^ the spider flower. Anyone who views its collection of 

 sepals, petals and stamens will, of course, recognize it as a 

 flower, though it is not likely to remind him of any other 

 flowers of his acquaintance. The long and sprawling stamens, 

 the petals all on one side, the ovary removed from the rest of 

 the floral organs by a lon^ stipe, and various other lesser 

 peculiarities all conspire to make it uniciue among the inhabi- 

 tants of our fields and gardens, and therefore of much interest 

 tO' lovers of the curious in plant life. The structure of the 

 flower also has an interesting bearing on the axiom that a 

 flower is a transformed branch. In ordinary flowers the 

 resemblance is not especially noticeable, but in the spider flower 

 the different sets of floral organs are separated from one 

 another by an appreciable interval and are arranged in whorls 

 at the nodes much as leaves are, therefore the origin of one 

 from the other is not difficult to imagine. It may be said in 

 passing, however, that one is not to assume that a flower is 

 really derived from a branch with leaves. All that is meant is 

 that the leaves and floral parts have a common origin. 



There are various species of spider flower in the West and 

 South, but probably the most interesting is the one cultivated 

 in gardens under the name of Clcome puiigcns, though I believe 

 the botanists, speaking strictly by the book, would call our 

 species Cleoine spiiwsa. The seedsmen, however, rarely pay 

 much attention to the whims of the botanist and the plant will 



