298 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST, 
[ J ULY, 
I8©YS§ 4s (SUMS’ (S©W1M 
The Doctor's Talks. 
Throughout the summer, and over a large part of the 
country, there may be found in meadows and pastures, 
and along the road-sides, a plant of which a portion is 
shown in fig. 1. The plant is about a foot high, and 
bears at the top a broad cluster of bright yellow flowers, 
If you ask the farmer about the plant, he will no doubt 
tell you that it is “St John's Wort,” or if he does not 
happen to know it by name, he will tell you that it is a 
plant that he would like to get rid of, as it is a weed. 
It came from Europe, and is now widely scattered, not 
only in this country, but in Canada. It was given its 
name in the times when people believed in witches, and 
this plant was hung at the doors of houses on the eve of 
St. John's Day (June 24th), to keep away evil spirits. 
You will recollect that, in May, we started our talks 
about plants 
With the Buttercup. 
You can find plenty of Buttercups now, and I wish you 
to compare that flower with this of the St, John’s Wort. 
Fig. 2.—PARTS OF A ST. JOHN’S WORT FLOWER. 
If the Buttercup itself is not at hand, you can turn to 
fig. 1, in .May, but it is always better to have the real 
thing, to examine with your own eyes. A drawing, no 
matter how truthful, shows the flower as it was seen by 
another person’s eyes. Recollect that the Buttercup 
was shown to have a green, leafy calyx , a bright yellow 
corolla, and within these, the most important parts of 
the flower, are those concerned in producing the seeds, 
stamens and pistils. 
The Flower of the Pea 
was taken to show how the parts of the flower could 
differ in shape, and while of the same number as in the 
Buttercup, the flower had a very different appearance. 
In June, other differences in the flower were shown, and 
now, in this St. John's Wort, I wish you to notice still 
others. You And that the flower of this has, like that 
of the Buttercup, a calyx of 5 sepals, and a corolla of 5 
petals, somewhat differently shaped. When you come 
to the stamens, you find a great differ¬ 
ence ; while there are many in the But¬ 
tercup, and all are separate from one 
another, the stamens in St. John’s Wort 
are in clusters, stuck together as it were 
at their lower parts (filaments), to form 
three (rarely five) little bunches. You 
can see these clusters more distinctly in 
the flower than in the engraving. Still 
another difference is to be seen in the 
center of the flower. The Buttercup has 
a great many pistils, all separate ; in 
St. John's Wort, there is 
But a Single Pistil, 
with three spreading styles. If you cut 
this pistil open, you will find its lower 
part, or ovary, has three parts, as if it 
were made by the growing together of 
three pistils. In figure 2 the parts of the 
flowers are shown much enlarged ; a 
gives, the shape of one of the petals ; b 
is a flower cut through lengthwise, and 
shows the interior of the pistil ; c is a 
separate cluster of stamens, while cl is a 
cross-section of a bud, showing its differ¬ 
ent parts. We have already made use of 
the pea, to show the shape of its petals, 
and I now wish you to look at its stamens. 
Pull off the petals one by one, carefully, 
and you will find 10 stamens, with their 
stalks, filaments, for more than half-way 
from their lower ends, united to form a 
sort of sheath or tube, while at their up¬ 
per ends they are all separate. If you 
look sharply, you will see that this state¬ 
ment is not quite correct, for one stamen 
is not joined with the rest, and while 9 
stamens are joined, one remains sepa¬ 
rate, as in fig. 3. In other flowers you 
may find all the stamens joined in various 
ways. I speax of the different parts of 
the flower as united or growing together. 
This does not mean that the stamens were once separate 
and afterwards grown together, but that parts, in 
their uses the same, are in some plants separate and in 
others united. These differences are no doubt of use to 
the plant, though we can not always see how. The 
great charm in studying plants, and animals also, is not 
merely to find out their names, but to see the same gen¬ 
eral plan running through a vast number of forms, and 
to trace out this plan in the most unlike objects. We 
have heretofore looked especially at the flower; but, 
while we have St. John’s Wort in hand, we will notice 
something about the leaves. You will observe that in 
this plant the leaves are in pairs, and opposite one an¬ 
other upon the stem, while the leaves upon the stem of 
the Buttercup are not so placed, but each leaf is by itself, 
and the next one is higher up, and on the opposite side 
of the stem, oralternating with one another. The leaves 
of the Buttercup are (mostly) much divided and cut, while 
those in the St. John's Wort are entire , the edges being 
withoutany division. If you hold a leaf of the St. John’s 
Wort up to the light, it will appear as if it were pricked 
with a great many minute holes, as seen in a leaf of the 
real size at the right of figure 1; these apparent holes 
are little places containing a minute quantity c t an oil, 
and similar dots are found in many other leaves....I 
have taken the Buttercup as a 
Pattern-flower, or Starting Point 
from which you could learn about other flowers. There 
are some flowers so very unlike the Buttercup that it is 
at first sight difficult to trace any resemblance—the 
flowers of the grasses for example. 1 have met with in¬ 
telligent persons who. never having thought of the mat¬ 
ter, were surprised at being told that grasses had flowers. 
The grasses (which means all the grains, including In¬ 
dian Corn, Sorghum and Broom Corn) are certainly those 
the flowers of which 
Every Fanner’s Boy and Girl 
should wish to know about, for these flowers are the 
very beginning of their father’s prosperity—indeed the 
source of the wealth of the nation—for are not the 
grasses and the grains the very foundation of our na¬ 
tional success ? Let us then try to learn something 
about these important plants. It may seem difficult at 
Fig. 1. —A FLOWER CLUSTER OF ST. JOHN’S WORT. 
first sight, but as you come nearer to them the difficulties: 
will disappear—at least I will try to make the matter 
plain. What I said last month about the flowers of the 
Willow, will help you to understand the flowers of the 
grasses. If you will look back to last month and review 
that Talk, yon will see that we may part with the corolla 
of our Buttercup, and still have a good flower; that the 
calyx may also go, but as long as stamens and pistils 
were left, the flower would produce seeds ; and after all, 
that, as in the Willow, the stamens and pistils might be 
reduced in number to one or two, and these even placed 
in separate flowers. You will recollect that the Willow 
flowers consist of either two stamens (fig. 2, June) placed 
in a leafy scale, ora single 
pistil (fig. 3, June) in a 
similar scale. The Wil¬ 
low helps you to under¬ 
stand grass flowers, as it 
3.-STAMENS OF THE REA. Sh °™ S th f‘ th ? ^ a ° d 
corolla, the showy parts 
of the flower, may be absent, small leafy scales serv¬ 
ing in their place. To apply this knowledge to grasses 
let us take one of the most common, as well as one of 
the most useful of grasses, 
A head of Timothy. 
This at first sight appears to be only a lot of green chaff 
crowded upon a stem. Now if you gently break off 
some of this chaff, or carefully take it off with a knife, 
you will find the separate green bits to be like fig. 4, 
which is somewhat enlarged. If you have a hand mag¬ 
nifier, or one of the small American Agriculturist Micro¬ 
scopes, you can with a little pains separate this and see 
that it consists of two pieces of chaff, a, b, and you will 
find within two much smaller and very delicate parts, c,d, 
fig.5. Within these inner parts, if you take the grass at the 
right time, will be found three stamens, e, and a pistil, 
the two hairy styles of which are 
shown coming out of c, d. This is a 
very simple grass-flower, but all of 
those which seem more complicated 
are but repetitions of these. It is con¬ 
venient to have names for these parts; 
the outer pair, a, b, are called glumes, 
and the inner pair, c, d, are palets. The 
stamens and pistils you learned some¬ 
thing about in the Buttercup. In 
grasses, the stamens are generally grass"FLO wliu 
thiee, with large anthers, which are 
hung by the middle to very long slender filaments. 
There is one pistil with (usually) two long slender, 
hairy styles. The glumes you will notice lap over 
one another a little ; one is outside of the other, and is 
known as the lower, and the other as the upper glume , 
and the two palets are also lower and upper. 
4. PART OF the: 
About BSotuuical Thames. 
Some people thoughtlessly ridicule these, and others 
think them very hard to remember, although they use 
them daily. Now Botanists give two names to a plant; 
one shows the kind, or genus, to which it belongs, the 
other the species. A genus is a collection of plants that 
agree in certain points. The Oak genus has many spe¬ 
cies, but tfaey all agree in certain points, especially in 
bearing acorns. The species, such as black, white, live, 
and other oaks, differ in the size and shape of the 
acorns, of the leaves, and in other matters. In naming 
the plants, names are used 
that are recognized all over 
the civilized world. Thus, 
Quercus is the ancient name 
for Oak, while the species is 
indicated by another name 
following it; the Quercus 
alba, is White-oak, Quercus 
virens, the Live-oak, alba and 
virens being Latin names 
for “white” and “live,” 
or “living.” It is very im¬ 
portant to have such names, 
as common names are very 
uncertain and vary greatly. 
We use Geranium,Magnolia, 
and a host of other botanical 
names without finding them 
difficult, because we have no 
other terms for these plants. 
Now our St.John’s Wort (see 
Fig. 5. flowers of Doctor’s Talks) is Hyperi- 
A GRASS. cum. The name of the genus, 
or generic name, is a very old one, used by the ancient 
Greeks for the plant, and its meaning is not known. But 
there are many Hypericums, and the one we have been 
talking about is called Hypericum perforatum, because 
the dots in the leaves make them appear as if they were 
perforated—or full of little holes. When the meaning 
of the names is understood, much of the difficulty ceases. 
