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NATURE'S GARDEN
LARGER BLUE FLAG.
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'NATURE'S GARDEN
AN AID TO KNOWLEDGE OF
OUR WILD FLOWERS AND
THEIR INSECT VISITORS
WITH COLORED PLATES AND MANY OTHER
ILLUSTRATIONS PHOTOGRAPHED DIRECTLY FROM
NATURE BY HENRY TROTH AND A. R. DUGMORE
TEXT BY
NELTJE BLANCHAN
AUTHOR OF " BIRD NEIGHBORS" AND " BIRDS THAT
HUNT AND ARE HUNTED "
#>?
TUFTS COLLEGE
NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & CO.
1900
Copyright, igoo, by
N. Dk g. douhleda:
Press of r. J. Little & Co.
Astor Place, New York
PREFACE
Surely a foreword of explanation is called for from one who
has the temerity to offer a surfeited public still another book on
wild flowers. Inasmuch as science has proved that almost every
blossom in the world is everything it is because of its necessity to
attract insect friends or to repel its foes — its form, mechanism,
color, markings, odor, time of opening and closing, and its season
of blooming being the result of natural selection by that special
insect upon which each depends more or less absolutely for help
in perpetuating its species — it seems fully time that the vitally im-
portant and interesting relationship existing between our common
wild flowers and their winged benefactors should be presented in
a popular book.
Is it enough to know merely the name of the flower you meet
in the meadow ? The blossom has an inner meaning, hopes
and fears that inspire its brief existence, a scheme of salvation for
its species in the struggle for survival that it has been slowly per-
fecting with some insect's help through the ages. It is not a pas-
sive thing to be admired by human eyes, nor does it waste its
sweetness on the desert air. It is a sentient being, impelled to act
intelligently through the same strong desires that animate us, and
endowed with certain powers differing only in degree, but not
in kind, from those of the animal creation. Desire ever creates
form.
Do you doubt it ? Then study the mechanism of one of our
common orchids or milkweeds that are adjusted with such mar-
vellous delicacy to the length of a bee's tongue or of a butterfly's
leg ; learn why so many flowers have sticky calices or protective
hairs; why the skunk cabbage, purple trillium, and carrion flower
emit a fetid odor while other flowers, especially the white or pale
yellow night bloomers, charm with their delicious breath; see if
you cannot discover why the immigrant daisy already whitens our
fields with descendants as numerous as the sands of the seashore,
whereas you may tramp a whole day without finding a single
native ladies' slipper. What of the sundew that not only catches
insects, but secretes gastric juice to digest them ? What of the
bladderwort, in whose inflated traps tiny crustaceans are impris-
oned, or the pitcher-plant, that makes soup of its guests ? 'Why
are gnats and flies seen about certain flowers, bees, butterflies.
Preface
moths, or humming birds about others, each visitor choosing the
restaurant most to his Hking ? With what infinite pains the
wants of each guest are catered to ! How relentlessly are pilferers
punished ! The endless devices of the more ambitious flowers
to save their species from degeneracy by close inbreeding through
fertilization with their own pollen, alone prove the operation of
Mind through them. How plants travel, how they send seeds
abroad in the world to found new colonies, might be studied
with profit by Anglo-Saxon expansionists. Do vice and virtue
exist side by side in the vegetable world also ? Yes, and every
sinner is branded as surely as was Cain. The dodder, Indian
pipe, broom-rape, and beech-drops wear the floral equivalent of
the striped suit and the shaved head. Although claiming most
respectable and exalted kinsfolk, they are degenerates not far
above the fungi. In short, this is a universe that we live in ; and
all that share the One Life are one in essence, for natural law is
spiritual law. "Through Nature to God," flowers show a way
to the scientist, lacking faith.
Although it has been stated by evolutionists for many years
that in order to know the flowers, their insect relationships must
first be understood, it is believed that "Nature's Garden " is the
first American work to explain them in any considerable number
of species. Dr. Asa Gray, William Hamilton Gibson, Clarence
Moores Weed, and Miss Maud Going in their delightful books
or lectures have shown the interdependence of a score or more
of different blossoms and their insect visitors. Hidden away
in the proceedings of scientific societies' technical papers are the
invaluable observations of such men as Dr. William Trelease
of Wisconsin and Professor Charles Robertson of Illinois. To
the latter, especially, 1 am glad to acknowledge my indebted-
ness. Sprengel, Darwin, Muller, Delpino, and Lubbock, among
others, have given the world classical volumes on European
flora only, but showing a vast array of facts which the theory of
adaptation to insects alone correlates and explains. That the
results of their illumining researches should be so slow in enlight-
ening the popular mind can be due only to the technical, scien-
tific language used in setting them forth, language as foreign
to the average reader as Chinese, and not to be deciphered by the
average student, either, without the help of a glossary. These
writings, as well as the vast array of popular books — too many for
individual mention — have been freely consulted after studies made
afield.
To Sprengel belongs the glory of first exalting flowers above
the level of mere botanical specimens. After studying the wild
geranium he became convinced, ashe wrote in 1787, that "the wise
Author of Nature has not made even a single hair without a defi-
nite design." A hundred years before, one, Nehemias Grew, had
said that it was necessary for pollen to reach the stigma of a flower
vi
Preface
in order that it might set fertile seed, and Linnaeus had to come
to his rescue with conclusive evidence to convince a doubting
world that he was right. Sprengel made the next step forward,
but his writings lay neglected over seventy years because he ad-
vanced the then incredible and only partially true statement that a
flower is fertilized by insects which carry its pollen from its an-
thers to its stigma. In spite of his discoveries that the hairs within
the wild geranium protect its nectar from rain for the insect bene-
factor's benefit ; that most flowers which secrete nectar have what
he termed " honey guides " — spots of bright color, heavy veining,
or some such pathfinder for the visitor on the petals ; that some-
times the male flowers, the staminate ones, are separated from the
seed-bearing or pistillate ones on distinct plants, he left it to Darwin
to show that cross-fertilization by insects, the transfer of pollen
from one blossom to another — not from anthers to stigma of the
same flower — is the great end to which so much marvellous floral
mechanism is adapted. The wind is a wasteful, uncertain pollen
distributor. Insects transfer it more economically, especially the
more highly organized and industrious ones. In a few instances
humming birds, as well, unwittingly do the flower's bidding while
they feast now here, now there. In spite of Sprengel's most pa-
tient and scientific research, that shed great light on the theory of
natural selection a half century before Darwin advanced it, he
never knew that flowers are nearly always sterile to pollen of an-
other species when carried to them on the bodies of insect visitors,
or that cross-pollenized blossoms defeat the self-pollinated ones in
the struggle for survival. These f^icts Darwin proved in endl-ess
experiments.
Because bees depend absolutely upon flowers, not only for
their own food but for that of future generations for whom they
labor ; because they are the most diligent of all visitors, and are
rarely diverted from one species of flower to another while on
their rounds collecting, as they must, both nectar and pollen, it fol-
lows they are the most important fertilizing agents. It is estimated
that, should they perish, more than half the flowers in the world
would be exterminated with them ! Australian farmers imported
clover from Europe, and although they had luxuriant fields of it,
no seed was set for next year's planting, because they had failed to
import the bumblebee. After his arrival, their loss was speedily
made good.
Ages before men cultivated gardens, they had tiny helpers
they knew not of. Gardeners win all the glory of producing a
Lawson pink or a new chrysanthemum ; but only for a few seasons
do they select, hybridize, according to their own rules of taste.
They take up the work where insects left it off after countless cen-
turies of toil. Thus it is to the night-flying moth, long of tongue,
keen of scent, that we are indebted for the deep, white, fragrant
Easter lily, for example, and not to the florist ; albeit the moth is in
vii
Preface
his turn indebted to the lily for the length of his tongue and his
keen nerves: neither could have advanced without the other.
What long vistas through the ages of creation does not this inter-
dependence of flowers and insects open !
Over five hundred flowers in this book have been classified
according to color, because it is believed that the novice, with
no knowledge of botany whatever, can most readily identify the
specimen found afield by this method, which has the added ad-
vantage of being the simple one adopted by the higher insects
ages before books were written. Technicalities have been avoided
in the text wherever possible, not to discourage the beginner from
entering upon one of the most enjoyable and elevating branches of
Nature study. The scientific names and classification follow that
method adopted by the International Botanical Congress which
has now superseded all others ; nevertheless the titles employed
by Gray, with which older botanists in this country are familiar,
are also indicated where they differ from the new nomenclature.
Mr. Dugmore's very beautiful photographs in color from the
living flowers, and the no less exquisite portraits from life in
black and white by Mr. Troth, cannot but prove the most attrac-
tive, as they are the most useful, feature of this book.
NELTJE BLANCHAN
New York, March, 1900
VIll
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
Preface v
List of Illustrations ....
xi
Blue to Purple Flowers
I
Magenta to Pink Flowers
79
White and Greenish Flowers
ISI
Yellow and Orange Flowers
273
Red and Indefinites ....
. 365
Fragrant Flowers or Leaves
395
Unpleasantly Scented
395
Plants and Shrubs Conspicuous in Fruit
396
Plant Families Represented ....
396
Index of Scientific Names
401
Index of English Names
408
IX
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Larger Blue Flag .
Pickerel-weed
Liverwort and Purple Violet
Wild Lupine ....
Bluets and Bird's-foot Violet
Fringed and Closed Gentians
Viper's Bugloss
Robin's Plantain and Blue Vervain
Iron-weed and Self-heal
Frontispiece
FACING PAGE
4
i6
20
28
32
38
40
46
ERRATUM
The captions under the plates of the Hyssop Skull-
cap and the Monkey-flower, facing page 56, should be
transposed.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Larger Blue Flag . . . .
Pickerel-weed ....
Liverwort and Purple Violet
Wild Lupine
Bluets and Bird's-foot Violet
Fringed and Closed Gentians
Viper's Bugloss ....
Robin's Plantain and Blue Vervain
Iron-weed and Self-heal
Hyssop Skullcap, and Monkey-flower
Card Teasel . . . . .
Harebell
Chicory and Great Lobelia .
New England and Late Purple Asters
Bur and Pasture Thistles
Moccasin Flower ....
Showy Orchis . "" .
Arethusa and Rose Pogonia .
SOAPWORT AND SnaKEHEAD
Steeplebush and Purple Raspberry
Goat's-rue .....
Fringed and Purple Milkworts
Swamp Rose Mallow
xi
Frontispiece
FACING PAGE
4
i6
20
28
32
38
40
46
56
62
64
68
74
78
82
84
86
92
96
102
1 10
114
List of Illustrations
Meadow Beauty
Prince's Pine .
Pink Azalea .
American Rhododendron
Mountain Laurel and Trailing Arbutus
Sea Pink and Fireweed ,
Purple Milkweed and Joe-Pye Weed
Moss Pink
Arrow-head and Black Cohosh
Green Arrow Arum
True and False Solomon's Seals .
Painted Wake-Robin
Ladies' Tresses and White Fringed Orchis
Rattlesnake Plantain and Spring Beauty
White Water Lily
Rue and Wood Anemones
Tall Meadow-rue .
Bloodroot and May Apple
Dutchman's Breeches
Meadow-sweet
Shad-bush
Rabbit-foot Clover
Lance-leaved and Sweet White Violets
Wild Carrot, or Queen Anne's Lace
Sweet Pepperbush ....
Indian Pipe
Star Flower and Early Saxifrage
Silky Cornel and Button Bush
White Wood Aster
Yarrow
FACING PAGE
ii8
120
122
124
128
132
138
142
156
160
162
166
170
180
182
18-6
188
198
206
210
218
222
230
234
242
2S2
262
268
xu
List of Illustrations
Field Camomile
Wild Yellow Lily ....
Turk's-cap Lily
Adder's Tongue and Bellwort
Yellow Star-grass and Blackberry Lily
Yellow Ladies' Slipper ....
Downy Yellow Violet and Marsh Marigold
Jewel-weed and Butterfly-weed .
St. John's-wort and Butter and Eggs .
Sundrops and Loosestrife
Great Mullein and Moth Mullein
Downy False Foxglove and Evening Primrose
Golden Aster and Rattlesnake-weed
Sweet-scented and Blue-stemmed Golden-rods
Giant Sunflower and Black-eyed Susan
Sneeze-weed and Wild Sunflower
Bur-Marigold ....
Canada Golden-rod and Tansy
Jack-in-the-Pulpit
Skunk Cabbage
Red Wood Lily.
Wild Ginger .
Wild Columbine
Pitcher-plant ,
Oswego Tea .
Wood Betony
Cardinal Flower and Painted Cup
FACING PAGE
270
276
278
280
284
286
292
312
316
324
334
346
348
354
358
360
366
368
370
374
378
380
386
388
392
xni
" Let us content ourselves no longer with being mere ' botanists ' — his-
torians of structural facts. The flowers are not mere comely or curious
vegetable creations, with colors, odors, petals, stamens and innumerable
technical attributes. The 7vonted insight alike of scientist, philosopher,
theologian, and dreamer is now trpu dialed in the neiv revelation. Beauty
is not ' its own excuse for bei?ig,' nor was fragrance ever ' 7vasted on the
desert air. ^ The seer has at last heard and interpreted the voice in the
wilderness. The flower is no longer a simple passive victim in the busy
bee' s sweet pillage, but rather a co7iscious being, with hopes, aspirations
and companionships. The insect is its counterpart. Its fragrance is but
a perfumed whisper of welcome, its color is as the wooing blush and rosy
lip, its portals are decked for his comifig, and its sweet hospitalities hutnored
tc his tarryitig ; and as it speeds its parting aflinity, rests content that its
life's consutnmation has been fulfilled.'" — William Hamilton Gibson.
XV
" / often think, 7vhen working over my plants, of what Linnaeus once
said of the utifo/ding of a blossom : ' I saw God in His glory passing near
me, and bowed my head in worship J' The scientific aspect of the sa?ne
thought has been put into words by Tennyson : — ,
' Flower in the crannied wall
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand
Little floiver, — but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.'
JVo deeper thought was ever uttered by poet. For in this world of plants,
which, with its magicia?i, chlorophyll, conjuring with sunbeams, is cease-
lessly at work bringing life out of death, — in this quiet vegetable world we
may find the elemeritary principles of all life in almost visible operation^
— John Fiske in " Through Nature to God."
XVI
FROM BLUE TO PURPLE FLOWERS
^^ If blue is the favourite colour of bees, and if bees have so much to
do with the origin of flowers, how is it that there are so few blue ones ?
J believe the explanation to be that all blue flowers have descended from
ancestors in which the flowers were green; or, to speak more precisely, in
which the leaves surrounding the stamens and pistil were green; and
that they have passed through stages of white or yellow, and generally red,
before becoming blue'' — SlR JOHN LuBBOCK in '^ Ants, Bees, afid Wasps.''
FROM BLUE TO PURPLE FLOWERS
Virginia, or Common Day-flower
{Commelina l^irginica) Spiderwort family
Flowers — Blue, i in. broad or less, irregular, grouped at end of
stem, and upheld by long leaf-like bracts. Calyx of 3 unequal
sepals ; 3 petals, i inconspicuous, 2 showy, rounded. Perfect
stamens 3 ; the anther of 1 incurved stamen largest ; 3 insig-
nificant and sterile stamens ; i pistil. Stem .• Fleshy, smooth,
branched, mucilaginous. Leaves : Lance-shaped, 3 to 5 in.
long, sheathing the stem at base ; upper leaves in a spathe-
like bract folding like a hood about flowers. Fruit : A 3-
celled capsule, i seed in each cell.
Preferred Habitat — Moist, shady ground.
Floivering Season — ^J une — September.
Distribution — "Southern New York to Illinois and Michigan,
Nebraska, Texas, and through tropical America to Para-
guay." — Britton and Browne.
Delightful Linnaeus, who dearly loved his little joke, himself
confesses to have named the day-flowers after three brothers
Commelyn, Dutch botanists, because two of them — commemo-
rated in the two showy blue petals of the blossom — published
their works ; the third, lacking application and ambition,
amounted to nothing, like the inconspicuous whitish third petal !
Happily Kaspar Commelyn died in 1731, before the joke was per-
petrated in " Species Plantarum."
In the morning we find the day-flower open and alert-looking,
owing to the sharp, erect bracts that give it support ; after noon,
or as soon as it has been fertilized by the female bees, that are its
chief benefactors while collecting its abundant pollen, the lovely
petals roll up, never to open again, and quickly wilt into a wet,
shapeless mass, which, if we touch it, leaves a sticky blue fluid
on our finger-tips.
The Slender Day-flower (C erecta), the next of kin, a more
fragile-looking, smaller-flowered, and narrower-leaved species,
blooms from August to October, from Pennsylvania southward
to tropical America and westward to Texas.
From Blue to Purple
Spiderwort; Widow's or Job's Tears
{Tradescantia yirginiana) Spiderwort family
Flotvers — Purplish blue, rarely white, showy, ephemeral, i to 2
in. broad ; usually several flowers, but more drooping buds,
clustered and seated between long blade-like bracts at end
of stem. Calyx of 3 sepals, much longer than capsule.
Corolla of 3 regular petals ; 6 fertile stamens, bearded ; anthers
orange ; i pistil. Stem .• 8 in. to 3 ft. tall, fleshy, erect,
mucilaginous, leafy. Leaves : Opposite, long, blade-like,
keeled, clasping, or sheathing stem at base. Fruit: 3-celled
capsule.
Preferred Habitat — Rich, moist woods, thickets, gardens.
Flowering Season — May — August.
Distribution — New York and Virginia westward to South Dakota
and Arkansas.
As so very many of our blue flowers are merely naturalized
immigrants from Europe, it is well to know we have sent to
England at least one native that was considered fit to adorn the
grounds of Hampton Court. John Tradescant, gardener to
Charles I., for whom the plant and its kin were named, had
seeds sent him by a relative in the Virginia colony ; and before
long the deep azure blossoms with their golden anthers were seen
in gardens on both sides of the Atlantic — another one of the many
instances where the possibilities of our wild flowers under culti-
vation had to be first pointed out to us by Europeans.
Like its relative the day-flower, the spiderwort opens for
part of a day only. In the morning it is wide awake and pert ;
early in the afternoon its petals have begun to retreat within the
calyx, until presently they become "dissolved in tears," like Job
or the traditional widow. What was flower only a few hours
ago is now a fluid jelly that trickles at the touch. To-morrow
fresh buds will open, and a continuous succession of bloom may
be relied upon for a long season. Since its stigma is widely sep-
arated from the anthers and surpasses them, it is probable the
flower cannot fertilize itself, but is wholly dependent on the
female bees and other insects that come to it for pollen. Note
the hairs on the stamens provided as footholds for the bees.
The plant is a cousin of the " Wandering Jew " {J. repens),
so commonly grown either in water or earth in American sitting-
rooms. In a shady lane within New York city limits, where a
few stems were thrown out one spring about five years ago, the
entire bank is now covered with the vine, that has rooted by its
hairy joints, and, in spite of frosts and blizzards, continues to
bear its true-blue flowers throughout the summer.
PICKEREL-WEED
(Poutederia cordata)
From Blue to Purple
J
Pickerel Weed
{Pontederia cordata) Pickerel-weed family
Flowers — Bright purplish blue, including filaments, anthers, and
style ; crowded in a dense spike ; quickly fading ; unpleas-
antly odorous. Perianth tubular, 2-lipped, parted into 6 irreg-
ular lobes, free from ovary ; middle lobe of upper lip with 2
yellow spots at base within. Stamens 6, placed at unequal
distances on tube, 3 opposite each lip. Pistil i, the stigma
minutely toothed. Stem : Erect, stout, fleshy, i to 4 ft. tall,
not often over 2 ft. above water line. Leaves : Several bract-
like, sheathing stem at base ; i leaf only, midway on flower-
stalk, thick, polished, triangular, or arrow-shaped, 4 to 8 in.
long, 2 to 6 in. across base.
Preferred Habitat — Shallow water of ponds and streams.
Flowering Season — ^j une — October.
Distribution — Eastern half of United States and Canada,
Grace of habit and the bright beauty of its long blue spikes
of ragged flowers above rich, glossy leaves give a charm to this
vigorous wader. Backwoodsmen will tell you that pickerels lay
their eggs among the leaves; but so they do among the sedges,
arums, wild rice, and various aquatic plants, like many another
fish. Bees and flies, that congregate about the blossoms to feed,
may sometimes fly too low, and so give a plausible reason for the
pickerel's choice of haunt. Each blossom lasts but a single day;
the upper portion, withering, leaves the base of the perianth to
harden about the ovary and protect the solitary seed. But as
the gradually lengthened spike keeps up an uninterrupted suc-
cession of bloom for months, more than ample provision is
made for the perpetuation of the race — a necessity to any plant
that refuses to thrive unless it stands in water. Ponds and
streams have an unpleasant habit of drying up in summer, and
often the pickerel weed looks as brown as a bullrush where it is
stranded in the baked mud in August. When seed falls on such
ground, if indeed it germinates at all, the young plant naturally
withers away.
In the Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club, Mr. W. H. Leg-
gett, who made a careful study of the flower, tells that three
forms occur, not on the same, but on different plants, being even
more distinctly trimorphic than the purple Loosestrife. As these
flowers set no seed without insects' aid, the provisions made to
secure the greatest benefit from their visits are marvellous. Of the
three kinds of blossoms, one raises its stigma on a long style
reaching to the top of the flower; a second form lifts its stigma
only half-way up, and the third keeps its stigma in the bottom of
From Blue to Purple
the tube. Now, there are two sets of stamens, three in each set
bearing pollen grains of different size and value. Whenever the
stigma is high, the two sets of stamens keep out of its way by
occupying the lowest and middle positions, or just where the
stigmas occur in the two other forms; or, let us say, whenever the
stigma is in one of the three positions, the different sets of sta-
mens occupy the other two. In a long series of experiments on
flowers occurring in two and three forms — dimorphic and tri-
morphic — Darwin proved that perfect fertility can be obtained
only when the stigma in each form is pollenized with grains car-
ried from the stamens of a corresponding height. For example,
a bee on entering the flower must get his abdomen dusted with