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"Industry need not wish"
THE UBRARY OF THE
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
WEST M.OCI, onAWA, ONTAIIO
Book No. 5f 1.
-)IV
Thit book ihould be returned thirty
day* from dite of lo«n. No ;t«inp» «re
necnury.
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FLOWERS OF THE FIELD AND FOREST.
FLOWERS
OF THE
FIELD AND FOREST.
FROM
original fflaater-color mamtiiti after feature,
By ISAAC SPRAGUE.
DESCRIPTIVE TEXT BY REV. A. B. HERVEY.
WITH EXTRACTS FROM
LONGFELLOU; LOWELL, BRYANT, EAlEhSON, AND OTHERS.
TROY. N.Y.:
NIMS AND KNIGHT.
1888.
Copyright, iS8s,
By H. B. Nims and Company.
>1\hH
ILLUSTRATIONS.
Blood-Root .
The Pasture This: • »^
The Partridge- Berry
The Pitcher-Plant
The Pale Laurel
The Meadow Beauty .
The Bur-Marigold
The Climbing Hemp-Weed
The White Bay .
The Cardinal- Flower .
»-\\hH
I
BLOODROOT.
=*h':;-.
^}-
I HAVE seen
A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract
Of inland ground, applying to his car
The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell.
To which, in silence hushed, his very soul
Listened intensely; and his countenance soon
Brightened with joy; for from within were heard
Murmurings, whereby the monitor expressed
Mysterious union with its native sea.
Even such a shell the universe itself
Is to the ear of Faith; and there are times,
I doubt not, when to you it doth impart
Authentic tidings of invisible things;
Of ebb and flow, and ever-during power;
And central peai.e, subsisting at the heart
Of endless agitation, Merc you stand,
Adore, and worship, when you know it not;
Pious beyond the intention of your thought;
Devout above the meaning of your will.
IVordszvofii,
Blood-Root.
SANGUINARIA CANADENSIS L.
How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean
Are thy returns I even as the flowers in Spring;
To which, besides their own demean,
The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring.
Grief nuics away
Like snow in May,
As if there were no such cold thing.
Who would have thought my shrivelled heart
Could have recovered greenness? It was gone
Quite under ground; as flowers depart
To see their mother-root, when they have blown;
Where they together,
All the hard weather,
Dead to the world, keep house unknown.
And now in age, I bud again,
After so many deaths I live and write;
I once more smell the dew and rain,
And relish versing: O my only light,
It cannot be
That I am he
On whom thy tempests fell all night.
Herbert.
■^if"
FLOWERS OF THE FIELD AND FOREST.
Nature also is an artist and an author. She paints the
flowers before we copy them, and writes their simple story for
us to tell again. We have put upon the first page of our book
a charming flower, which she also displays upon the opening
leaves of the great floral book of the year. The story of its
modest life is not a long or a startling one, but perhaps it has
a cheery word of hope, which weary, wintry hearts, longing for
spring, may be glad to hear.
In the very early April days, which in our New England clime
are not over likely to be sunny days, before the leaves come out
at all upon the trees, when the downy catkins are first showing
the revival of life in the willows by the brook-side, before any
green thing yet gladdens the eye in field or forest, and the brown
dead grass and the brown dead leaves cover all the ground, then
it is that in the edges of the moist, rich woods the Sanguinaria
puts up its slender stem, crowned with its circlet of petals daz-
zling white. It is a most beautiful flower, and, to my thoughts,
a beautiful emblem of nature's Easter, its pure whiteness having
something more than the earthly in its unstained loveliness. It
seems almost to have lived its earthly course, and passing through
the disrobing room of Death, which —
"has left on her
Only the beautiful."
comes now as the promise, radiant and heavenly, of that touch of
the Infinite Life by which all the dead are quickened.
It is not easy to say why we see in a 1 these beautiful forms
of nature these hidden meanings, and ddight to trace in them
a likeness to our deeper thoughts and experiences. Are these
BLOOD-ROOT.
similitudes mere fanciful semblances, or are they indications that
our clearer consciousness is but the sign of a universal life, which,
after its kind, is conscious in every thing ? Are the mental and
material worlds after all but separate rooms in the one house of
Life, divided by a thin, flexible partition, so that a mox'ing breath
in the one palpitates through the other in correlations of conscious
thought? Who shall say? Still it remains true that we like
to see our own thoughts and feelings mirrored in the larger
doings and happenings of the Kosmos. We love that poet best
who best humanizes nature, and finis a present counterpart of
himself in the dumb life around him ; who, without seeming to
exceed probability, or distort natural functions, discovers emotions
in things which we have known in ourselves. We love his mes-
sage most who puts his ear to the natural universe as to
" The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell,"
and then tells us of
■"Authentic tidings, of invisible things.
The central peace subsisting at the heart
Of endless agitation."
which it murmurs to his listening soul.
So I am sure quaint George Herbert speaks to wide acceptance
when he finds in the coming forth of the flowers in early spring
from their abode "quite underground," where they have gone "to
see their mother-root ; " and
" Dead to the world, keep house unknown
All the hard weadier,"
a deep illuminating correspoi.dence with that most precious
PtOWiiRS OF THE FIELD AND FOREST.
spiritual experience, when the shrivelled heart, "on which tem-
pests Icll all night," has " recovered greenness," and
"Smells the dew and rain,
And buds again."
For nature teaches no sweeter lesson than when, with floral sym-
bols, it repeats from year to year, to a sinful and mortal world, the
pictured hope of man's moral and material rebuilding. And the
Sanguinaria, with its blood-red root under ground, and its pearly
purity up in tne April air, may rightly speak a word of hope to
those who in obscurity and darkness have all their lives distilled
only bitter tears, like drops of blood, from the griefs and defile-
ments of their lot. For with it what a beautiful white soul has
blossomed from a root-life so ensanguined and bitter I How
greatly is it like those souls about the Throne " which have come
out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes and made
them white in the blood of the Lamb."
The poet's quaint fancy of flowers, "keeping house" all the win-
ter long, underground, finds plenty of illustrations in the real life
of mp.iiy plants, notably in this one. The housekeeping, however,
does not use up in the winter what has been garnered in the sum-
mer. It only just preserve 1 it for the early needs of the plant at
the beginning of the next season, before it shall have time to draw
anew from nature's great supplies. Through the long smnmer its
broad, roundish leaves are opened and Mfted up to the sun a'--^ -xw,
and with patient industry gather out of the air and .-• litoics
of invisible food. These, mingling with the nutritious elements
which its fine rootlets have sucked from the moistened soil, have
been slo. "v elaborated and laid away in the red root-stalk, lying
BLOOn-KOOT.
like a hidden storehouse underground. So when the warm spring
sun melts the locks and chains of frosty u inter, and sets free the
whole imprisoned kingdom of plants, none are sooner ready to
come forth and smile a welcome to the great Liberator than the
red-footed, white-breasted Sanguinaria.
The flower stays not long, and the plant, after producing the
early harvest of seeds, surrenders, as just now indicated, most of
the growing season to the prudent accumulation of sustenance for
next year's flowering and fruit bearing. So it makes to-day renuer
tribute to to-morrow, as to-day itself is in part tiie product of yes-
terday. Thus its little life links its genti uions together with
mutual helpfulness, and mingles the common .md popular blessing
of receiving with the greater blessedness of giving.
Concerning the blood-red liquid which freclv exudes when the
stem or root-stalk is cut or broken, and which .irivcs the popular
as well as the scientific name to Sanguinarin Prof. Goodale
says : " In the case of nearly all plants from which a white
or colored juice exudes, there is a special system of microscopic
canals, consisting either of branched cells or . onfluent tubes,
termed the Latex system. Thus in the Euphorbias, Lettuce and
Poppy, the milky juice is contained in communicatirg Latex-tubes.
But in some other cases, for example blood-root, th. colored juice
is held in receptacles of a different character. In bl od-root these
special receptacles are roundish or more elongated and possess
very thin walls. While some of these sacs or cells re separated
from each other, others are arranged in rows. This grouping
into linear series is well marked in the more superficial parts."
The colored juice of the Sanguinaria was used by the Indians
as a dye.
FLOWERS OF THE FIELD AND FOREST.
Having referred to this plant as our sweetest floral emblem of
nature's Easter, I cannot refrain from quoting a few stanzas from
Phirbo Gary's well known lines, " Resurgam," in which she for-
tifies her own heart, at the approach of death, by this hope which
nature in the early spring so brightly illuminates:
Nature's sepulchre is breaking,
•And the earth, her gloom forsaking,
Into life and light is waking.
Oh, the weakness and the madness
Of a heart that holdeth sadness
When all else is light and gladness !
Shall not He who life supplieth
To the dead seed, where it lieth,
Qiiickcn also man, who dicth?
Rise, my soul, then, from dejection,
See in nature the reflection
Of the dear Lord's resurrection.
Let this promise leave thee never:
" If the might of death I sever,
Yc shall also live forever I "
rn of
from
3 for-
t'hich
THE PASTURE THISTLE.
m
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a\mM^
The Pasture Thistle.
CNICUS PUMILUS Torrey,
THE THISTLE FLOWER.
My homely flower, that blooms along
The dry and dusty ways,
I have a mind to make a sonf>.
And make it in thy praise;
For thou art favored of my heart,
Humble and outcast as thou art.
Though never with the plants of grace
In garden borders set,
Full often have I seen thy face
With tender tear-drops wet.
And seen thy gray and ragged sleeves
All wringing with them morns and eves.
Albeit thou livest in a bush
Of such unsightly form,
Thou hast not any need to blush —
Thou hast tliinc own sweet charm;
And for that charm I love thee so,
And not for any outward show.
Alice Caty.
I NEED hardly make a point of formally introducing the Thistle
to my readers. It has a faculty of pointedly introducing itself, and,
FLOWERS OF THE FIELD AND FOREST.
notwithstanding the humane admiration of our poet for this brist-
ling denizen of the pastures, most people do not care for a very
close or intimate acquaintance with it. I may say, however, that
among botanists it is spoken of as belonging to the large tribe of
composite flowers. The admirable picture by Mr. Sprague tells
more of it at a single glance than could be conveyed by pages
of description. It is in flower all summer, and may be found, in
the latitude of New England and Pennsylvania, as far West as
the Mississippi. Though so common, and so obnoxious as a
weed, that few ever take any interest in it, it is not to be denied
that it possesses a certain kind of attractiveness. In the artist's
eye, its rich, red blossom, and its curiously cut and jagged leaves,
are not without their elements of beauty. It has been made to
serve ornamental if not useful ends, for it was early seized upon
by the architect and designer as the basis of much fine orna-
mentation both in colors and in carvings.
Prof. Hulme says: "The Thistle has been largely employed
in ornamental art, in some cases clearly for its own inherent
beauty; in others as clearly from its heraldic and historic asso-
ciations. A very beautiful example of it may be seen in a square
panel in the Cathedral of Bruges, and again in the moulding on
a tomb of Don Juan II., in that building; in numerous wooden
panels (Gothic carvings) in the South Kensington Museum ; and
on the monument of Mary Queen of Scots, in Westminster
Abbey."
It is best known, perhaps, as the national emblem of Scot-
land, but how it came to be such, or what particular species
of it first furnished the sturdy Scotchmen with their symbol,
is much in dispute among the antiquarians and naturalists. In
THE PASTURE THISTLE.
any case it was not probably the one figured in our plate. Various
legends undertake to account for its becoming the national sym-
bol, and of course throw the origin of it far back into the past.
This is one story: "When the Danes invaded Scotland, it was
deemed unwarlike to attack an enemy in the darkness of the night
instead of a pitched battle by day; but on one occasion the in-
vaders resolved to avail themselves of stratagem, and, in order
to prevent their tramp being heard, marched barefooted. They
had thus neared the Scottish camp unobserved, when a Dane
unluckily stepped upon a sharp thistle, and uttered a cry of pain,
which immediately aroused the Scotch, who discovered the stealthy
foe, and defeated them with great slaughter. The thistle was
immediately adopted as the emblem of Scotland." For as good
a reason Rome might have adopted the goose as its national
bird, for did not a flock of cackling geese, on a like occasion,
save Rome? There is, however, no authentic record of its ap-
pearance in Scottish history in this relation earlier than 1458,
when it is referred to in an inventory of the property of James
III., of Scotland, as "a covering of variand purpir tarter browdin
with thrissils and a unicorn," the unicorn being also an emblem
of Scotland.
The Scottish knighthood, the Order of the Thistle, is of com-
paratively late origin. James I. of Great Britain, who was also
James VI. of Scotland, on his accession to the throne of the
United Kingdom, took as his badge a compound flower, half rose
and half thistle, and the stalk supporting this floral monstrosity
had on one side of it a rose leaf and on the other the leaf of a
thistle.
If national emblems are emblematic, as I suppose, strictly
FLOWERS OF THE FIELD AND FOREST.
speaking they are not, I can scarcely see why the Thistle should
stand for the " Cannie Scot." There are, to be sure, points of
resemblance, but they are quite superficial. The national motto,
apropos of the emblematic Thistle, " Nemo me impitne /acessif, —
No one provokes me with impunity," might indeed hint at tho
pugnacious quality of the Scotch, especially in the matter of
metaphysical theology; and the sharp points with which the
Thistle always bristles may be no inapt symbol of the natural
acuteness of the Scotchman's mind, and the native keenness of
his wit. But underneath all, in him there is a rich store of
hearty, genial humanity and kindliness, which find no adequate
symbol in the burly thistle.
Like everything else associated with his native land, it was
dear to the heart of Burns, who meeting it in his farm work,
says, —
"The rough burr thistle spreading wide
Among the bearded bear,
I turned the weedcr-clips aside
And spared the symbol dear."
The early bad reputation of the Thistle among English speak-
ing people, is obvious from its being made to figure so prominently
in the "primal curse," pronounced upon the ground when Adani
sinned in Eden, as related in our English Bible. "Cursed is the
ground for thy sake. Thorns also, and thistles shall it bring
forth to thee." It is not known what plants are here referred
to, but the use of this word shows the real opinion our translators
had of this well known English weed. It hasn't many friends,
that is certain, and for the best of all reasons. It is not friendly.
It has a sort of touch-me-not attitude toward all the world. It
THE PASTURE THISTLE.
has its virtues, no doubt, but tliey are not of the pleasing or
conciliatory kind. If people want to admire it for what it has of
worth or beauty, well and good, they may stand off and admire.
If they don't, it is all the same to the thistle. It is bound to
stand on its own feet, defend its own rights, and occupy its own
place, let the world wag as it may. There seems to be a certain
sturdiness of moral character about it which is not unlike what
we find in similar independent, thistly, strongly individualized,
and not very agreeable human mortals. They are here, and here
to stay, and to take caro of their own, not without pugnacity,
giving and taking thrusts. The world may be pleased or dis-
pleased, it matters little to them; and the rest of us console
ourselves by thinking about them, "Oh, well, it takes all sorts of
people to make a world."
While something may be said in a general way in behalf of
this friendless weed, I should not expect to make it a favorite
with the farmer. He is blinded by prejudice, a prejudice, how-
ever, not altogether without some good grounds; for this plant
yields food neither to himself nor his beast, and it absorbs much
of the vital strength of the soil which ought to go to nourish
his grain or his grass. Besides, I have no doubt he carries the
memory of many sharp and painful thrusts which it has given
him when he has taken it up unawares with his sheaves of
wheat or oats.
But the most interesting thing about the Thistle is the in-
genious way by which it contrives to scatter its seed, — just as
though there wouldn't be thistles enough for all practical pur-
poses if the seeds were left to take their chances of planting by
wind and weather. Nature has contrived for every one of its
FLOWERS OF THE FIELD AND FOREST.
myri^l seeds an airy little balloon, of the finest and lightest
down, and it goes sailing away upon the wings of the wind like
• another Montgolfier, whose famous aeronautics, indeed, this flying
plant antedated many ages. Who ever saw a sunny summer
day in the country when there were not multitudes of these fairy
globes, each with an embryo plant in its breast, sailing lazily
through the sultry air! What images of lightness and grace are
these airy nothings from the thistle's white crown ! They will
sail on and on, till the rain beats the buoyancy out of their
wings, and then they will come down with the raindrop, and be
planted far away from their native fields.
I suppose most seeds are. left to the ordinary chances of the
elements for dispersion and planting, but many of them are fur-
nished with special appliances for it. Some of these are purely
mechanical, the pod in which they grow being so contrived that
as it ripens it brings its sides into a state of tension, which
increases as the growth and ripening goes on, till at last it bursts
open with a sudden and violent spring which scatters the seeds
in every direction, sometimes many feet away.
Then, again, other seeds are provided with barbed points, or
with sharp hooks which readily seize upon any passing object,
as the wool and hair of animals, perhaps the feathers of birds,
certainly the clothing of men, and are thus carried long distances
from their native home. Others, like the seeds of the maple
and trumpet-flower, have their gossamer wings, by which they
" fly away to be at rest " in some distant, hospitable soil.
Many, like the thistle and dandelion, are furnished with buoy-
ant envelopes of feathery fibre, which make them the sport of
every breeze. This device, by which Nature disperses the seeds
ill
THE PASTURE THISTLE.
of some of the humblest of its creatures, is of the greatest im-
portance to man in at least one case, for the downy fibre which
in the open boll covers the black seed of the cotton plant, clothes
also the whole civilized race of man, and is the foundation of
one of the chief and most astonishing industries of modern
times.
The water-lily, which produces its seeds beneath the surface
of the water, has a curious contrivance for dispersing them. It
encloses them in a light, thin bag, which is filled with air, and
is impervious to water. This acts as a float or life-preserver to
the seed, which, directly it is released from the mother plant,
rises to the surface and floats away. " driven by the winds and
tossed," or carried by the currents of water. By and by the sack
bursts or decays, and the seed immediately sinks and is embedded
in the mud at bottom, and is ready to produce a new plant in
a new place. The plant world is full of those ingenious contriv-
ances. But it is time we permitted our poet to tell the reason
why she takes the thistle to her kindly regard.
Thou hast no lovers, and for that
I love thee all the more;
Only the wind and the rain to be
Thy friends, and keep thcc conipiuiy.
So, being left to take thine case
Behind thy thorny wall,
Thy little head with vanities
Has not been turned at all,
And all field beauties give me grace
To praise thee to thy very face.
FLOWERS OF THE FIELD AND FOREST.
So thou shalt evermore belong
To me from this sweet hour,
And I will take thee for my song,
And take tliee for my flower,
And by the great, and proud, and high,
Unenvied, we will live and die.
Alice Cary.
THE PARTRIDGE-BERRY.
i
H^i
\
Partridge-Berry.
MITCHELLA REPENS L.
Spring, with that nameless pathos in the air
Which dwells with all things fair,
Spring, with her golden sun and silver rain,
Is with us once again.
In the deep heart of every forest tree
The blood is all aglee.
And there's a look about the leafless bowers
As if they dreamed of flowers.
Yet still on every side we trace the hand
Of winter in the land,
Save where the maple reddens on the lawn
Flushed by the season's dawn.
Or where, like those strange semblances we find
That age to childhood biad,
The elm puts on, as if in Nature's scorn,
The brown of autumn corn.
As yet the turf is dark, although you know
That, not a span below,
A thousand germs are groping through the gloom
And soon will burst their tomb.
Henry Titurod,
FLOWERS OF THE FIELD AND FOREST.
This is by no means a spring flower, for it opens its delicate
little twin blossoms of pink in the hot days of June and July.
But I suppose the plant is associated in the minds of most
lovers of nature with the memory of the very earliest sunny days
of the year, for amidst the universal brown of early spring, its
bright evergreen leaves, and its brilliant red berries, are almost
the only things which gladden the weary eyes with bits of pleas-
ing color. Here and there a little bank or tuft of moss, or a
frond of rock-fern, adds its greenness, and shares with the Par-
tridge-Berry the gratitude of eyes hungering for the tints of sum-
mer. Especially grateful to us is this humble plant, in the time
when its shining leaves and sparkling berries peep up from their
nest in the dull dead leaves, sometimes just from under the edge
of the retreating snow. But in the luxuriant life and color of mid-
summer it would scarcely be noticed at all, as it modestly puts up
its delicate pink flowers, in some dark nook, hidden away and
crowded out of sight by a mob of obstreperous weeds. As red as
the plump cheeks of this little berry commonly are, it has been
sometimes found as white as snowdrops. A young lady sent
some white ones, two or three years ago, from York, Pennsylvania,
to Dr. Gray, the first he had ever heard of, it seems.
In some parts of the country the aromatic Wintergrcen, or
Checkerberry, is called the Partridge-Berry, Prof. Goodaie states.
I am sure that in some parts of New York and Pennsylvania 1
have heard our plant called the Checkerberry, and in those regions,
the latter name is not applied to the Wintergrcen, as it is in New
England. The scientific name of the plant was given to it by the
great Linnaeus, in honor of Dr. John Mitchell of Virginia, who,
during the first half of the last century, was one of our best known
PARTRIDGE-BERRY,
botanists, and a valued correspondent of the founder of our science.
He was a Fellow of the Royal Society, and is known in botanical
science as the author of several short treatises on botany, which
were issued in a collected form in London, in 1769. He certainly
is among the most fortunate of men to have his name and memory
embalmed in a plant at once so charming and so widely distributed
as is the Mitchclla rcpcns. There is but one other species be-
longing to that genus, and that is found in Japan. Dr. Gray has
shown, in a very interesting paper, that many of our North Amer-
ican forms are represented in the flora of that country. The
Mayflower, or trailing Arbutus, so widely and deservedly popular
in New England, is a case quite similar to that of the Mitchclla.
There is but one other species of the Epigcca known, and that is
a native of Japan.
The most careless observer could scarcely fail to notice, that the
bright red berry is furnished with a double " blow end," as though
two flowers had assisted in its production. Such is the case. A
single ovary bears twin flowers, which, indeed, sometimes come to
be something more than "Siamese-twin" flowers, for they occa-
sionally coalesce and form a single flower with an eight-lobcd
corolla. Commonly, however, they are quite separate, and fructify
the corresponding segments of the compound ovary on which they
grow. The flowers themselves have individual peculiarities. In
some the pistil is long and stands out beyond the mouth of the little
hairy tube of the corolla, while the stamens are short and are con-
cealed somewhere down in its obscure depths. ( her flowers will
show an arrangement exactly the opposite of this, the pistil, with
its four-parted stigma, will be short and hidden away in the tube
while the stamens will protrude. It is evident that flowers, built
i ir
FLOWER;! OF THE FIELD AND FOREST.
on this plan, cannot conveniently fertilize themselves. The parts
involved in the act seem to be thus purposely arranged, so that
they cannot come in contact. It has been observed in other flowers
thus constructed, that they are very nicely arranged to utilize the
help of bees and other insects in cross-fertilization, for the pollen
from flowers with long stamens will be placed on the insect which
comes for their honey, in exactly the right position to be most
easily communicated to the stigma of a flower with a long pistil.
So with the flowers having short stamens, and those having short
pistils.
If one looks closely he will see beneath the rows of roundish,
opposite, green leaves, just at the base of the leaf-stalk, a pair of
minute scales, or stipules. They seem to be of no use to the
plant, nor are they ornamental But the trained botanist sees in
them great significance. They are the unmistakable signs that our
little creeping vine is the " long lost and far wandered scion of a
noble house." This humble denizen of our woods has aristocratic
connections, and is almost our only representative of a large and
influential family in the kingdom of plants, whose native home is
in a more genial clime than ours,— a family distinguished in some
of its members, by the most considerable and most honorable ser-
vices to mankind.
I need mention but two or three of these to show that. The
Coffee plant furnishes the material for a decoction which is the
most universal and most delicious drink (when rightly made and
rightly served) that art has yet educed from nature. In the bark
of the Cinchona tree, Peruvian Bark, is found one of the most
invaluable drugs employed in the art of healing, and one which,
perhaps, as a defence against the subtle poisons of malaria, has
PARTRIDGE-BERRY.
saved more human lives than any other. In the pigment pro-
duced from the Madder plant, we have the basis and substance
of some of our most useful dyes. These, and several other useful
plants that might be named, are all first cousins to our bright
little friend of the early spring time.
New are the leaves on the oaken spray,
New the blades of the silky grass;
Flowers, tliat were buds but yesterday.
Peep from the ground where'er I pass.
These gay idlers, the butterflies.
Broke, to-day, from their winter shroud;
These light airs, that winnow the skies.
Blow, just born, from the soft white cloud.
Gushing fresh in the little streams.
What a prattle the waters make!
Even the sun, with his tender beams,
Seems as young as the flowers they wake.
Children are wading, with cheerful cries,
In the shoals of the sparkling brook;
Laughing maidens, with soft young eyes,
Walk or sit in the shady nook.
Bryant.
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Pitcher-Plant.
SARRACENIA PURPUREA L.
Deep in the shady sadness of a vale
Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn, "
Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star,
Sat gfray-haired Saturn, quiet as a stone,
Still as the silence round about his lair;
Forest on forest hung about his head
Like cloud on cloud. No stir of air was there,
Not so much life as on a summer's day
Robs not one light seed from the feathered ^rass,
But where the dead leaf r W, there did it rest.
A stream went voiceless by, still deadened more
By reason of his fallen divinity
Spreading a shade. The Naiad 'mid her reeds
Pressed her cold finger closer to her lips.
Along the margin-sand large footmarks went.
No further tl.an to where his feet had strayed.
And slept there since. Upon the sodden ground
His old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead,
Unsceptred; and his realmless eyes were closed;
While his bowed head seemed listening to the Earth,
His ancient mother, for some comfort yet.
Keats.
This incomparable picture of a swampy vale deep Vx the
woods, is so exactly like the native home of our purple Pitcher-
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FLOWERS OF THE FIELD AND FOREST.
Plant, that I could not resist the temptation to transfer it to our
pages. Mr. Mechan thinks Longfellow must have had in his
thought some image or memory of our southern Pitcher-Plant
when, in the song of the "Slave in the Dismal Swamp," he
made this life-like picture of southern vegetation, —
Wlicrc will-o'-the-wisps and glow-worms shine,
In bulrush and in brake;
Where waving mosses shroud the pine.
And the cedar grows, and the poisonous vine
Is spotted like the snake;
Where hardly a human foot could pass,
Or a human heart would dare,
On the quaking turf of the green morass
He crouched in the rank and tangled grass
Like a wild beast in his lair.
Be this as it may, our plant is common all along our eastern
border from Newfoundland to Florida, growing in bogs and
swampy places, and flowering in the early summer. This plant
introduces us to one of the most interesting fields of biological
inquiry that has been opened in many a day. I refer to that
curious instance, which these and some other plants illustrate, in
which the vegetable kingdom seems to reverse the ordinary course
of nature and makes reprisal upon the animal kingdom for its
habitual foraging. In this as in many other departments of re-
search the interest has been gr atly quickened, almost created,
throughout the scientific world, by the magic touch of that one
master spirit of the century, Charles Robert Darwin,— now alas,
no more of earth! His monograph on Insectivorous Plants
marks an era in this department of botanical science.
I
THE PITCHER-PLANT.
Insectivorous plants are a group or physiological assemblage of
plants which belong to a number of distinct natural orders <'They
agree in the extraordinary habit of adding to the ordinary supplies
of nitrogenous material afforded them in common with other plants
by the soil and atmosphere, by the capture and consumption of
insects and other small animals. The curious and varied mechan-
ical arrangements by which these supplies of animal food are
obtained, the way and degrees in which they are utilized, and the
remarkable chemical, biological and electrical phenomena of pre-
hension and utilization can only be fully understood by a separate
and somewhat detailed account of the leading orders and genera -
To give that would not come within the purpose of this paper
and yet I think I may be able to embody enough of this strange'
knowledge to give my readers some adequate idea of what happens
when a plant devours "insects and other small animals."
Take for example the common Sun-dew, Droscra rotumlifoUa
of our bogs and swamps. It has a circle of long-stemmed round
leaves which spring out horizontally from the bottom of the
flower stalk near the ground. These leaves, which are not usually
over half an inch diameter, are covered pretty thickly above with
flexible hairs, or tentacles, to the number of two hundred and fifty
or more, not longer than two-thirds of the diameter of the leaf
Each of these tentacles bears at top a transparent drop of viscid
gi.stening fluid which looks very like a drop of dew in the early
sunshine. This gives the plant both its popular and its scientific
name.
Insects seem to be attracted to the leaves of this plant, perhaps
by Its glistening appearance, perhaps by its odor or color, or by all
combined. But if they come too near, or dare to light upon its
FLOWERS OF THE FIELD AND FOREST.
brilliant leaves, they will ^^et anything but a friendly welcome. A
fly coming in contact with the viscid end of the tentacles finds itself
stuck fast. He cannot get away even if but two or three of these
silvery dewdrops touch him. But his struggles to do so awaken the
active interest of all the neighboring tentacles, which immediately
bend over toward him and fix upon him their adhesive tops. In
fact an impulse seems to be spreading over the whole surface of
the leaf, which sets all the parts into sympathetic activity. The
leaf itself soon hollows under the victim and rolls up its edges,
and thrusts down upon him more and more of its animated bead-
topped hairs. Slowly he is pressed down upon the surface of the
leaf, drenched in the abundant fluid which the leaf and its tentacles
secrete, and in a quarter of an hour or so he is dead.
But the leaf does not stop there. It holds its dead prey in its
close embrace till it has fully digested him, for its tentacles and
its superficial cells and glands constitute a true stomach, which
secretes digestive fluids and deals with animal substances in
exactly the same way that the animal stomach does. The nutri-
tious resultants of this digestive process are absorbed into the
tissues of the plant and help to nourish it. A chemical analysis of
the fluids produced in this vegetable stomach, and a careful obser-
vation of their action upon all nitrogenous substances which ordi-
narily constitute the food of animals, show that in almost all
respects it runs in an exact parallel with the functions of that
organ in the animal economy. It appears to be strictly car-
nivorous, as it will not digest vegetable or purely carboniferous
substances, such as gum-Arabic, sugar, starch, olive oil, etc. Wa
n v/e then here the leaf of a plant possessing a true animal
function.
THE PITCHER-PLANT.
The Venus Flytrap, Diona^a ,nusdp,,/„.^„Mi',t of southeastern
North Carolina, is another earnivorous plant. At the extremity of
.ts obeordatc leaves, are two lobes standing at something less
than a right angle to each other, hinged together at the back upon
the prolonged midrib of the leaf. The edges of these lobes are
armed with long spines which shut by and between each other
when the lobes close. Each of the lobes has three slender, sharp
sens.ttve hairs placed triangularly some little distance apart upon
us .nner surface. The slightest touch upon either of these hairs
as the hghting upon it of the smallest insect, or brushing it with
thetr w-tngs, or touching it with their legs or bodies as they crawl
over the surface, causes the lobes to shut together like a trap
instantly .mprisoning the unwary victim. If he be not too laree
.0 pass between the closed teeth at the edge of the lobes he may
escape. Otherwise he is doomed, for the leaf immediately pours
out upon h,m from glands specially provided an abundance of
d.gest.ve flu,d which soon kills and dissolves him
As with the Sundew so with the Dio„c.^. a true digestive
process takes place perfectly analogous to that in the animat econ-
omy and the plant gets much nourishment from this source of
food supply. I, has been observed that plants provided with this
spec,al adaptation for securing food have smaller roots than other
kmds of plants no. so furnished. There are several other genera
of pants .hat possess this extraordinary function, which we have
heretofore considered an exclusive attribute of anin.al life
But ,„ the Sarraceuia we have the ease of plants adapted to
^P.ure.and devour insects, but with no ability truly to digest them
Whtle they entrap and destroy great nun.bers of .hen a„d ,
obvtously contrived especially to do that, , hey make use of th.m
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FLOWERS OF THE FIELD AND FOREST.
as nourishment in away more analogous to the processes of plant
life than do the Drosera and Dioncen.
We are indebted to an admirable study of Sarraccnia vam-
laris, published in 1874, by Dr. Mellichamp of South Carolina,
for the best report yet made of the insect-capturing habit of
the Pitcher-Plant. The species abovx-named is larger than the
one so accurately represented in our plate. It has yellow flowers,
and the trumpet-shaped "pitcher" is from ten to twenty inches
long, and is covered at top with an overarching hood which quite
effectually excludes the rain. It grows common in the South and
is often transplanted into the house to serve as a domestic fly-trap.
It is furnished with the necessary appliances for capturing insects
in this way. Along the leaf border or wing of the pitcher quite
down to the ground are secreted at regular short intervals drops of
a sweet liquid which is very prlatable to flies, ants, bugs, and other
insects. These make a baited path, or honey-trail straight up the
leaf to the open mouth of the pitcher at top. Around the margin
of the mouth and well down the interior the sugary drops exude.
Of course the hungry insect led up the honeyed road of danger
presses on regardless of peril, over the margin, down into the open
mouth of the pitcher, mindful only of the abundant sweets. But he
soon comes to a place on the inner surface of the pitcher where he
cannot maintain his foothold. The surface for several inches is
there covered with a velvety nap of downward-pointing smooth
hairs.
An ant, or any other wingless insect, directly he steps upon
this treacherous surface falls into the depths, where he finds the
narrowing space for several inches beset on all sides with long
sharp spines pointing inward and downward. His frantic efforts
THIi PITCHER-PLANT.
to escape only serve therefore to push him further and further
toward the bottom. But before he reaches that he vVU find himself
plunged mto a watery liquid which the leaf secretes, and which
acts upon him first as a powerful narcotic or anaesthetic, and when
he IS once dead, as a dissolvent which will quickly change his
tissue into a •' liquid fertilizer " wherewith to nourish the hungry
plant. ° ■'
Winged insects in most cases fare but little better for if
they fly directly upward when they lose their foothold, they
stnke their heads against the overarching hood, and are perhaps
beaten back too far to recover themselves before they are en-
gulfed, or take a zigzag course downward to their destruction
At al events, the long tube of this plant is often found a quarter
or half ull of dead or decaying insects. That our co„,mo„
P Cher-Plan, carries on the same business less perfectly, though
w,th no dtfferen. purpose, may be seen by examining ly w!,
developed eaf with its tube lined with bristling downward-pointing
sptnes, and half filled with a watety liquid and drowned insects
The flower of this plant is certainly a very singular one.
The p,st,l consists of an enormous style, which resembles a par-
asol or a toadstool more than anything else, with the stigma in
Tr ""tn, ""'" ""= ""' °' "^ '°''^^- '"'^ P^'^'^. -ched
.n hke a fiddle, pass out between the re-entrant angles of the
expanded style.
The origin as well as the appropriateness of the English
popular name of this plant, .he ■• Side-saddle Flower," appears to
be undtscoverable. The generic name was given in honor of Dr
Sarrazm, of Quebec, who, many years ago, firs, sent specimens
of th,s plant, w,.h some account of its habits, to European bot-
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FLOWERS OF THE FIELD AND FOREST.
anists. This genus, which contains some six or eight exclusively
American species, is closclv related to the Darlingtonia, a curi-
ously uooded Pitcher-Plant of the Sierra Nevada mountains, and
the still more singular Nepenthes, from the islands of the Indian
Ocean, which have tendril-like prolongations of the leaf, some-
times two feet or more long, becoming at their ends, perfectly
developed pitchers.
Altogether, when we get among these plants with such strange
forms and such wonderful habits and functions, we can begin to
understand something of what our Longfellow meant when he
wrote of that great naturalist, his well-beloved friend, Agassiz;
And Nature, the old nurse, took
The child upon her knee,
Saying: "Here is a story-book
Thy Father has written for thee."
"Come wander with me," she said,
"Into regions yet untrod;
And read what is still unread
In the manuscripts of God."
And he wandered away and away
With Nature, the dear old nurse,
Who sang to him, night and day,
The rhymes of the universe.
And whenever the way seemed long.
Or his heart began to fail,
She would s'ng a more wonderful song.
Or tell a more marvellous tale.
THE PALE LAUREL.
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The Pale Laurel.
KALMIA GLAUCA Ait.
Now swells the forest, calm and wide,
In I ppling waves of deepest green,
And all the rugged mountain side
Through billowy curves is seen;
The roadsides meet in ample shade,
W.th showers of light and golden glooms,
And bubbling up the rocky ways
The clustered Laurel blooms.
Each chalice holds the infinite air,
Each rounded cluster grows a sphere;
A twilight pale she grants us there,
A rosier sunrise here;
She broods above the happy earth,
She dwells upon the enchanted da--,--
A th(Misand voices hail her birth
In chanfs of love and praise !
Elaine Goodafe.
Ti.nRH are throe species of Laurel common in the Unr .- States
the most showy being the Mountain Laurel, a conspicuous upla.ni
shrub, growing from four to twenty feet hi,.h, and crowned in mf.i-
summer with splendi.i corymbs of rose-coh)red blossoms. From
FLOWERS OF THI- FIELD AND FOREST.
Ill
this is easily distinguished the Dwarf Laurel of the louver hills and
plains, by its smaller plant and flower, and by the fact thai its blos-
soms are produced below the ends of the branches. Our I'ale
Laurel grows in peat-bogs and other swampy places, and differs
from, both the others by flowering in the spring, and by having nar-
row ioavos which are folded back al"ng the edges and, covered
on the under side with a white bloom or dust, whence the naaic,
Pale Laurel. T*'c flov. ei of the Laurel is unique, the corolla
not imperfectly rescmbli'n;; a saucer in shape.
Kabnia is an Amcioan gcnus, though the Heath family, to
which it belong-'-.is fa-iious in the Old World, especially in the Brit-
ish Isles, where the Heather, the favorite of the poets, often forms
no inconsiderable element in the beauty of otherwise barren moor-
lands. Its nearest relatives here are the Azalia, Rhodora. Blue-
berry, Cranberry, Huckleberry, etc., and some other like shrubs;
though it by no means bears so good a reputation as these last-
name.' useful plants. It has the name of being decidedly poison-
ous, und the Dwarf Laurel has a popular title, the Lambkill or
Sheep- Laurel, which indicates this. How well it deserves its bad
fame I know not.
From time out of mind the poets have spoken of the Laurel as
the particular plant whose leaves make the victor's wreath.
"The Laurel, ineetl of" mi