Part 15

Where pelargoniums live out of doors the year round they grow very large and have stems that are quite woody.

Some of them, as we know, are useful to the human race as well as ornamental, supplying food and an oil highly esteemed as a perfume.

The wood sorrels do not look much like the rest of the Geranium Family. But they do resemble it in their habit of caring for their seeds. Out in the fields you will find the small, yellow-flowered sheep sorrel, with its clover-like, sour-tasting leaves. Now hunt for a seed-pod. They are pretty little things that stand up something like Christmas candles. Touch a ripe one and it splits open down each of its five cells and shows you a row of white seeds in each. You think the seeds are not ripe because they are white, and you touch one of them. What has happened? That seed surely exploded! No, there it is—the other side of the table, not white, but dark brown. Queer performance, this. You touch another and another, and at last you get to understand it. Each seed is surrounded by an elastic white covering, and this it is that suddenly curls up, very much as the impatiens pod does, and sends the seed within it flying!

When night comes the sorrel goes to sleep. Its leaflets droop and shut together as you see in the picture, and the flowers, too, close. The sorrel loves the sunshine, and often does not open on cloudy days.

There are a great many sorrels in the world besides our sheep sorrel; in fact, we are told there are about two hundred and five of them!

We have only three or four out of all that number, and they are not all yellow like the sheep sorrel. One that lives in the cool Northern woods is white, with delicate pink veins. Pretty little things they are, and farther South there lives a pretty violet one.

Like the pelargoniums, the sorrels are to be found at the Cape of Good Hope. In fact, most of the two hundred and five kinds live there and in South America.

Like the pelargoniums, too, the South African sorrels are much larger and brighter than their American relatives.

We like them so well we raise them in our greenhouses and window boxes. They are much larger than our wild sorrels and have bright pink or white or yellow corollas.

Down in Peru, too, there grows a very useful sorrel; they call it “oca,” and raise it for its potatolike tubers which the people eat.

The Mexicans also have a sorrel with edible bulbs and bright red flowers. In fact, the sorrel, like the potato, has a habit of storing up plenty of underground food which is also good food for man, and several species of sorrel are raised for this purpose in different parts of the world.

In those places, instead of a potato field you have a sorrel field.

We often eat the leaves of the wood sorrel for the sake of their pleasant acid taste. The proper name of the sorrel is “oxalis,” and comes from a Greek word meaning “acid.” But if we were to extract this acid from the sorrel and then eat it, we would have a serious time, for in its concentrated form it is a fearful poison. It is sold under the misleading name of “salt of lemons,” and for this reason people often ignorantly taste it, thinking that “salt of lemons” can do them no harm.

This dangerous “salt of lemons” is very useful in calico printing, in dyeing, and in the bleaching of flax and straw.

The next time you come across a patch of sheep sorrel, stop and think of all it and its relatives are able to do for us.

We usually think of the Geranium Family as being merely ornamental; but, as we have seen, some kinds of tropæolum, several kinds of sorrel, and at least one kind of pelargonium yield edible tubers which are eaten in different parts of the world, and the modest little oxalis yields a substance valuable for manufacturing purposes.

Even our commonplace crane’s bill that blooms so abundantly in the woods in early summer has something for us, for from its roots a medicine is obtained.

Hyacinth Stories

THE HYACINTH.

Out in the garden there’s something so dear! Just as dear, Do you hear? Something that comes in the spring of the year Fragrant as roses and fresh as the dew, Purple and pink and violet too. Something new, Darling too. Guess what it is and I’ll show it to you!

SIGNS OF SPRING.

Out of doors are signs of spring. The buds on the trees look full, and some are beginning to burst. But there is very little life as yet.

Only in the hyacinth bed it is different, for there the hyacinths have waked up; their stiff leaves have opened the door of the earth for the blossoms to come out. The flower clusters are nearly ready to bloom, but the buds are still green. The tall stem has lifted them up into the air and sunlight, and, although the air is still cold, they continue to grow.

Soon the green buds undergo a change. The topmost one on each flower cluster softens to a tender blue or pink.

The green buds grow lovely as they stand on their stems in the sun. Delicate tints steal over them, the green color fades away, and many colors take its place.

They open into charming flowers and give forth a delightful fragrance. The whole garden is sweet with the odor of hyacinths, and we feel that the beautiful summer has sent us a messenger.

THE HYACINTH’S SCEPTRE.

Kings bear a sceptre, and so do I. Theirs is a symbol of power, and so is mine. Theirs is a costly rod with an emblem at the top Mine is a tall green rod bearing flower bells. My sceptre is called a “scape.” “Scape” means “sceptre,” the sign of kings.