Part 23

The tall white wands of the black cohosh shoot up in the shadowy woods of midsummer like so many ghosts. A curious-looking plant it is, bearing aloft the feathery flowers which have such an unpleasant odor that even the insects are supposed to avoid them. Fortunately they are sufficiently conspicuous to be admired at a distance, many a newly cleared hill-side and wood-border being lightened by their slender, torch-like racemes which flash upon us as we travel through the country. The plant was one of the many which the Indians believed to be efficacious for snake-bites. The generic name is from cimex—a bug, and fugare—to drive away.

COMMON ELDER. Sambucus Canadensis. Honeysuckle Family.

Stems.—Scarcely woody, five to ten feet high. Leaves.—Divided into toothed leaflets. Flowers.—White, small, in flat-topped clusters. Calyx.—Lobes minute or none. Corolla.—With five spreading lobes. Stamens.—Five. Pistil.—One, with three stigmas. Fruit.—Dark purple, berry-like.

The common elder borders the lanes and streams with its spreading flower-clusters in early summer, and in the later year is noticeable for the dark berries from which “elderberry wine” is brewed by the country people. The fine white wood is easily cut and is used for skewers and pegs. A decoction of the leaves serves the gardener a good purpose in protecting delicate plants from caterpillars. Evelyn wrote of it: “If the medicinal properties of the leaves, berries, bark, etc., were thoroughly known, I cannot tell what our countrymen could ail for which he might not fetch from every hedge, whether from sickness or wound.”

The white pith can easily be removed from the stems, hence the old English name of bore-wood.

PLATE XXII

BLACK COHOSH.—C. racemosa. ]

The name elder is probably derived from the Anglo-Saxon aeld—a fire—and is thought to refer to the former use of the hollow branches in blowing up a fire.

SPURGE. Euphorbia corollata. Spurge Family.

Stem.—Two or three feet high. Leaves.—Ovate, lance-shaped or linear. Flowers.—Clustered within the usually five-lobed, cup-shaped involucre which was formerly considered the flower itself; the male flowers numerous and lining its base, consisting each of a single stamen; the female flower solitary in the middle of the involucre, consisting of a three-lobed ovary with three styles, each style being two-cleft. Pod.—On a slender stalk, smooth.

In this plant the showy white appendages of the cup-shaped clustered involucres are usually taken for the petals of the flower; only the botanist suspecting that the minute organs within these involucres really form a cluster of separate flowers of different sexes. While the most northerly range in the Eastern States of this spurge is usually considered to be New York, the botany states that it has been recently naturalized in Massachusetts. It blossoms from July till October.

PARTRIDGE VINE. Mitchella repens. Madder Family.

Stems.—Smooth and trailing. Leaves.—Rounded, evergreen, veined with white. Flowers.—White, fragrant, in pairs. Calyx.—Four-toothed. Corolla.—Funnel-form, with four spreading lobes, bearded within. Stamens.—Four. Pistil.—One, its ovary united with that of its sister flower, its four stigmas linear.

At all times of the year this little plant faithfully fulfils its mission of adorning that small portion of the earth to which it finds itself rooted. But only the early summer finds the partridge vine exhaling its delicious fragrance from the delicate sister-blossoms which are its glory. Among the waxy flowers will be found as many of the bright red berries of the previous year as have been left unmolested by the hungry winter birds. This plant is found not only in the moist woods of North America, but also in the forests of Mexico and Japan. It is a near relative of the dainty bluets or Quaker ladies, and has the same peculiarity of dimorphous flowers (p. 232).

PLATE XXIII

PARTRIDGE VINE.—M. repens. ]

GREEN ORCHIS. Habenaria virescens.

RAGGED FRINGED ORCHIS. Habenaria lacera. Orchis Family (p. 17).

Leaves.—Oblong or lance-shaped. Flowers.—Greenish or yellowish-white, growing in a spike.

These two orchids are found in wet boggy places during the earlier summer, the green antedating the ragged fringed orchis by a week or more. The lip of the ragged fringed is three-parted, the divisions being deeply fringed, giving what is called in Sweet’s “British Flower-Garden” an “elegantly jagged appearance.” The lip of the green orchis is furnished with a tooth on each side and a strong protuberance in the middle. So far as superficial beauty and conspicuousness are concerned these flowers do scant justice to the brilliant family to which they belong, and equally excite the scornful exclamation, “You call that an orchid!” when brought home for analysis or preservation.

BUTTON-BUSH. Cephalanthus occidentalis. Madder Family.

A shrub three to eight feet high. Leaves.—Opposite or whorled in threes, somewhat oblong and pointed. Flowers.—Small, white, closely crowded in round button-like heads. Calyx.—Four-toothed. Corolla.—Four-toothed. Stamens.—Four. Pistil.—One, with a thread-like protruding style and blunt stigma.

This pretty shrub borders the streams and swamps throughout the country. Its button-like flower-clusters appear in midsummer. It belongs to the family of which the delicate bluet and fragrant partridge vine are also members. Its flowers have a jasmine-like fragrance.

MILD WATER-PEPPER. Polygonum hydropiperoides. Buckwheat Family.

Stem.—One to three feet high, smooth, branching. Leaves.—Alternate, narrowly lance-shaped or oblong. Flowers.—White or flesh-color, small, growing in erect, slender spikes. Calyx.—Five-parted. Corolla.—None. Stamens.—Eight. Pistil.—One, usually with three styles.

These rather inconspicuous but very common flowers are found in moist places and shallow water.

The common knotweed, P. aviculare, which grows in such abundance in country dooryards and waste places, has slender, often prostrate, stems, and small greenish flowers, which are clustered in the axils of the leaves or spiked at the termination of the stems. This is perhaps the “hindering knotgrass” to which Shakespeare refers in the “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” so terming it, not on account of its knotted trailing stems, but because of the belief that it would hinder the growth of a child. In Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Coxcomb” the same superstition is indicated:

We want a boy Kept under for a year with milk and knotgrass.