Part 40

SNEEZEWEED. SWAMP SUNFLOWER. Helenium autumnale. Composite Family (p. 13).

One to six feet high. Stem.—Angled, erect, branching. Leaves.—Alternate, lance-shaped. Flower-heads.—Yellow, composed of both ray and disk-flowers, the rays being somewhat cleft.

As far north as Connecticut we see masses of these bright flowers bordering the streams and swamps in September.

STICK-TIGHT. BUR MARIGOLD, BEGGAR-TICKS. Bidens frondosa. Composite Family (p. 13).

Two to six feet high. Stem.—Branching. Leaves.—Opposite, three to five-divided. Flower-heads.—Consisting of brownish-yellow tubular flowers, with a leaf-like involucre beneath.

PLATE LVIII

STICK-TIGHT.—B. frondosa. ]

If one were only describing the attractive wild flowers, the stick-tight would certainly be omitted, as its appearance is not prepossessing, and the small barbed seed-vessels so cleverly fulfil their destiny in making one’s clothes a means of conveyance to “fresh woods and pastures new” as to cause all wayfarers heartily to detest them. “How surely the desmodium growing on some cliff-side, or the bidens on the edge of a pool, prophesy the coming of the traveller, brute or human, that will transport their seeds on his coat,” writes Thoreau. But the plant is so constantly encountered in late summer, and yet so generally unknown, that it can hardly be overlooked.

The larger bur marigold, B. chrysanthemoides, does its best to retrieve the family reputation for ugliness, and surrounds its dingy disk-flowers with a circle of showy golden rays which are strictly decorative, having neither pistils nor stamens, and leaving all the work of the household to the less attractive but more useful disk-flowers. Their effect is pleasing, and late into the autumn the moist ditches look as if sown with gold through their agency. The plant varies in height from six inches to two feet. Its leaves are opposite, lance-shaped, and regularly toothed.

SMOOTH FALSE FOXGLOVE. Gerardia quercifolia. Figwort Family.

Stem.—Smooth, three to six feet high, usually branching. Leaves.—The lower usually deeply incised, the upper narrowly oblong, incised, or entire. Flowers.—Yellow, large, in a raceme or spike. Calyx.—Five-cleft. Corolla.—Two inches long, somewhat tubular, swelling above, with five more or less unequal, spreading lobes, woolly within. Stamens.—Four, in pairs, woolly. Pistil.—One.

These large pale yellow flowers are very beautiful and striking when seen in the dry woods of late summer. They are all the more appreciated because there are few flowers abroad at this season save the Composites, which are decorative and radiant enough, but usually somewhat lacking in the delicate charm we look for in a flower.

The members of this genus, which is named after Gerarde, the author of the famous “Herball,” are supposed to be more or less parasitic in their habits, drawing their nourishment from the roots of other plants.

PLATE LIX

SMOOTH FALSE FOXGLOVE.—G. quercifolia. ]

The downy false foxglove, G. flava, is usually a somewhat lower plant, with a close down, a less-branched stem, more entire leaves, and smaller, similar flowers.

TANSY. Tanacetum vulgare. Composite Family (p. 13).

Stem.—Two to four feet high. Leaves.—Divided into toothed leaflets. Flower-heads.—Yellow, composed of tiny flowers which are nearly, if not all, tubular in shape; borne in flat-topped clusters.

With the name of tansy we seem to catch a whiff of its strong-scented breath and a glimpse of some New England homestead beyond whose borders it has strayed to deck the roadside with its deep yellow, flat-topped flower-clusters. The plant has been used in medicine since the Middle Ages, and in more recent times it has been gathered by the country people for “tansy wine” and “tansy tea.” In the Roman Church it typifies the bitter herbs which were to be eaten at the Paschal season; and cakes made of eggs and its leaves are called “tansies,” and eaten during Lent. It is also frequently utilized in more secular concoctions.

The common name is supposed to be a corruption of the Greek word for immortality.

WITCH-HAZEL. Hamamelis Virginiana. Witch-hazel Family.

A tall shrub. Leaves.—Oval, wavy-toothed, mostly falling before the flowers appear. Flowers.—Honey-yellow, clustered, autumnal. Calyx.—Four-parted. Corolla.—Of four long narrow petals. Stamens.—Eight. Pistils.—Two. Fruit.—A capsule which bursts elastically, discharging its large seeds with vigor.

PLATE LX

TANSY.—T. vulgare. ]

It seems as though the flowers of the witch-hazel were fairly entitled to the “booby-prize,” of the vegetable world. Surely no other blossoms make their first appearance so invariably late upon the scene of action. The fringed gentian often begins to open its “meek and quiet eye” quite early in September. Certain species of golden-rod and aster continue to flower till late in the year, but they began putting forth their bright clusters before the summer was fairly over; while the elusively fragrant, pale yellow blossoms of the witch-hazel need hardly be expected till well on in September, when its leaves have fluttered earthward and its fruit has ripened. Does the pleasure which we experience at the spring-like apparition of this leafless yellow-flowered shrub in the autumn woods arise from the same depraved taste which is gratified by strawberries at Christmas, I wonder? Or is it that in the midst of death we have a foretaste of life; a prophecy of the great yearly resurrection which even now we may anticipate?

Thoreau’s tastes in such directions were certainly not depraved, and he writes: “The witch-hazel loves a hill-side with or without woods or shrubs. It is always pleasant to come upon it unexpectedly as you are threading the woods in such places. Methinks I attribute to it some elfish quality apart from its fame. I love to behold its gray speckled stems.” Under another date he writes: “Heard in the night a snapping sound, and the fall of some small body on the floor from time to time. In the morning I found it was produced by the witch-hazel nuts on my desk springing open and casting their seeds quite across my chamber, hard and stony as these nuts were.”

The Indians long ago discovered the value of its bark for medicinal purposes, and it is now utilized in many well-known extracts. The forked branches formerly served as divining-rods in the search for water and precious ores. This belief in its mysterious power very possibly arose from its suggestive title, which Dr. Prior says should be spelled wych-hazel, as it was called after the wych-elm, whose leaves it resembles, and which was so named because the chests termed in old times “wyches” were made of its wood—

His hall rofe was full of bacon flytches, The chambre charged was with wyches Full of egges, butter, and chese.