Part 23

Preferred Habitat--Thickets, fence-rows, woodland borders.

Flowering Season--May.

Distribution--Newfoundland and Manitoba southward to the Gulf of Mexico.

“The fair maid who, the first of May, Goes to the fields at break of day And washes in dew from the hawthorn tree Will ever after handsome be.”

Here is a popular recipe omitted from that volume of heart-to-heart talks entitled “How to Be Pretty Though Plain!”

The sombre-thoughted Scotchman, looking for trouble, tersely observes:

“Mony haws, Mony snaws.”

But in delicious, blossoming May, when the joy of living fairly intoxicates one, and every bird’s throat is swelling with happy music, who but a Calvinist would croak dismal prophecies? In Ireland, old crones tell marvellous tales about the hawthorns, and the banshees which have a predilection for them.

Five-finger; Common Cinquefoil

Potentilla canadensis

Flowers--Yellow, 1/4 to 1/2 in. across, growing singly on long peduncles from the leaf axils. Five petals longer than the 5 acute calyx lobes with 5 linear bracts between them; about 20 stamens; pistils numerous, forming a head. Stem: Spreading over ground by slender runners or ascending. Leaves: 5-fingered, the digitate, saw-edged leaflets (rarely 3 or 4) spreading from a common point, petioled; some in a tuft at base.

Preferred Habitat--Dry fields, roadsides, hills, banks.

Flowering Season--April-August.

Distribution--Quebec to Georgia, and westward beyond the Mississippi.

Every one crossing dry fields in the eastern United States and Canada at least must have trod on a carpet of cinquefoil (cinque = five, feuilles = leaves), and have noticed the bright little blossoms among the pretty foliage, possibly mistaking the plant for its cousin, the trefoliate barren strawberry. Both have flowers like miniature wild yellow roses. During the Middle Ages, when misdirected zeal credited almost any plant with healing virtues for every ill that flesh is heir to, the cinquefoils were considered most potent remedies, hence their generic name.

High Bush Blackberry; Bramble

Rubus villosus

Flowers--White, 1 in. or less across, in terminal raceme-like clusters. Calyx deeply 5-parted, persistent; 5 large petals; stamens and carpels numerous, the latter inserted on a pulpy receptacle. Stem: 3 to 10 ft. high, woody, furrowed, curved, armed with stout, recurved prickles. Leaves: Compounded of 3 to 5 ovate, saw-edged leaflets, the end one stalked, all hairy beneath. Fruit: Firmly attached to the receptacle; nearly black, oblong juicy berries 1 in. long or less, hanging in clusters. Ripe, July-August.

Preferred Habitat--Dry soil, thickets, fence-rows, old fields, waysides. Low altitudes.

Flowering Season--May-June.

Distribution--New England to Florida, and far westward.

“There was a man of our town, And he was wondrous wise, He jumped into a bramble bush”--

If we must have poetical associations for every flower, Mother Goose furnishes several.

But for the practical mind this plant’s chief interest lies in the fact that from its wild varieties the famous Lawton and Kittatinny blackberries have been derived. The late Peter Henderson used to tell how the former came to be introduced. A certain Mr. Secor found an unusually fine blackberry growing wild in a hedge at New Rochelle, New York, and removed it to his garden, where it increased apace. But not even for a gift could he induce a neighbor to relieve him of the superfluous bushes, so little esteemed were blackberries in his day. However, a shrewd lawyer named Lawton at length took hold of it, exhibited the fruit, advertised it cleverly, and succeeded in pocketing a snug little fortune from the sale of the prolific plants. Another fine variety of the common wild blackberry, which was discovered by a clergyman at the edge of the woods on the Kittatinny Mountains in New Jersey, has produced fruit under skilled cultivation that still remains the best of its class. When clusters of blossoms and fruit in various stages of green, red, and black hang on the same bush, few ornaments in Nature’s garden are more decorative.

Purple-flowering or Virginia Raspberry

Rubus odoratus

Flowers--Royal purple or bluish pink, showy, fragrant, 1 to 2 in. broad, loosely clustered at top of stem. Calyx sticky-hairy, deeply 5-parted, with long, pointed tips; corolla of 5 rounded petals; stamens and pistils very numerous. Stem: 3 to 5 ft. high, erect, branched, shrubby, bristly, not prickly. Leaves: Alternate, petioled, 3 to 5 lobed, middle lobe largest, and all pointed; saw-edged lower leaves immense. Fruit: A depressed red berry, scarcely edible.

Preferred Habitat--Rocky woods, dells, shady roadsides.