Part 29

Preferred Habitat--Beside streams, ponds, ditches; moist ground.

Flowering Season--July-October.

Distribution--Nova Scotia to Oregon, south to Missouri and Florida.

These exquisite, bright flowers, hanging at a horizontal, like jewels from a lady’s ear, may be responsible for the plant’s folk-name; but whoever is abroad early on a dewy morning, or after a shower, and finds notched edges of the drooping leaves hung with scintillating gems, dancing, sparkling in the sunshine, sees still another reason for naming this the Jewel-weed. In a brook, pond, spring, or wayside trough, which can never be far from its haunts, dip a spray of the plant to transform the leaves into glistening silver. They shed water much as the nasturtiums do.

When the tiny ruby-throated humming bird flashes northward out of the tropics to spend the summer, where can he hope to find nectar so deeply secreted that not even the long-tongued bumblebee may rob him of it all? Beyond the bird’s bill his tongue can be run out and around curves no other creature can reach. Now the early-blooming columbine, its slender cornucopias brimming with sweets, welcomes the messenger whose needle-like bill will carry pollen from flower to flower; presently the coral honeysuckle and the scarlet painted-cup attract him by wearing his favorite color; next the jewel-weed hangs horns of plenty to lure his eye; and the trumpet vine and cardinal flower continue to feed him successively in Nature’s garden; albeit cannas, nasturtiums, salvia, gladioli, and such deep, irregular showy flowers in men’s flower beds sometimes lure him away.

Familiar as we may be with the nervous little seed-pods of the touch-me-not, which children ever love to pop and see the seeds fly, as they do from balsam pods in grandmother’s garden, they still startle with the suddenness of their volley. Touch the delicate hair-trigger at the end of a capsule, and the lightning response of the flying seeds makes one jump. They sometimes land four feet away. At this rate of progress a year, and with the other odds against which all plants have to contend, how many generations must it take to fringe even one mill pond with jewel-weed; yet this is rapid transit indeed compared with many of Nature’s processes. The plant is a conspicuous sufferer from the dodder.

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The Pale Touch-me-not (I. aurea)--I. pallida of Gray--most abundant northward, a larger, stouter species found in similar situations, but with paler yellow flowers only sparingly dotted if at all, has its broader sac-shaped sepal abruptly contracted into a short, notched, but not incurved spur. It shares its sister’s popular names.

BUCKTHORN FAMILY (Rhamnaceae)

New Jersey Tea; Wild Snowball; Red-root

Ceanothus americanus

Flowers--Small, white, on white pedicels, crowded in dense, oblong, terminal clusters. Calyx white, hemispheric, 5-lobed; 5 petals, hooded and long-clawed; 5 stamens with long filaments; style short, 3-cleft. Stems: Shrubby, 1 to 3 ft. high, usually several, from a deep reddish root. Leaves: Alternate, ovate-oblong, acute at tip, finely saw-edged, 3-nerved, on short petioles.

Preferred Habitat--Dry, open woods and thickets.

Flowering Season--May-July.

Distribution--Ontario south and west to the Gulf of Mexico.

Light, feathery clusters of white little flowers crowded on the twigs of this low shrub interested thrifty colonial housewives of Revolutionary days not at all; the tender, young, rusty, downy leaves were what they sought to dry as a substitute for imported tea. Doubtless the thought that they were thereby evading George the Third’s tax and brewing patriotism in every kettleful added a sweetness to the home-made beverage that sugar itself could not impart. The American troops were glad enough to use New Jersey Tea throughout the war. A nankeen or cinnamon-colored dye is made from the reddish root.

MALLOW FAMILY (Malvaceae)

Swamp Rose-mallow; Mallow Rose

Hibiscus Moscheutos

Flowers--Very large, clear rose pink, sometimes white, often with crimson centre, 4 to 7 in. across, solitary, or clustered on peduncles at summit of stems. Calyx 5-cleft, subtended by numerous narrow bractlets; 5 large, veined petals; stamens united into a valvular column bearing anthers on the outside for much of its length; 1 pistil partly enclosed in the column, and with 5 button-tipped stigmatic branches above. Stem: 4 to 7 ft. tall, stout, from perennial root. Leaves: 3 to 7 in. long, tapering, pointed, egg-shaped, densely white, downy beneath; lower leaves, or sometimes all, lobed at middle.

Preferred Habitat--Brackish marshes, riversides, lake shores, saline situations.

Flowering Season--August-September.

Distribution--Massachusetts to the Gulf of Mexico, westward to Louisiana; found locally in the interior, but chiefly along Atlantic seaboard.

Stately ranks of these magnificent flowers, growing among the tall sedges and “cat-tails” of the marshes, make the most insensate traveller exclaim at their amazing loveliness. To reach them one must don rubber boots and risk sudden seats in the slippery ooze; nevertheless, with spade in hand to give one support, it is well worth while to seek them out and dig up some roots to transplant to the garden. Here, strange to say, without salt soil or more water than the average garden receives from showers and hose, this handsomest of our wild flowers soon makes itself delightfully at home under cultivation. Such good, deep earth, well enriched and moistened, as the hollyhock thrives in, suits it perfectly. Now we have a better opportunity to note how the bees suck the five nectaries at the base of the petals, and collect the abundant pollen of the newly-opened flowers, which they perforce transfer to the five button-shaped stigmas intentionally impeding the entrance to older blossoms. Only its cousin the hollyhock, a native of China, can vie with the rose-mallow’s decorative splendor among the shrubbery; and the Rose of China (Hibiscus Rosa-Sinensis), cultivated in greenhouses here, eclipse it in the beauty of the individual blossom. This latter flower, whose superb scarlet corolla stains black, is employed by the Chinese married women, it is said, to discolor their teeth; but in the West Indies it sinks to even greater ignominy as a dauber for blacking shoes!

Marsh Mallow (Althaea officinalis), a name frequently misapplied to the Swamp Rose-mallow, is properly given to a much smaller pink flower, measuring only an inch and a half across at the most, and a far rarer one, being a naturalized immigrant from Europe found only in the salt marshes from the Massachusetts coast to New York. It is also known as Wymote. This is a bushy, leafy plant, two to four feet high, and covered with velvety down as a protection against the clogging of its pores by the moisture arising from its wet retreats. Plants that live in swamps must “perspire” freely and keep their pores open. From the Marsh Mallow’s thick roots the mucilage used in confectionery is obtained, a soothing demulcent long esteemed in medicine.

ST. JOHN’S-WORT FAMILY (Hypericaceae)

Common St. John’s-wort

Hypericum perforatum