Part 43

Preferred Habitat--Dry, open waste land; roadsides, fields.

Flowering Season--June-November.

Distribution--Naturalized from Europe and Asia, more or less common throughout the United States and Canada.

“Of beautiful weeds quite a long list might be made without including any of the so-called wild flowers,” says John Burroughs. “A favorite of mine is the little Moth Mullein that blooms along the highway, and about the fields, and maybe upon the edge of the lawn.” Even in winter, when the slender stem, set with round brown seed-vessels, rises above the snow, the plant is pleasing to the human eye, as it is to that of hungry birds.

Butter-and-eggs; Yellow Toadflax; Eggs-and-bacon; Flaxweed; Brideweed

Linaria vulgaris

Flowers--Light canary yellow and orange, 1 in. long or over, irregular, borne in terminal, leafy-bracted spikes. Corolla spurred at the base, 2-lipped, the upper lip erect, 2-lobed; the lower lip spreading, 3-lobed, its base an orange-colored palate closing the throat; 4 stamens in pairs within; 1 pistil. Stem: 1 to 3 ft. tall, slender, leafy. Leaves: Pale, grass-like.

Preferred Habitat--Waste land, roadsides, banks, fields.

Flowering Season--June-October.

Distribution--Nebraska and Manitoba, eastward to Virginia and Nova Scotia. Europe and Asia.

An immigrant from Europe, this plebeian perennial, meekly content with waste places, is rapidly inheriting the earth. Its beautiful spikes of butter-colored cornucopias, apparently holding the yolk of a diminutive egg, emit a cheesy odor, suggesting a close dairy. Perhaps half the charm of the plant--and its charms increase greatly when it is grown in a garden--consists in the pale bluish-green grass-like leaves with a bloom on the surface, which are put forth so abundantly from the sterile shoots.

Blue or Wild Toadflax; Blue Linaria

Linaria canadensis

Flowers--Pale blue to purple, small, irregular, in slender spikes. Calyx 5 pointed;-corolla 2-lipped, with curved spur longer than its tube, which is nearly closed by a white, 2-ridged projection or palate; the upper lip erect, 2-lobed; lower lip 3-lobed, spreading. Stamens 4, in pairs, in throat; 1 pistil. Stem: Slender, weak, of sterile shoots, prostrate; flowering stem, ascending or erect, 4 in. to 2 ft. high. Leaves: Small, linear, alternately scattered along stem, or oblong in pairs or threes on leafy sterile shoots.

Preferred Habitat--Dry soil, gravel or sand.

Flowering Season--May-October.

Distribution--North, Central, and South Americas.

Wolf, rat, mouse, sow, cow, cat, snake, dragon, dog, toad, are among the many animal prefixes to the names of flowers that the English country people have given for various and often most interesting reasons. Just as dog, used as a prefix, expresses an idea of worthlessness to them, so toad suggests a spurious plant; the toadflax being made to bear what is meant to be an odious name because before flowering it resembles the true flax, linum, from which the generic title is derived.

Hairy Beard-tongue

Pentstemon hirsutus (P. pubescens)

Flowers--Dull violet or lilac and white, about 1 in. long, borne in a loose spike. Calyx 5-parted, the sharply pointed sepals overlapping; corolla, a gradually inflated tube widening where the mouth divides into a 2-lobed upper lip and a 3-lobed lower lip; the throat nearly closed by hairy palate at base of lower lip; sterile fifth stamen densely bearded for half its length; 4 anther-bearing stamens, the anthers divergent. Stem: 1 to 3 ft. high, erect, downy above. Leaves: Oblong to lance-shaped, upper ones seated on stem; lower ones narrowed into petioles.

Preferred Habitat--Dry or rocky fields, thickets, and open woods.

Flowering Season--May-July.

Distribution--Ontario to Florida, Manitoba to Texas.

It is the densely bearded, yellow, fifth stamen (pente = five, stemon = a stamen) which gives this flower its scientific name and its chief interest to the structural botanist. From the fact that a blossom has a lip in the centre of the lower half of its corolla, that an insect must use as its landing place, comes the necessity for the pistil to occupy a central position. Naturally, a fifth stamen would be only in its way, an encumbrance to be banished in time. In the figwort, for example, we have seen the fifth stamen reduced, from long sterility, to a mere scale on the roof of the corolla tube; in other lipped flowers, the useless organ has disappeared; but in the beard-tongue, it goes through a series of curious curves from the upper to the under side of the flower to get out of the way of the pistil. Yet it serves an admirable purpose in helping close the mouth of the flower, which the hairy lip alone could not adequately guard against pilferers. A long-tongued bee, thrusting in his head up to his eyes only, receives the pollen in his face. The blossom is male (staminate) in its first stage and female (pistillate) in its second. A western species of the beard-tongue has been selected by gardeners for hybridizing into showy but often less charming flowers.

Snake-head; Turtle-head; Balmony; Shellflower; Cod-head

Chelone glabra

Flowers--White tinged with pink, or all white, about 1 in. long, growing in a dense, terminal cluster. Calyx 5-parted, bracted at base; corolla irregular broadly tubular, 2-lipped; upper lip arched, swollen, slightly notched;, lower lip 3-lobed, spreading, woolly within; 5 stamens, 1 sterile, 4 in pairs, anther-bearing, woolly; 1 pistil. Stem: 1 to 3 ft. high, erect, smooth, simple, leafy. Leaves: Opposite, lance-shaped, saw-edged.