Part 55

After flowering, it again looks like a bud, lowering its head to mature seed unobserved. Presently rising on a gradually lengthened scape to elevate it where there is no interruption for the passing breeze from surrounding rivals, the transformed head, now globular, white, airy, is even more exquisite, set as it is with scores of tiny parachutes ready to sail away. A child’s breath puffing out the time of day, a vireo plucking at the fluffy ball for lining to put in its nest, the summer breeze, the scythe, rake, and mowing machines, sudden gusts of winds sweeping the country before thunderstorms--these are among the agents that set the flying vagabonds free. In the hay used for packing they travel to foreign lands in ships, and, once landed, readily adapt themselves to conditions as they find them. After soaking in the briny ocean for twenty-eight days--long enough for a current to carry them a thousand miles along the coast--they are still able to germinate.

Tall or Wild Lettuce; Wild Opium; Horse-weed

Lactuca canadensis

Flower-heads--Numerous, small, about 1/4 in. across, involucre, cylindric, rays pale yellow; followed by abundant, soft, bright white pappus; the heads growing in loose, branching, terminal clusters. Stem: Smooth, 3 to 10 ft. high, leafy up to the flower panicle; juice milky. Leaves: Upper ones lance-shaped; lower ones often 1 ft. long, wavy-lobed, often pinnatifid, taper pointed, narrowed into flat petioles.

Preferred Habitat--Moist, open ground; roadsides.

Flowering Season--June-November.

Distribution--Georgia, westward to Arkansas, north to the British Possessions.

Few gardeners allow the table lettuce (sativa) to go to seed; but as it is next of kin to this common wayside weed, it bears a strong likeness to it in the loose, narrow panicles of cream-colored flowers, followed by more charming, bright, white little pompons. Where the garden varieties originated, or what they were, nobody knows. Herodotus says lettuce was eaten as a salad in 550 B.C.; in Pliny’s time it was cultivated, and even blanched, so as to be had at all seasons of the year by the Romans. Among the privy-purse expenses of Henry VIII is a reward to a certain gardener for bringing “lettuze” and cherries to Hampton Court. Quaint old Parkinson, enumerating “the vertues of the lettice,” says, “They all cool a hot and fainting stomache.” When the milky juice has been thickened (lactucarium), it is sometimes used as a substitute for opium by regular practitioners--a fluid employed by the plants themselves, it is thought, to discourage creatures from feasting at their expense. Certain caterpillars, however, eat the leaves readily; but offer lettuce or poppy foliage to grazing cattle, and they will go without food rather than touch it.

“What’s one man’s poison, Signer, Is another’s meat or drink.”

Rabbits, for example, have been fed on the deadly nightshade for a week without injury.

Orange or Tawny Hawkweed; Golden Mouse-ear Hawkweed; Devil’s Paint-brush

Hieracium aurantiacum

Flower-heads--Reddish orange; 1 in. across or less, the 5-toothed rays overlapping in several series; several heads on short peduncles in a terminal cluster. Stem: Usually leafless, or with 1 to 2 small sessile leaves; 6 to 20 in. high, slender, hairy, from a tuft of hairy, spatulate, or oblong leaves at the base.

Preferred Habitat--Fields, woods, roadsides, dry places.

Flowering Season--June-September.

Distribution--Pennsylvania and Middle states northward into British Possessions.

A popular title in England, from whence the plant originally came, is Grimm the Collier. All the plants in this genus take their name from hierax--a hawk, because people in the old country once thought that birds of prey swooped earthward to sharpen their eyesight with leaves of the hawkweed, hawkbit, or speerhawk, as they are variously called. Transplanted into the garden, the orange hawkweed forms a spreading mass of unusual, splendid color.

The Rattlesnake-weed, Early or Vein-leaf Hawkweed, Snake or Poor Robin’s Plantain (H. venosum), with flower-heads only about half an inch across, sends up a smooth, slender stem, paniculately branched above, to display the numerous dandelion-yellow disks as early as May, although October is not too late to find this generous bloomer in pine woodlands, dry thickets, and sandy soil. Purplish-veined oval leaves, more or less hairy, that spread in a tuft next the ground, are probably as efficacious in curing shake bites as those of the Rattlesnake Plantain. When a credulous generation believed that the Creator had indicated with some sign on each plant the special use for which each was intended, many leaves were found to have veinings suggesting the marks on a snake’s body; therefore, by simple reasoning, they must extract venom. How delightful is faith cure!

COLOR KEY

BLUE TO PURPLE FLOWERS

Asters, Blue and Purple Beard-tongues Bittersweet (Nightshade) Bluets Brooklime, American Chicory Day-flowers Eye-bright Flags, Blue Fluellin Forget-me-nots Gentians Harebell Iron-weed Liverwort Monkey-flower Orchids, Purple-fringed Peanut, Hog Pickerel-weed Plantain, Robin’s Self-heal Skullcaps Speedwells Tare, Blue Thistles Toadflax, Blue Venus’ Looking Glass Vervain, Blue Violets, Blue and Purple Viper’s Bugloss

MAGENTA TO PINK

Arbutus, Trailing Arethusa Bergamot, Wild Bindweed, Hedge Bitter-bloom Calopogon Campion, Corn Catch-flies Clovers Dogbanes Geraniums, Wild Gerardias Hardhack Herb-Robert Honeysuckle, Wild Joe-Pye weed Knotwood, Pink Laurels Lobelias, Blue Lupine, Wild Milkworts Moccasin Flower, Pink Motherwort Orchid, Showy Persicaria, Common Pink, Moss Pipsissewa Polygala, Fringed Raspberry, Purple-flowering Rhododendron, American Rose, Mallow Roses, Wild Snake-head Soapwort Willow-herb, Spiked Wood-sorrel, Violet Wood-sorrel, White

WHITE AND GREENISH

Anemone, Wood Arrow-head, Broad-leaved Aster, White Baneberries Blackberries Bloodroot Button-Bush Camomile Campion, Starry Carrot, Wild Chickweed, Common Clover, White Sweet Cohosh, Black Coolwort Culver’s Root Dodder, Gronovius’ Dogwoods Dutchman’s Breeches Everlastings Gold-thread Grass of Parnaoeas Hawthorn, Common Hellebore, White Indian Pipe Jamestown weed Ladies’ Tresses May Apple Meadow-rues Meadow-sweets Mitrewort, False New Jersey Tea Orchids, White-fringed Partridge Vine Pokeweed Saxifrage, Early Shepherd’s Purse Solomon’s Seals Spikenard, American Spikenard, Wild Spring Beauty Squirrel Corn Star-flower Star-grass Sundews Violets, White Virgin’s Bower Wake-Robin, Early Water-lily, White Wintergreen, Creeping Yarrow

YELLOW AND ORANGE

Adder’s Tongue, Yellow Aster, Golden Barberry, American Black-eyed Susan Butter-and-eggs Buttercups Butterfly-weed Carrion-flower Celandine, Greater Clintonia, Yellow Dandelions Devil’s Paint-brush Elecampane Evening Primrose Five-finger Foxgloves, False Golden-rods Hawkweeds Indigo, Wild Jewel-weed Lettuce, Wild Lily, Blackberry Lily, Wild Yellow Marigold, Marsh Meadow-gowan Moccasin-flower, Yellow Mullein, Great Mullein, Moth Mustards Orchis, Yellow-fringed Parsnips, Wild Rockrose, Canadian St. John’s-wort Senna, Wild Sneezeweed Star-grass Tansy Violets, Yellow Water-lily, Yellow Witch-hazel

RED AND INDEFINITES