Wild Flowers Worth Knowing(txt+pdf+epub+mobi电子书下载)


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作者:Blanchan, Neltje

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Wild Flowers Worth Knowing

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WILD FLOWERS WORTH KNOWING

ADAPTED BY ASA DON DICKINSON From Nature's Garden BY NELTJE BLANCHAN 1917

PREFACE

A still more popular edition of what has proved to the author to be a surprisingly popular book, has been prepared by the able hand of Mr.Asa Don Dickinson, and is now offered in the hope that many more people will find the wild flowers in Nature's garden all about us well worth knowing.For flowers have distinct objects in life and are everything they are for the most justifiable of reasons, i.e., the perpetuation and the improvement of their species.The means they employ to accomplish these ends are so various and so consummately clever that, in learning to understand them, we are brought to realize how similar they are to the fundamental aims of even the human race.Indeed there are few life principles that plants have not worked out satisfactorily.The problems of adapting oneself to one's environment, of insuring healthy families, of starting one's children well in life, of founding new colonies in distant lands, of the cooperative method of conducting business as opposed to the individualistic, of laying up treasure in the bank for future use, of punishing vice and rewarding virtue——these and many other problems of mankind the flowers have worked out with the help of insects, through the ages.To really understand what the wild flowers are doing, what the scheme of each one is, besides looking beautiful, is to give one a broader sympathy with both man and Nature and to add a real interest and joy to life which cannot be too widely shared.Neltje Blanchan.Oyster Bay, New York, January 2, 1917.Editor's Note.——The nomenclature and classification of Gray's New Manual of Botany, as rearranged and revised by Professors Robinson and Fernald, have been followed throughout the book.This system is based upon that of Eichler, as developed by Engler and Prantl.A variant form of name is also sometimes given to assist in identification.——A.D.D.

WILD FLOWERS

WATER-PLANTAIN FAMILY (Alismaceae)

Broad-leaved Arrow-head Sagittaria latifolia (S.variabilis) Flowers——White, 1 to 1-1/2 in.wide, in 3-bracted whorls of 3, borne near the summit of a leafless scape 4 in.to 4 ft.tall.Calyx of 3 sepals; corolla of 3 rounded, spreading petals.Stamens and pistils numerous, the former yellow in upper flowers; usually absent or imperfect in lower pistillate flowers.Leaves: Exceedingly variable; those under water usually long and grass-like; upper ones sharply arrow-shaped or blunt and broad, spongy or leathery, on long petioles.Preferred Habitat——Shallow water and mud.Flowering Season——July-September.Distribution——From Mexico northward throughout our area to the circumpolar regions.Wading into shallow water or standing on some muddy shore, like a heron, this striking plant, so often found in that bird's haunts, is quite as decorative in a picture, and, happily, far more approachable in life.Indeed, one of the comforts of botany as compared with bird study is that we may get close enough to the flowers to observe their last detail, whereas the bird we have followed laboriously over hill and dale, through briers and swamps, darts away beyond the range of field-glasses with tantalizing swiftness.While no single plant is yet thoroughly known to scientists, in spite of the years of study devoted by specialists to separate groups, no plant remains wholly meaningless.When Keppler discovered the majestic order of movement of the heavenly bodies, he exclaimed, "O God, I think Thy thoughts after Thee!"——the expression of a discipleship every reverent soul must be conscious of in penetrating, be it ever so little a way, into the inner meaning of the humblest wayside weed.Any plant which elects to grow in shallow water must be amphibious: it must be able to breathe beneath the surface as the fish do, and also be adapted to thrive without those parts that correspond to gills; for ponds and streams have an unpleasant way of drying up in summer, leaving it stranded on the shore.This accounts in part for the variable leaves on the arrow-head, those underneath the water being long and ribbon-like, to bring the greatest possible area into contact with the air with which the water is charged.Broad leaves would be torn to shreds by the current through which grass-like blades glide harmlessly; but when this plant grows on shore, having no longer use for its lower ribbons, it loses them, and expands only broad arrow-shaped surfaces to the sunny air, leaves to be supplied with carbonic acid to assimilate, and sunshine to turn off, the oxygen and store up the carbon into their system.

ARUM FAMILY (Araceae)

Jack-in-the-Pulpit; Indian Turnip Arisaema triphyllum Flowers——Minute, greenish yellow, clustered on the lower part of a smooth, club-shaped, slender spadix within a green and maroon or whitish-striped spathe that curves in a broad-pointed flap above it.Leaves: 3-foliate, usually overtopping the spathe, their slender petioles 9 to 30 in.high, or as tall as the scape that rises from an acrid corm.Fruit: Smooth, shining red berries clustered on the thickened club.Preferred Habitat——Moist woodland and thickets.Flowering Season——April-June.Distribution——Nova Scotia westward to Minnesota, and southward to the Gulf states.A jolly-looking preacher is Jack, standing erect in his parti-colored pulpit with a sounding-board over his head; but he is a gay deceiver, a wolf in sheep's clothing, literally a "brother to dragons," an arrant upstart, an ingrate, a murderer of innocent benefactors!"Female botanizing classes pounce upon it as they would upon a pious young clergyman," complains Mr.Ellwanger.A poor relation of the stately calla lily one knows Jack to be at a glance, her lovely white robe corresponding to his striped pulpit, her bright yellow spadix to his sleek reverence.In the damp woodlands where his pulpit is erected beneath leafy cathedral arches, minute flies or gnats, recently emerged from maggots in mushrooms, toadstools, or decaying logs, form the main part of his congregation.Now, to drop the clerical simile, let us peep within the sheathing spathe, or, better still, strip it off altogether.Doctor Torrey states that the dark-striped spathes are the fertile plants, those with green and whitish lines, sterile.Within are smooth, glossy columns, and near the base of each we shall find the true flowers, minute affairs, some staminate; others, on distinct plants, pistillate, the berry bearers; or rarely both male and female florets seated on the same club, as if Jack's elaborate plan to prevent self-fertilization were not yet complete.Plants may be detected in process of evolution toward their ideals just as nations and men are.Doubtless when Jack's mechanism is perfected, his guilt will disappear.A little way above the florets the club enlarges abruptly, forming a projecting ledge that effectually closes the avenue of escape for many a guileless victim.A fungous gnat, enticed perhaps by the striped house of refuge from cold spring winds, and with a prospect of food below, enters and slides down the inside walls or the slippery, colored column: in either case descent is very easy; it is the return that is made so difficult, if not impossible, for the tiny visitors.Squeezing past the projecting ledge, the gnat finds himself in a roomy apartment whose floor——the bottom of the pulpit——is dusted over with fine pollen; that is, if he is among staminate flowers already mature.To get some of that pollen, with which the gnat presently covers himself, transferred to the minute pistillate florets waiting for it in a distant chamber is, of course, Jack's whole aim in enticing visitors within his polished walls; but what means are provided for their escape? Their efforts to crawl upward over the slippery surface only land them weak and discouraged where they started.The projecting ledge overhead prevents them from using their wings; the passage between the ledge and the spathe is far too narrow to permit flight.Now, if a gnat be persevering, he will presently discover a gap in the flap where the spathe folds together in front, and through this tiny opening he makes his escape, only to enter another pulpit, like the trusted, but too trusting, messenger he is, and leave some of the vitalizing pollen on the fertile florets awaiting his coming.But suppose the fly, small as he is, is too large to work his way out through the flap, or too bewildered or stupid to find the opening, or too exhausted after his futile efforts to get out through the overhead route to persevere, or too weak with hunger in case of long detention in a pistillate trap where no pollen is, what then? Open a dozen of Jack's pulpits, and in several, at least, dead victims will be found——pathetic little corpses sacrificed to the imperfection of his executive system.Had the flies entered mature spathes, whose walls had spread outward and away from the polished column, flight through the overhead route might have been possible.However glad we may be to make every due allowance for this sacrifice of the higher life to the lower, as only a temporary imperfection of mechanism incidental to the plant's higher development, Jack's present cruelty shocks us no less.Or, it may be, he will become insectivorous like the pitcher plant in time.He comes from a rascally family, anyhow.His cousin, the cuckoo-pint, as is well known, destroys the winged messenger bearing its offspring to plant fresh colonies in a distant bog, because the decayed body of the bird acts as the best possible fertilizer into which the seedling may strike its roots.In June and July the thick-set club, studded over with bright berries, becomes conspicuous, to attract hungry woodland rovers in the hope that the seeds will be dropped far from the parent plant.The Indians used to boil the berries for food.The farinaceous root (corm) they likewise boiled or dried to extract the stinging, blistering juice, leaving an edible little "turnip," however insipid and starchy.

Skunk or Swamp Cabbage Symplocarpus foetidus Flowers——Minute, perfect, foetid; many scattered over a thick, rounded, fleshy spadix, and hidden within a swollen, shell-shaped, purplish-brown to greenish-yellow, usually mottled, spathe, close to the ground, that appears before the leaves.Spadix much enlarged and spongy in fruit, the bulb-like berries imbedded in its surface.Leaves: In large crowns like cabbages, broadly ovate, often 1 ft.across, strongly nerved, their petioles with deep grooves, malodorous.Preferred Habitat——Swamps, wet ground.Flowering Season——February-April.Distribution——Nova Scotia to Florida, and westward to Minnesota and Iowa.This despised relative of the stately calla lily proclaims spring in the very teeth of winter, being the first bold adventurer above ground.When the lovely hepatica, the first flower worthy the name to appear, is still wrapped in her fuzzy furs, the skunk cabbage's dark, incurved horn shelters within its hollow, tiny, malodorous florets.Why is the entire plant so foetid that one flees the neighborhood, pervaded as it is with an odor that combines a suspicion of skunk, putrid meat, and garlic? After investigating the Carrion-flower and the Purple Trillium, among others, we learned that certain flies delight in foul odors loathsome to higher organisms; that plants dependent on these pollen carriers woo them from long distances with a stench, and in addition sometimes try to charm them with color resembling the sort of meat it is their special mission, with the help of beetles and other scavengers of Nature, to remove from the face of the earth.In such marshy ground as the Skunk Cabbage lives in, many small flies and gnats live in embryo under the fallen leaves during the winter.But even before they are warmed into active life, the hive-bees, natives of Europe, and with habits not perfectly adapted as yet to our flora, are out after pollen.After the flowering time come the vivid green crowns of leaves that at least please the eye.Lizards make their home beneath them, and many a yellowthroat, taking advantage of the plant's foul odor, gladly puts up with it herself and builds her nest in the hollow of the cabbage as a protection for her eggs and young from four-footed enemies.Cattle let the plant alone because of the stinging acrid juices secreted by it, although such tender, fresh, bright foliage must be especially tempting, like the hellebore's, after a dry winter diet.Sometimes tiny insects are found drowned in the wells of rain water that accumulate at the base of the grooved leafstalks.

SPIDERWORT FAMILY (Commelinaceae)

Virginia, or Common Day-flower Commelina virginica Flowers——Blue, 1 in.broad or less, irregular, grouped at end of stem, and upheld by long leaf-like bracts.Calyx of 3 unequal sepals; 3 petals, 1 inconspicuous, 2 showy, rounded.Perfect stamens 3; the anther of 1 incurved stamen largest; 3 insignificant and sterile stamens; 1 pistil.Stem: Fleshy, smooth, branched, mucilaginous.Leaves: Lance-shaped, 3 to 5 in.long, sheathing the stem at base; upper leaves in a spathe-like bract folding like a hood about flowers.Fruit: A 3-celled capsule, 1 seed in each cell.Preferred Habitat——Moist, shady ground.Flowering Season——June-September.

Distribution——"Southern New York to Illinois and Michigan, Nebraska, Texas, and through tropical America to Paraguay."——Britton and Browne.Delightful Linnaeus, who dearly loved his little joke, himself confesses to have named the day-flowers after three brothers Commelyn, Dutch botanists, because two of them——commemorated in the two showy blue petals of the blossom——published their works; the third, lacking application and ambition, amounted to nothing, like the inconspicuous whitish third petal!Happily Kaspar Commelyn died in 1731, before the joke was perpetrated in "Species Plantarum." Soon after noon, the day-flower's petals roll up, never to open again.

PICKEREL-WEED FAMILY(Pontederiaceae)

Pickerel Weed Pontederia cordata Flowers——Bright purplish blue, including filaments, anthers, and style; crowded in a dense spike; quickly fading; unpleasantly odorous.Perianth tubular, 2-lipped, parted into 6 irregular lobes, free from ovary; middle lobe of upper lip with 2 yellow spots at base within.Stamens 6, placed at unequal distances on tube, 3 opposite each lip.Pistil 1, the stigma minutely toothed.Stem: Erect, stout, fleshy, 1 to 4 ft.tall, not often over 2 ft.above water line.Leaves: Several bract-like, sheathing stem at base; 1 leaf only, midway on flower-stalk, thick, polished, triangular, or arrow-shaped, 4 to 8 in.long, 2 to 6 in.across base.Preferred Habitat——Shallow water of ponds and streams.Flowering Season——June-October.Distribution——Eastern half of United States and Canada.Grace of habit and the bright beauty of its long blue spikes of ragged flowers above rich, glossy leaves give a charm to this vigorous wader.Backwoodsmen will tell you that pickerels lay their eggs among the leaves; but so they do among the sedges, arums, wild rice, and various aquatic plants, like many another fish.Bees and flies, that congregate about the blossoms to feed, may sometimes fly too low, and so give a plausible reason for the pickerel's choice of haunt.Each blossom lasts but a single day; the upper portion, withering, leaves the base of the perianth to harden about the ovary and protect the solitary seed.But as the gradually lengthened spike keeps up an uninterrupted succession of bloom for months, more than ample provision is made for the perpetuation of the race——a necessity to any plant that refuses to thrive unless it stands in water.Ponds and streams have an unpleasant habit of drying up in summer, and often the Pickerel Weed looks as brown as a bullrush where it is stranded in the baked mud in August.When seed falls on such ground, if indeed it germinates at all, the young plant naturally withers away.Of the three kinds of blossoms, one raises its stigma on a long style reaching to the top of the flower; a second form reaches its stigma only half-way up, and the third keeps its stigma in the bottom of the tube.The visiting bee gets his abdomen, his chest, and his tongue dusted with pollen from long, middle-length, and short stamens respectively.When he visits another flower, these parts of his body coming in contact with the stigmas that occupy precisely the position where the stamens were in other individuals, he brushes off each lot of pollen just where it will do the most good.

LILY FAMILY (Liliaceae)

American White Hellebore; Indian Poke; Itch-weed Veratrum viride Flowers——Dingy, pale yellowish or whitish green, growing greener with age, 1 in.or less across, very numerous, in stiff-branching, spike-like, dense-flowered panicles.Perianth of 6 oblong segments; 6 short curved stamens; 3 styles.Stem: Stout, leafy, 2 to 8 ft.tall.Leaves: Plaited, lower ones broadly oval, pointed, 6 to 12 in.long; parallel ribbed, sheathing the stem where they clasp it; upper leaves gradually narrowing; those among flowers small.Preferred Habitat——Swamps, wet woods, low meadows.Flowering Season——May-July.Distribution——British Possessions from ocean to ocean; southward in the United States to Georgia, Tennessee, and Minnesota.

"Borage and hellebore fill two scenes——

Sovereign plants to purge the veins

Of melancholy, and cheer the heart

Of those black fumes which make it smart." Such are the antidotes for madness prescribed by Burton in his "Anatomie of Melancholy." But like most medicines, so the homoeopaths have taught us, the plant that heals may also poison; and the coarse, thick rootstock of this hellebore sometimes does deadly work.The shining plaited leaves, put forth so early in the spring they are especially tempting to grazing cattle on that account, are too well known by most animals, however, to be touched by them——precisely the end desired, of course, by the hellebore, nightshade, aconite, cyclamen, Jamestown weed, and a host of others that resort, for protection, to the low trick of mixing poisonous chemicals with their cellular juices.Pliny told how the horses, oxen, and swine of his day were killed by eating the foliage of the black hellebore.But the flies which cross-fertilize this plant seem to be uninjured by its nectar.

Wild Yellow, Meadow, or Field Lily; Canada Lily Lilium canadense Flowers——Yellow to orange-red, of a deeper shade within, and speckled with dark, reddish-brown dots.One or several (rarely many) nodding on long peduncles from the summit.Perianth bell-shaped, of 6 spreading segments 2 to 3 in.long, their tips curved backward to the middle; 6 stamens, with reddish-brown linear anthers; 1 pistil, club-shaped; the stigma 3-lobed.Stem: 2 to 5 ft.tall, leafy, from a bulbous rootstock composed of numerous fleshy white scales.Leaves: Lance-shaped to oblong; usually in whorls of fours to tens, or some alternate.Fruit: An erect, oblong, 3-celled capsule, the flat, horizontal seeds packed in 2 rows in each cavity.Preferred Habitat——Swamps, low meadows, moist fields.Flowering Season——June-July.Distribution——Nova Scotia to Georgia, westward beyond the Mississippi.Not our gorgeous lilies that brighten the low-lying meadows in early summer with pendent, swaying bells; possibly not a true lily at all was chosen to illustrate the truth which those who listened to the Sermon on the Mount, and we, equally anxious, foolishly overburdened folk of to-day, so little comprehend."Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: "And yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." Opinions differ as to the lily of Scripture.Eastern peoples use the same word interchangeably for the tulip, anemone, ranunculus, iris, the water-lilies, and those of the field.The superb scarlet Martagon Lily (L.chalcedonicum), grown in gardens here, is not uncommon wild in Palestine; but whoever has seen the large anemones there "carpeting every plain and luxuriantly pervading the land" is inclined to believe that Jesus, who always chose the most familiar objects in the daily life of His simple listeners to illustrate His teachings, rested His eyes on the slopes about Him glowing with anemones in all their matchless loveliness.What flower served Him then matters not at all.It is enough that scientists——now more plainly than ever before——see the universal application of the illustration the more deeply they study nature, and can include their "little brothers of the air" and the humblest flower at their feet when they say with Paul, "In God we live and move and have our being." Tallest and most prolific of bloom among our native lilies, as it is the most variable in color, size, and form, the Turk's Cap, or Turban Lily (L.superbum), sometimes nearly merges its identity into its Canadian sister's.Travellers by rail between New York and Boston know how gorgeous are the low meadows and marshes in July or August, when its clusters of deep yellow, orange, or flame-colored lilies tower above the surrounding vegetation.Like the color of most flowers, theirs intensifies in salt air.Commonly from three to seven lilies appear in a terminal group; but under skilful cultivation even forty will crown the stalk that reaches a height of nine feet where its home suits it perfectly; or maybe only a poor array of dingy yellowish caps top a shrivelled stem when unfavorable conditions prevail.There certainly are times when its specific name seems extravagant.

Red, Wood, Flame, or Philadelphia Lily Lilium philadelphicum Flowers——Erect, tawny, or red-tinted outside; vermilion, or sometimes reddish orange, and spotted with madder brown within; 1 to 5, on separate peduncles, borne at the summit.Perianth of 6 distinct, spreading, spatulate segments, each narrowed into a claw, and with a nectar groove at its base; 6 stamens; 1 style, the club-shaped stigma 3-lobed.Stem: 1 to 3 ft.tall, from a bulb composed of narrow, jointed, fleshy scales.Leaves: In whorls of 3's to 8's, lance-shaped, seated at intervals on the stem.Preferred Habitat——Dry woods, sandy soil,

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