WILD FLOWERS [104]
themselves blessed to be bitten to death by one. Indeed, the rattle, a sacred symbol, has been employed in religious ceremonies of most tribes. Snakes may be revered in other lands, but only in America is the rattlesnake worshipped. Among the Moquis there still survives much of the religion of the snake-worshipping Aztecs. Bernal Diaz tells how living rattlesnakes, kept in the great temple at Mexico as sacred and petted objects, were fed with the bodies of the sacrificed. Cortes found a town called by the Spaniards Terraguea, or the city of serpents, whose walls and temples were decorated with figures of the reptiles, which the inhabitants worshiped as gods.
The DOWNY RATTLESNAKE PLANTAIN (P. pubescens), usually a taller plant than the preceding, with larger cream-white, globular-lipped flowers on both sides of its spike, and glandular-hairy throughout, has even more strongly marked leaves. These, the most conspicuous parts, are dark grayish green, heavily netted with greenish or silvery-white veins, silky to the touch, and often wavy edged. This plant scarcely strays westward beyond the Mississippi, but it is common East. It also blooms in midsummer, and shows a preference for dry woods where oak and pine abound.
LIZARD'S TAIL [LIZARD'S-TAIL, WATER-DRAGON] (Saurus cernuus) Lizard's-tail family
Flowers - Fragrant, very small, white, lacking a perianth, bracted, densely crowded on peduncled, slender spikes 4 to 6 in. long and nodding at the tip. Stamens 6 to 8, the filaments white; carpels 3 or 4, united at base, dangling. Stem: 2 to 5 ft. high, jointed, sparingly branched, leafy. Leaves: Heart-shaped, palmately ribbed, dark green, thin, on stout petioles. Preferred Habitat - Swamps, shallow water. Flowering Season - June-August. Distribution - Southern New England to the Gulf, westward to Minnesota and Texas.
The fragrance arising from these curious, drooping, tail-like spikes of flowers, where they grow in numbers, must lure their insect friends as it does us, since no showy petals or sepals advertise their presence. Nevertheless they are what are known as perfect flowers, each possessing stamens and pistils, the only truly essential parts, however desirable a gaily colored perianth may be to blossoms attempting to woo such large land insects as the bumblebee and butterfly. Since flies, whose color sense is by no means so acute as their sense of smell, are by far the most abundant fertilizers of waterside plants, we can see a tendency in such to suppress their petals, for the flowers to become minute and massed in series that the little visitors may more readily transfer pollen from one to another, and to become fragrant - just what the lizard's tail has done.
SPRING BEAUTY; CLAYTONIA (Claytonia Virginica) Purslane family.
Flowers - White veined with pink, or all pink, the veinings of deeper shade, on curving, slender pedicels, several borne in a terminal loose raceme, the flowers mostly turned one way (secund). Calyx of 2 ovate sepals; corolla of 5 petals slightly united by their bases; 5 stamens, 1 inserted on base of each petal; the style 3-cleft. Stem: Weak, 6 to 12 in. long, from a deep, tuberous root. Leaves: Opposite above, linear to lance-shaped, shorter than basal ones, which are 3 to 7 in. long; breadth variable. Preferred Habitat - Moist woods, open groves, low meadows. Flowering Season - March-May. Distribution - Nova Scotia and far westward, south to Georgia and Texas.
Dainty clusters of these delicate, starry blossoms, mostly turned in one direction, expand in the sunshine only, like their gaudy cousin the portulaca and the insignificant little yellow flowers of another relative, the ubiquitous, invincible "pussley" immortalized in "My Summer in a Garden." At night and during cloudy, stormy weather, when their benefactors are not flying, the claytonias economically close their petals to protect nectar and pollen from rain and pilferers. Pick them, the whole plant droops, and the blossoms close with indignation; nor will any coaxing but a combination of hot water and sunshine
The DOWNY RATTLESNAKE PLANTAIN (P. pubescens), usually a taller plant than the preceding, with larger cream-white, globular-lipped flowers on both sides of its spike, and glandular-hairy throughout, has even more strongly marked leaves. These, the most conspicuous parts, are dark grayish green, heavily netted with greenish or silvery-white veins, silky to the touch, and often wavy edged. This plant scarcely strays westward beyond the Mississippi, but it is common East. It also blooms in midsummer, and shows a preference for dry woods where oak and pine abound.
LIZARD'S TAIL [LIZARD'S-TAIL, WATER-DRAGON] (Saurus cernuus) Lizard's-tail family
Flowers - Fragrant, very small, white, lacking a perianth, bracted, densely crowded on peduncled, slender spikes 4 to 6 in. long and nodding at the tip. Stamens 6 to 8, the filaments white; carpels 3 or 4, united at base, dangling. Stem: 2 to 5 ft. high, jointed, sparingly branched, leafy. Leaves: Heart-shaped, palmately ribbed, dark green, thin, on stout petioles. Preferred Habitat - Swamps, shallow water. Flowering Season - June-August. Distribution - Southern New England to the Gulf, westward to Minnesota and Texas.
The fragrance arising from these curious, drooping, tail-like spikes of flowers, where they grow in numbers, must lure their insect friends as it does us, since no showy petals or sepals advertise their presence. Nevertheless they are what are known as perfect flowers, each possessing stamens and pistils, the only truly essential parts, however desirable a gaily colored perianth may be to blossoms attempting to woo such large land insects as the bumblebee and butterfly. Since flies, whose color sense is by no means so acute as their sense of smell, are by far the most abundant fertilizers of waterside plants, we can see a tendency in such to suppress their petals, for the flowers to become minute and massed in series that the little visitors may more readily transfer pollen from one to another, and to become fragrant - just what the lizard's tail has done.
SPRING BEAUTY; CLAYTONIA (Claytonia Virginica) Purslane family.
Flowers - White veined with pink, or all pink, the veinings of deeper shade, on curving, slender pedicels, several borne in a terminal loose raceme, the flowers mostly turned one way (secund). Calyx of 2 ovate sepals; corolla of 5 petals slightly united by their bases; 5 stamens, 1 inserted on base of each petal; the style 3-cleft. Stem: Weak, 6 to 12 in. long, from a deep, tuberous root. Leaves: Opposite above, linear to lance-shaped, shorter than basal ones, which are 3 to 7 in. long; breadth variable. Preferred Habitat - Moist woods, open groves, low meadows. Flowering Season - March-May. Distribution - Nova Scotia and far westward, south to Georgia and Texas.
Dainty clusters of these delicate, starry blossoms, mostly turned in one direction, expand in the sunshine only, like their gaudy cousin the portulaca and the insignificant little yellow flowers of another relative, the ubiquitous, invincible "pussley" immortalized in "My Summer in a Garden." At night and during cloudy, stormy weather, when their benefactors are not flying, the claytonias economically close their petals to protect nectar and pollen from rain and pilferers. Pick them, the whole plant droops, and the blossoms close with indignation; nor will any coaxing but a combination of hot water and sunshine