WILD FLOWERS [129]
Gulf. Immense numbers of little bees, among many other visitors, may be noted on a fine day in May and early June about this showy shrub or tree. Because it blooms later than its rival sisters, it has the insect wooers then abroad all to itself.
While most of our beautiful native hawthorns have been introduced to European gardens, it is the WHITE THORN or MAY (C. Oxyacantha) of Europe and Asia which is most commonly cultivated here. Truly a shrub, like a prophet, is not without honor save in its own country.
WHITE SWEET CLOVER; BOKHARA or TREE CLOVER; WHITE MELILOT; HONEY LOTUS (Melilotus alba) Pea family
Flowers - Small, white, fragrant, papilionaceous, the standard petal a trifle longer than the wings; borne in slender racemes. Stem: 3 to 10 ft. tall, branching. Leaves: Rather distant, petioled, compounded of 3 oblong, saw-edged leaflets; fragrant, especially when dry. Preferred Habitat - Wastelands, roadsides. Flowering Season - June-November. Distribution - United States, Europe, Asia.
Happy must the honeybees have been to find that the sweet clover, one of their dearest delights in the Old World, had preceded them in immigrating to the New. Immense numbers of insects - bees in great variety, wasps, flies, moths, and beetles - visit the little blossoms that provide entertainment so generous and accessible; but honey-bees are ever especially abundant. Slight weight depresses the keel, releasing the stigma and anthers therefore, so soon as a bee alights and opens the flower, he is hit below the belt by the projecting stigma. Pollen carried by him there from other clovers comes off on its sticky surface before his abdomen gets freshly dusted from the anthers, which are necessarily rubbed against while he sips nectar. On the removal of his pressure, the floret springs back to its closed condition, to protect the precious nectar and pollen from rain and pilferers. As the stigma projects too far beyond the anthers to be likely to receive any of the flower's own pollen, good reason is there for the blossoms guarding their attractions for the benefit of their friends, which transfer the vitalizing dust from one floret to another. By clustering its small flowers in spikes, to make them conspicuous, as well as to facilitate dining for its benefactors; by prolonging its season of bloom, to get relief from the fiercest competition for insect trade, and so to insure an abundance of vigorous cross-fertilized seed, this plant reveals at a glance some of the reasons why it has been able to establish itself so quickly throughout our vast area.
Both the white and the yellow sweet clover put their leaves to sleep at night in a remarkable manner: the three leaflets of each leaf twist through an angle of 90 degrees, until one edge of each vertical blade is uppermost. The two side leaflets, Darwin found, always tend to face the north with their upper surface, one facing north-northwest and the other north-northeast, while the terminal leaflet escapes the chilling of its sensitive upper surface through radiation by twisting to a vertical also, but bending to either east or west, until it comes in contact with the vertical upper surface of either of the side leaflets. Thus the upper surface of the terminal and of at least one of the side leaflets is sure to be well protected through the night; one is "left out in the cold."
The dried branches of sweet clover will fill a room with delightful fragrance; but they will not drive away flies, nor protect woolens from the ravages of moths, as old women once taught us to believe.
The ubiquitous WHITE or DUTCH CLOVER (Trifolium repens), whose creeping branches send up solitary round heads of white or pinkish flowers on erect, leafless stems, from May to December, in fields, open waste land, and cultivated places throughout our area, Europe, and Asia, devotes itself to wooing bees, since these are the only insects that effect cross-fertilization regularly, other visitors aiding it only occasionally. When nets are stretched over these flowers to exclude insects, only one-tenth
While most of our beautiful native hawthorns have been introduced to European gardens, it is the WHITE THORN or MAY (C. Oxyacantha) of Europe and Asia which is most commonly cultivated here. Truly a shrub, like a prophet, is not without honor save in its own country.
WHITE SWEET CLOVER; BOKHARA or TREE CLOVER; WHITE MELILOT; HONEY LOTUS (Melilotus alba) Pea family
Flowers - Small, white, fragrant, papilionaceous, the standard petal a trifle longer than the wings; borne in slender racemes. Stem: 3 to 10 ft. tall, branching. Leaves: Rather distant, petioled, compounded of 3 oblong, saw-edged leaflets; fragrant, especially when dry. Preferred Habitat - Wastelands, roadsides. Flowering Season - June-November. Distribution - United States, Europe, Asia.
Happy must the honeybees have been to find that the sweet clover, one of their dearest delights in the Old World, had preceded them in immigrating to the New. Immense numbers of insects - bees in great variety, wasps, flies, moths, and beetles - visit the little blossoms that provide entertainment so generous and accessible; but honey-bees are ever especially abundant. Slight weight depresses the keel, releasing the stigma and anthers therefore, so soon as a bee alights and opens the flower, he is hit below the belt by the projecting stigma. Pollen carried by him there from other clovers comes off on its sticky surface before his abdomen gets freshly dusted from the anthers, which are necessarily rubbed against while he sips nectar. On the removal of his pressure, the floret springs back to its closed condition, to protect the precious nectar and pollen from rain and pilferers. As the stigma projects too far beyond the anthers to be likely to receive any of the flower's own pollen, good reason is there for the blossoms guarding their attractions for the benefit of their friends, which transfer the vitalizing dust from one floret to another. By clustering its small flowers in spikes, to make them conspicuous, as well as to facilitate dining for its benefactors; by prolonging its season of bloom, to get relief from the fiercest competition for insect trade, and so to insure an abundance of vigorous cross-fertilized seed, this plant reveals at a glance some of the reasons why it has been able to establish itself so quickly throughout our vast area.
Both the white and the yellow sweet clover put their leaves to sleep at night in a remarkable manner: the three leaflets of each leaf twist through an angle of 90 degrees, until one edge of each vertical blade is uppermost. The two side leaflets, Darwin found, always tend to face the north with their upper surface, one facing north-northwest and the other north-northeast, while the terminal leaflet escapes the chilling of its sensitive upper surface through radiation by twisting to a vertical also, but bending to either east or west, until it comes in contact with the vertical upper surface of either of the side leaflets. Thus the upper surface of the terminal and of at least one of the side leaflets is sure to be well protected through the night; one is "left out in the cold."
The dried branches of sweet clover will fill a room with delightful fragrance; but they will not drive away flies, nor protect woolens from the ravages of moths, as old women once taught us to believe.
The ubiquitous WHITE or DUTCH CLOVER (Trifolium repens), whose creeping branches send up solitary round heads of white or pinkish flowers on erect, leafless stems, from May to December, in fields, open waste land, and cultivated places throughout our area, Europe, and Asia, devotes itself to wooing bees, since these are the only insects that effect cross-fertilization regularly, other visitors aiding it only occasionally. When nets are stretched over these flowers to exclude insects, only one-tenth