WILD FLOWERS [182]
So short are the stamens, it is improbable that a flower's pollen ever reaches its own stigma except through the occasional confused fumbling of a visitor. Usually he is so startled by the sudden shower of pollen that he flies away instantly.
In the barberry bushes, as in the gorse, when grown in dry, gravelly situations, we see many leaves and twigs modified into thorns to diminish the loss of water through evaporation by exposing too much leaf surface to the sun and air. That such spines protect the plants which bear them from the ravages of grazing cattle is, of course, an additional motive for their presence. Under cultivation, in well-watered garden soil - and how many charming varieties of barberries are cultivated - the thorny shrub loses much of its armor, putting forth many more leaves, in rosettes, along more numerous twigs, instead. Even the prickly-pear cactus might become mild as a lamb were it to forswear sandy deserts and live in marshes instead. Country people sometimes rob the birds of the acid berries to make preserves. The wood furnishes a yellow dye.
Curiously enough it is the EUROPEAN BARBERRY that is the common species here. The AMERICAN BARBERRY (B. Canadensis), a lower shrub, with dark reddish-brown twigs; its leaves more distantly toothed; its flowers, and consequently its berries, in smaller clusters, keeps almost exclusively to the woods in the Alleghany region and in the southwest, in spite of its specific name.
SPICE-BUSH; BENJAMIN-BUSH; WILD ALLSPICE; FEVER-BUSH (Benzoin Benzoin; Lindera Benzoin of Gray) Laurel family
Flowers - Before the leaves, lemon yellow, fragrant, small, in clusters close to the slender, brittle twigs. Six petal-like sepals; sterile flowers with 9 stamens in 3 series; fertile flowers with a round ovary encircled by abortive stamens. Stem: A smooth shrub 4 to 20 ft. tall. Leaves: Alternate, entire, oval or elliptic, 2 to 5 in, long. Fruit: Oblong, red, berry-like drupes. Preferred Habitat - Moist woodlands, thickets, beside streams. Flowering Season - March-May. Distribution - Central New England, Ontario, and Michigan, southward to Carolina and Kansas.
Even before the scaly catkins on the alders become yellow, or the silvery velvet pussy willows expand to welcome the earliest bees that fly, this leafless bush breathes a faint spicy fragrance in the bleak gray woods. Its only rivals among the shrubbery, the service-berry and its twin sister the shad-bush, have scarcely had the temerity to burst into bloom when the little clusters of lemon-yellow flowers, cuddled close to the naked branches, give us our first delightful spring surprise. All the favor they ask of the few insects then flying is that they shall transfer the pollen from the sterile to the fertile flowers as a recompense for the early feast spread. Inasmuch as no single blossom contains both stamens and pistil, little wonder the flowers should woo with color and fragrance the guests on whose ministrations the continuance of the species absolutely depends. Later, when the leaves appear, we may know as soon as we crush them in the hand that the aromatic sassafras is next of kin. But ages before Linnaeus published "Species Plantarum" butterflies had discovered floral relationships.
Sharp eyes may have noticed how often the leaves on both the spice-bush and the sassafras tree are curled. Have you ever drawn apart the leaf edges and been startled by the large, fat green caterpillar, speckled with blue, whose two great black "eyes" stare up at you as he reposes in his comfortable nest - a cradle which also combines the advantages of a restaurant? This is the caterpillar of the common spice-bush swallow-tail butterfly (Papilio troilus), an exquisite, dark, velvety creature with pale greenish-blue markings on its hind wings. (See Dr. Holland's "Butterfly Book," Plate XLI.) The yellow stage of this caterpillar (which William Hamilton Gibson calls the "spice-bush bugaboo") indicates, he says, that "its period of transformation is close at hand. Selecting a suitable situation, it spins a tiny tuft
In the barberry bushes, as in the gorse, when grown in dry, gravelly situations, we see many leaves and twigs modified into thorns to diminish the loss of water through evaporation by exposing too much leaf surface to the sun and air. That such spines protect the plants which bear them from the ravages of grazing cattle is, of course, an additional motive for their presence. Under cultivation, in well-watered garden soil - and how many charming varieties of barberries are cultivated - the thorny shrub loses much of its armor, putting forth many more leaves, in rosettes, along more numerous twigs, instead. Even the prickly-pear cactus might become mild as a lamb were it to forswear sandy deserts and live in marshes instead. Country people sometimes rob the birds of the acid berries to make preserves. The wood furnishes a yellow dye.
Curiously enough it is the EUROPEAN BARBERRY that is the common species here. The AMERICAN BARBERRY (B. Canadensis), a lower shrub, with dark reddish-brown twigs; its leaves more distantly toothed; its flowers, and consequently its berries, in smaller clusters, keeps almost exclusively to the woods in the Alleghany region and in the southwest, in spite of its specific name.
SPICE-BUSH; BENJAMIN-BUSH; WILD ALLSPICE; FEVER-BUSH (Benzoin Benzoin; Lindera Benzoin of Gray) Laurel family
Flowers - Before the leaves, lemon yellow, fragrant, small, in clusters close to the slender, brittle twigs. Six petal-like sepals; sterile flowers with 9 stamens in 3 series; fertile flowers with a round ovary encircled by abortive stamens. Stem: A smooth shrub 4 to 20 ft. tall. Leaves: Alternate, entire, oval or elliptic, 2 to 5 in, long. Fruit: Oblong, red, berry-like drupes. Preferred Habitat - Moist woodlands, thickets, beside streams. Flowering Season - March-May. Distribution - Central New England, Ontario, and Michigan, southward to Carolina and Kansas.
Even before the scaly catkins on the alders become yellow, or the silvery velvet pussy willows expand to welcome the earliest bees that fly, this leafless bush breathes a faint spicy fragrance in the bleak gray woods. Its only rivals among the shrubbery, the service-berry and its twin sister the shad-bush, have scarcely had the temerity to burst into bloom when the little clusters of lemon-yellow flowers, cuddled close to the naked branches, give us our first delightful spring surprise. All the favor they ask of the few insects then flying is that they shall transfer the pollen from the sterile to the fertile flowers as a recompense for the early feast spread. Inasmuch as no single blossom contains both stamens and pistil, little wonder the flowers should woo with color and fragrance the guests on whose ministrations the continuance of the species absolutely depends. Later, when the leaves appear, we may know as soon as we crush them in the hand that the aromatic sassafras is next of kin. But ages before Linnaeus published "Species Plantarum" butterflies had discovered floral relationships.
Sharp eyes may have noticed how often the leaves on both the spice-bush and the sassafras tree are curled. Have you ever drawn apart the leaf edges and been startled by the large, fat green caterpillar, speckled with blue, whose two great black "eyes" stare up at you as he reposes in his comfortable nest - a cradle which also combines the advantages of a restaurant? This is the caterpillar of the common spice-bush swallow-tail butterfly (Papilio troilus), an exquisite, dark, velvety creature with pale greenish-blue markings on its hind wings. (See Dr. Holland's "Butterfly Book," Plate XLI.) The yellow stage of this caterpillar (which William Hamilton Gibson calls the "spice-bush bugaboo") indicates, he says, that "its period of transformation is close at hand. Selecting a suitable situation, it spins a tiny tuft