WILD FLOWERS [195]
decidedly taper-pointed, and usually several stems together.
Our other common yellow species, the ROUND-LEAVED VIOLET (V. rotundifolia), lifts smaller, pale, brown-veined, and bearded blossoms above a tuffet of broad, shining leaves close to the ground. The veins on the petals serve as pathfinders to the nectary for the bee, and the beard as footholds, while she probes the inverted blossoms. Such violets as have their side petals bearded are most frequently visited by small greenish mason bees (Osmia), with collecting brushes on their abdomen that receive the pollen as it falls. Abundant cleistogamous flowers (see blue violets and white wood sorrel) are borne on the runners late in the season. Bryant, whose botanical lore did not always keep step with his Muse, wrote of the yellow violet as the first spring flower, because he found it "by the snowbank's edges cold," one April day, when the hepaticas about his home at Roslyn, Long Island, had doubtless been in bloom a month.
"Of all her train the hands of Spring First plant thee in the watery mould,"
he wrote, regardless of the fact that the round-leaved violet's preferences are for dry, wooded, or rocky hillsides. Muller believed that all violets were originally yellow, not white, after they evoluted from the green stage.
EASTERN CACTUS; PRICKLY PEAR; INDIAN FIG (Opuntia Opuntia; 0. vulgaris of Gray) Cactus family
Flowers -Yellow, sometimes reddish at center, 2 to 3 in. across, solitary, mostly seated at the side of joints. Calyx tube not prolonged beyond ovary, its numerous lobes spreading. Petals numerous; stamens very numerous; ovary cylindric; the style longer than stamens, and with several stigmas. Stem: Prostrate or ascending, fleshy, juicy, branching, the thick, flattened joints oblong or rounded, 2 to 5 in. long. Leaves: Tiny, awl-shaped, dotting the joints, but usually falling early; tufts of yellowish bristles at their base. Plant unarmed, or with few solitary stout spines. Fruit: Pear-shaped, pulpy, red, nearly smooth, 1 in. long or over, edible. Preferred Habitat - Sandy or dry or rocky places. Flowering Season - June-August. Distribution - Massachusetts to Florida.
Upwards of one hundred and fifty species of Opuntia, which elect to grow in parching sands, beneath a scorching sun, often prostrate on baking hot rocks, on glaring plains, beaches, and deserts, from Massachusetts to Peru - for all are natives of the New World - show so marvelous an adaptation to environment in each instance that no group of plants is more interesting to the botanist, more decorative in form and color from an artistic standpoint, more distinctively characteristic. Plants choosing such habitats as they have adopted, usually in tropical or semi-tropical regions, had to resort to various expedients to save loss of water through transpiration and evaporation. Now, as leaves are the natural outlets for moisture thrown off by any plant, manifestly the first thing to do was either to reduce the number of branches and leaves, or to modify them into sharp spines (not surface prickles like the rose's); to cultivate a low habit of growth, not to expose unnecessary surface to sun and air; to thicken the skin until little moisture could evaporate through the leathery coat; and, finally, to utilize the material thus saved in developing stems so large, fleshy, and juicy that they should become wells in a desert, with powers of sustenance great enough to support the plant through its fiery trials. A common expedient of plants in dry situations, even at the north, is to modify their leaves into spines, as the gorse and the barberry, for example, have done. That such an armor also serves to protect them against the ravages of grazing animals is an additional advantage, of course; but not their sole motive in wearing it. Popular to destruction would the cool juices of the cacti be in thirsty lands, if only they might be obtained without painful and often poisonous scratches. Given moist soil and greater humidity of atmosphere to grow in, spiny plants at once show a
Our other common yellow species, the ROUND-LEAVED VIOLET (V. rotundifolia), lifts smaller, pale, brown-veined, and bearded blossoms above a tuffet of broad, shining leaves close to the ground. The veins on the petals serve as pathfinders to the nectary for the bee, and the beard as footholds, while she probes the inverted blossoms. Such violets as have their side petals bearded are most frequently visited by small greenish mason bees (Osmia), with collecting brushes on their abdomen that receive the pollen as it falls. Abundant cleistogamous flowers (see blue violets and white wood sorrel) are borne on the runners late in the season. Bryant, whose botanical lore did not always keep step with his Muse, wrote of the yellow violet as the first spring flower, because he found it "by the snowbank's edges cold," one April day, when the hepaticas about his home at Roslyn, Long Island, had doubtless been in bloom a month.
"Of all her train the hands of Spring First plant thee in the watery mould,"
he wrote, regardless of the fact that the round-leaved violet's preferences are for dry, wooded, or rocky hillsides. Muller believed that all violets were originally yellow, not white, after they evoluted from the green stage.
EASTERN CACTUS; PRICKLY PEAR; INDIAN FIG (Opuntia Opuntia; 0. vulgaris of Gray) Cactus family
Flowers -Yellow, sometimes reddish at center, 2 to 3 in. across, solitary, mostly seated at the side of joints. Calyx tube not prolonged beyond ovary, its numerous lobes spreading. Petals numerous; stamens very numerous; ovary cylindric; the style longer than stamens, and with several stigmas. Stem: Prostrate or ascending, fleshy, juicy, branching, the thick, flattened joints oblong or rounded, 2 to 5 in. long. Leaves: Tiny, awl-shaped, dotting the joints, but usually falling early; tufts of yellowish bristles at their base. Plant unarmed, or with few solitary stout spines. Fruit: Pear-shaped, pulpy, red, nearly smooth, 1 in. long or over, edible. Preferred Habitat - Sandy or dry or rocky places. Flowering Season - June-August. Distribution - Massachusetts to Florida.
Upwards of one hundred and fifty species of Opuntia, which elect to grow in parching sands, beneath a scorching sun, often prostrate on baking hot rocks, on glaring plains, beaches, and deserts, from Massachusetts to Peru - for all are natives of the New World - show so marvelous an adaptation to environment in each instance that no group of plants is more interesting to the botanist, more decorative in form and color from an artistic standpoint, more distinctively characteristic. Plants choosing such habitats as they have adopted, usually in tropical or semi-tropical regions, had to resort to various expedients to save loss of water through transpiration and evaporation. Now, as leaves are the natural outlets for moisture thrown off by any plant, manifestly the first thing to do was either to reduce the number of branches and leaves, or to modify them into sharp spines (not surface prickles like the rose's); to cultivate a low habit of growth, not to expose unnecessary surface to sun and air; to thicken the skin until little moisture could evaporate through the leathery coat; and, finally, to utilize the material thus saved in developing stems so large, fleshy, and juicy that they should become wells in a desert, with powers of sustenance great enough to support the plant through its fiery trials. A common expedient of plants in dry situations, even at the north, is to modify their leaves into spines, as the gorse and the barberry, for example, have done. That such an armor also serves to protect them against the ravages of grazing animals is an additional advantage, of course; but not their sole motive in wearing it. Popular to destruction would the cool juices of the cacti be in thirsty lands, if only they might be obtained without painful and often poisonous scratches. Given moist soil and greater humidity of atmosphere to grow in, spiny plants at once show a