WILD FLOWERS [198]
that are poisonous to highly organized men and beasts, afford harmless food for insects. Pliny says that parsnips, which were cultivated beyond the Rhine in the days of Tiberius, were brought to Rome annually to please the emperor's exacting palate; yet this same plant, which has overrun two continents, in its wild state (when its leaves are a paler yellowish green than under cultivation) often proves poisonous. A strongly acrid juice in the very tough stem causes intelligent cattle to let it alone - precisely the object desired. But caterpillars of certain swallow-tail butterflies, particularly of the common eastern swallow-tail (Papilio asterias), may be taken on it - the same greenish, black-banded, and yellow-dotted fat "worm" found on parsnips, fennel, and parsley in the kitchen garden. Insects understood plant relationships ages before Linnaeus defined them. When we see this dark, velvety butterfly, marked with yellow, hovering above the wild parsnip, we may know she is there only to lay eggs that her larvae may eat their way to maturity on this favorite food store. After the flat, oval, shining seeds with their conspicuous oil tubes are set in the spreading umbels, the strong, vigorous plant loses nothing of its decorative charm.
>From April to June the lower-growing EARLY or GOLDEN MEADOW PARSNIP (Zizia aurea) spreads its clearer yellow umbels above moist fields, meadows, and swamps from New Brunswick and Dakota to the Gulf of Mexico. Its leaves are twice or thrice compounded of oblong, pointed, saw-edged, but not lobed leaflets.
The HAIRY-JOINTED MEADOW PARSNIP (Thaspium barbinode), another early bloomer, with pale-yellow flowers, most common in the Mississippi basin, may always be distinguished by the little tufts of hair at the joints of the stem, the compound leaves, and often on the rays of the umbels.
A yellow variety of the PURPLE MEADOW PARSNIP, which is popularly known as GOLDEN ALEXANDERS (T. trifoliatum var. aureum), confines itself chiefly to woodlands. The leaves are compounded of three leaflets, longer and more lance-shaped in outline than those of other yellow species.
FOUR-LEAVED or WHORLED LOOSESTRIFE; CROSSWORT (Lysimachia quadrifolia) Primrose family
Flowers - Yellow, streaked with dark red, 1/2 in. across or less; each on a thread-like, spreading footstem from a leaf axil. Calyx, 5 to 7 parted; corolla of 5 to 7 spreading lobes, and as many stamens inserted on the throat; 1 pistil. Stem: Slender, erect, to 3 ft. tall, leafy. Leaves: In whorls of 4 (rarely in 3's to 7's), lance-shaped or oblong, entire, black dotted. Preferred Habitat - Open woodland, thickets, roadsides, moist, sandy soil. Flowering Season - June-August. Distribution - Georgia and Illinois, north to New Brunswick.
Medieval herbalists usually recorded anything that "Plinie saieth" with profoundest respect; not always so, quaint old Parkinson. Speaking of the common (vulgaris), wild loosestrife of Europe, a rather stout, downy species with terminal clusters of good-sized, yellow flowers, that was once cultivated in our Eastern States, and has sparingly escaped from gardens, he thus refers to the reputation given it by the Roman naturalist: "It is believed to take away strife, or debate between ye beasts, not onely those that are yoked together, but even those that are wild also, by making them tame and quiet...if it be either put about their yokes or their necks," significantly adding, "which how true, I leave to them shall try and find it soe." Our slender, symmetrical, common loosestrife, with its whorls of leaves and little star-shaped blossoms on thread-like pedicels at regular intervals up the stem, is not even distantly related to the wonderful purple loosestrife (q.v.).
Another common, lower-growing species, the BULB-BEARING LOOSESTRIFE (L. terrestris; L. stricta of Gray) - blooming from July to September, lifts a terminal, elongated raceme of even smaller, slender-pedicelled, yellow flowers streaked or dotted with reddish; and in the axils of its abundant, opposite, lance-shaped, black-dotted leaves,
>From April to June the lower-growing EARLY or GOLDEN MEADOW PARSNIP (Zizia aurea) spreads its clearer yellow umbels above moist fields, meadows, and swamps from New Brunswick and Dakota to the Gulf of Mexico. Its leaves are twice or thrice compounded of oblong, pointed, saw-edged, but not lobed leaflets.
The HAIRY-JOINTED MEADOW PARSNIP (Thaspium barbinode), another early bloomer, with pale-yellow flowers, most common in the Mississippi basin, may always be distinguished by the little tufts of hair at the joints of the stem, the compound leaves, and often on the rays of the umbels.
A yellow variety of the PURPLE MEADOW PARSNIP, which is popularly known as GOLDEN ALEXANDERS (T. trifoliatum var. aureum), confines itself chiefly to woodlands. The leaves are compounded of three leaflets, longer and more lance-shaped in outline than those of other yellow species.
FOUR-LEAVED or WHORLED LOOSESTRIFE; CROSSWORT (Lysimachia quadrifolia) Primrose family
Flowers - Yellow, streaked with dark red, 1/2 in. across or less; each on a thread-like, spreading footstem from a leaf axil. Calyx, 5 to 7 parted; corolla of 5 to 7 spreading lobes, and as many stamens inserted on the throat; 1 pistil. Stem: Slender, erect, to 3 ft. tall, leafy. Leaves: In whorls of 4 (rarely in 3's to 7's), lance-shaped or oblong, entire, black dotted. Preferred Habitat - Open woodland, thickets, roadsides, moist, sandy soil. Flowering Season - June-August. Distribution - Georgia and Illinois, north to New Brunswick.
Medieval herbalists usually recorded anything that "Plinie saieth" with profoundest respect; not always so, quaint old Parkinson. Speaking of the common (vulgaris), wild loosestrife of Europe, a rather stout, downy species with terminal clusters of good-sized, yellow flowers, that was once cultivated in our Eastern States, and has sparingly escaped from gardens, he thus refers to the reputation given it by the Roman naturalist: "It is believed to take away strife, or debate between ye beasts, not onely those that are yoked together, but even those that are wild also, by making them tame and quiet...if it be either put about their yokes or their necks," significantly adding, "which how true, I leave to them shall try and find it soe." Our slender, symmetrical, common loosestrife, with its whorls of leaves and little star-shaped blossoms on thread-like pedicels at regular intervals up the stem, is not even distantly related to the wonderful purple loosestrife (q.v.).
Another common, lower-growing species, the BULB-BEARING LOOSESTRIFE (L. terrestris; L. stricta of Gray) - blooming from July to September, lifts a terminal, elongated raceme of even smaller, slender-pedicelled, yellow flowers streaked or dotted with reddish; and in the axils of its abundant, opposite, lance-shaped, black-dotted leaves,