WILD FLOWERS [229]
taste. For flies, a snug shelter from cold spring winds such as Jack-in-the-pulpit, the marsh calla, the pitcher-plant, or the skunk cabbage offers; sometimes a fetid odor like the latter's, or dull purplish red or brownish color resembling stale meat, which the purple trillium likewise wears as an additional attraction, are necessary when certain carrion flies must be catered to; and, above all, an abundance of pollen for food - with any or all of these seductions a flower dependent on flies has nothing to fear from neglect. Therefore the wild ginger does not even attempt to fertilize itself. Within the cozy cup one can usually find a contented fly seeking shelter or food. Close to the ground it is warm and less windy. When the cup first opens, only the stigmas are mature and sticky to receive any pollen the visitors may bring in on their bodies from other asylums where they have been hiding. These stigmas presently withering, up rise the twelve stamens beside them to dust with pollen the flies coming in search of it. Only one flower from a root compels cross-fertilizing between flowers of distinct plants - a means to insure the most vigorous seed, as Darwin proved. Evidently the ginger is striving to attain some day the ambitious mechanism for temporarily imprisoning its guests that its cousin the Dutchman's pipe has perfected. After fertilization the cup nods, inverted, and the leathery capsule following it bursts irregularly, discharging many seeds.
No ruminant will touch the leaves, owing to their bitter juices, nor will a grub or nibbling rodent molest the root, which bites like ginger; nevertheless credulous mankind once utilized the plant as a tonic medicine.
DUTCHMAN'S PIPE; PIPE-VINE (Aristolochia macrophylla; A. Sipho of Gray))
Flower - An inflated, curved, yellowish-green, veiny tube (calyx), pipe-shaped, except that it abruptly broadens beyond the contracted throat into 3 flat, spreading, dark purplish or reddish-brown lobes; pipe 1 to 1 1/2 in. long, borne on a long, drooping peduncle, either solitary or 2 or 3 together, from the bracted leaf-axils; 6 anthers, without filaments, in united pairs under the 3 lobes of the short, thick stigma. Stem: A very long, twining vine, the branches smooth and green. Leaves: Thin, reniform to heart-shaped, slender petioled, downy underneath when young; 6 to 15 in. broad when mature. Fruit: An oblong, cylindric capsule, containing quantities of seeds within its six sections. Preferred Habitat - Rich, moist woods. Flowering Season - May-June. Distribution - Pennsylvania, westward to Minnesota, south to Georgia and Kansas. Escaped from cultivation further north.
After learning why the pitcher plant, Jack-in-the-pulpit, and skunk cabbage are colored and shaped as they are, no one will be surprised on opening this curious flower to find numbers of little flies within the pipe. Certain relatives of this vine produce flowers that are not only colored like livid, putrid meat around the entrance, but also emit a fetid odor to attract carrion flies especially. (See purple trillium.)
In May, when the pipe-vine blooms, gauzy-winged small flies and gnats gladly seek food and shelter from the wind within so attractive an asylum as the curving tube offers. They enter easily enough through the narrow throat, around which fine hairs point downward - an entrance resembling an eel trap's. Any pollen they may bring in on their bodies now rubs off on the sticky stigma lobes, already matured at the bottom of a newly opened flower, in which they buzz, crawl, slide, and slip, seeking an avenue of escape. None presents itself: they are imprisoned. The hairs at the entrance, approached from within, form an impenetrable stockade. Must the poor little creatures perish? Is the flower heartless enough to murder its benefactors, on which the continuance of its species depends? By no means is it so shortsighted! A few tiny drops of nectar exuding from the center table prevent the visitors from starving. Presently the fertilized stigmas wither, and when they have safely escaped the danger
No ruminant will touch the leaves, owing to their bitter juices, nor will a grub or nibbling rodent molest the root, which bites like ginger; nevertheless credulous mankind once utilized the plant as a tonic medicine.
DUTCHMAN'S PIPE; PIPE-VINE (Aristolochia macrophylla; A. Sipho of Gray))
Flower - An inflated, curved, yellowish-green, veiny tube (calyx), pipe-shaped, except that it abruptly broadens beyond the contracted throat into 3 flat, spreading, dark purplish or reddish-brown lobes; pipe 1 to 1 1/2 in. long, borne on a long, drooping peduncle, either solitary or 2 or 3 together, from the bracted leaf-axils; 6 anthers, without filaments, in united pairs under the 3 lobes of the short, thick stigma. Stem: A very long, twining vine, the branches smooth and green. Leaves: Thin, reniform to heart-shaped, slender petioled, downy underneath when young; 6 to 15 in. broad when mature. Fruit: An oblong, cylindric capsule, containing quantities of seeds within its six sections. Preferred Habitat - Rich, moist woods. Flowering Season - May-June. Distribution - Pennsylvania, westward to Minnesota, south to Georgia and Kansas. Escaped from cultivation further north.
After learning why the pitcher plant, Jack-in-the-pulpit, and skunk cabbage are colored and shaped as they are, no one will be surprised on opening this curious flower to find numbers of little flies within the pipe. Certain relatives of this vine produce flowers that are not only colored like livid, putrid meat around the entrance, but also emit a fetid odor to attract carrion flies especially. (See purple trillium.)
In May, when the pipe-vine blooms, gauzy-winged small flies and gnats gladly seek food and shelter from the wind within so attractive an asylum as the curving tube offers. They enter easily enough through the narrow throat, around which fine hairs point downward - an entrance resembling an eel trap's. Any pollen they may bring in on their bodies now rubs off on the sticky stigma lobes, already matured at the bottom of a newly opened flower, in which they buzz, crawl, slide, and slip, seeking an avenue of escape. None presents itself: they are imprisoned. The hairs at the entrance, approached from within, form an impenetrable stockade. Must the poor little creatures perish? Is the flower heartless enough to murder its benefactors, on which the continuance of its species depends? By no means is it so shortsighted! A few tiny drops of nectar exuding from the center table prevent the visitors from starving. Presently the fertilized stigmas wither, and when they have safely escaped the danger