WILD FLOWERS [32]
New York. One has only to crush the leaves in one's hand to name the flower.
Our native WILD MINT (M. Canadensis), common along brook-sides and in moist soil from New Brunswick to Virginia and far westward, has its whorls of small purplish flowers seated in the leaf axils. Its odor is like pennyroyal. The true PENNYROYAL, not to be confused with our spurious woodland annual, is M. Pulegium, a native of Europe, whence a number of its less valuable relatives, all perennials, have traveled to become naturalized Americans.
In dry open woods and thickets and by the roadside, from late August throughout September, we find blooming the aromatic fragrant STONE MINT, SWEET HORSE-MINT, or AMERICAN DITTANY (Cunila origanoides; C. Mariana of Gray). Its small pink-purple, lilac, or whitish flowers, that are only about half as long as the protruding pair of stamens, are borne in loose terminal clusters at the ends of the stiff, branched, slender, sometimes reddish, stem. A pair of rudimentary, useless stamens remain within the two-lipped tube; the exserted pair, affording the most convenient alighting place for the visiting flies, dust their undersides with pollen the first day the flower opens; on the next, the stigma will be ready to receive pollen carried from young flowers.
NIGHTSHADE; BLUE BINDWEED; FELONWORT; BITTERSWEET; SCARLET or SNAKE BERRY; POISON-FLOWER; WOODY NIGHTSHADE (Solanum Dulcamara) Potato family
Flowers - Blue, purple, or, rarely, white with greenish spots on each lobe; about 1/2 in. broad, clustered in slender, drooping cymes. Calyx 5-lobed, oblong, persistent on the berry; corolla deeply, sharply 5-cleft, wheel-shaped, or points curved backward; 5 stamens inserted on throat, yellow, protruding, the anthers united to form a cone; stigma small. Stem: Climbing or straggling, woody below, branched, 2 to 8 ft. long. Leaves: Alternate, 2 to 4 in. long, 1 to 2 1/2 in. wide, pointed at the apex, usually heart-shaped at base; some with 2 distinct leaflets below on the petiole, others have leaflets united with leaf like lower lobes or wings. Fruit: A bright red, oval berry. Preferred Habitat - Moist thickets, fence rows. Flowering Season - May-September. Distribution - United States east of Kansas, north of New Jersey. Canada, Europe, and Asia.
More beautiful than the graceful flowers are the drooping cymes of bright berries, turning from green to yellow, then to orange and scarlet, in the tangled thicket by the shady roadside in autumn, when the unpretending, shrubby vine, that has crowded its way through the rank midsummer vegetation, becomes a joy to the eye. Another bittersweet, so-called, festoons the hedgerows with yellow berries which, bursting, show their scarlet-coated seeds. Rose hips and mountain-ash berries, among many other conspicuous bits of color, arrest attention, but not for us were they designed. Now the birds are migrating, and, hungry with their long flight, they gladly stop to feed upon fare so attractive. Hard, indigestible seeds traverse the alimentary canal without alteration and are deposited many miles from the parent that bore them. Nature's methods for widely distributing plants cannot but stir the dullest imagination.
The purple pendent flowers of this nightshade secrete no nectar, therefore many insects let them alone; but it is now believed that no part of the plant is poisonous. Certainly one that claims the potato, tomato, and eggplant among its kin has no right to be dangerous. The BLACK, GARDEN, or DEADLY NIGHTSHADE, also called MOREL (S. nigrum), bears jet-black berries that are alleged to be fatal. Nevertheless, female bumblebees, to which its white flowers are specially adapted, visit them to draw out pollen from the chinks of the anthers with their jaws, just as they do in the case of the wild, sensitive plant, and with no more disastrous result. It has been well said that the nightshades are a blessing both to the sick and to the doctors. The present species takes its name from dulcis, sweet, and amaras, bitter, referring to the taste of the juice; the generic
Our native WILD MINT (M. Canadensis), common along brook-sides and in moist soil from New Brunswick to Virginia and far westward, has its whorls of small purplish flowers seated in the leaf axils. Its odor is like pennyroyal. The true PENNYROYAL, not to be confused with our spurious woodland annual, is M. Pulegium, a native of Europe, whence a number of its less valuable relatives, all perennials, have traveled to become naturalized Americans.
In dry open woods and thickets and by the roadside, from late August throughout September, we find blooming the aromatic fragrant STONE MINT, SWEET HORSE-MINT, or AMERICAN DITTANY (Cunila origanoides; C. Mariana of Gray). Its small pink-purple, lilac, or whitish flowers, that are only about half as long as the protruding pair of stamens, are borne in loose terminal clusters at the ends of the stiff, branched, slender, sometimes reddish, stem. A pair of rudimentary, useless stamens remain within the two-lipped tube; the exserted pair, affording the most convenient alighting place for the visiting flies, dust their undersides with pollen the first day the flower opens; on the next, the stigma will be ready to receive pollen carried from young flowers.
NIGHTSHADE; BLUE BINDWEED; FELONWORT; BITTERSWEET; SCARLET or SNAKE BERRY; POISON-FLOWER; WOODY NIGHTSHADE (Solanum Dulcamara) Potato family
Flowers - Blue, purple, or, rarely, white with greenish spots on each lobe; about 1/2 in. broad, clustered in slender, drooping cymes. Calyx 5-lobed, oblong, persistent on the berry; corolla deeply, sharply 5-cleft, wheel-shaped, or points curved backward; 5 stamens inserted on throat, yellow, protruding, the anthers united to form a cone; stigma small. Stem: Climbing or straggling, woody below, branched, 2 to 8 ft. long. Leaves: Alternate, 2 to 4 in. long, 1 to 2 1/2 in. wide, pointed at the apex, usually heart-shaped at base; some with 2 distinct leaflets below on the petiole, others have leaflets united with leaf like lower lobes or wings. Fruit: A bright red, oval berry. Preferred Habitat - Moist thickets, fence rows. Flowering Season - May-September. Distribution - United States east of Kansas, north of New Jersey. Canada, Europe, and Asia.
More beautiful than the graceful flowers are the drooping cymes of bright berries, turning from green to yellow, then to orange and scarlet, in the tangled thicket by the shady roadside in autumn, when the unpretending, shrubby vine, that has crowded its way through the rank midsummer vegetation, becomes a joy to the eye. Another bittersweet, so-called, festoons the hedgerows with yellow berries which, bursting, show their scarlet-coated seeds. Rose hips and mountain-ash berries, among many other conspicuous bits of color, arrest attention, but not for us were they designed. Now the birds are migrating, and, hungry with their long flight, they gladly stop to feed upon fare so attractive. Hard, indigestible seeds traverse the alimentary canal without alteration and are deposited many miles from the parent that bore them. Nature's methods for widely distributing plants cannot but stir the dullest imagination.
The purple pendent flowers of this nightshade secrete no nectar, therefore many insects let them alone; but it is now believed that no part of the plant is poisonous. Certainly one that claims the potato, tomato, and eggplant among its kin has no right to be dangerous. The BLACK, GARDEN, or DEADLY NIGHTSHADE, also called MOREL (S. nigrum), bears jet-black berries that are alleged to be fatal. Nevertheless, female bumblebees, to which its white flowers are specially adapted, visit them to draw out pollen from the chinks of the anthers with their jaws, just as they do in the case of the wild, sensitive plant, and with no more disastrous result. It has been well said that the nightshades are a blessing both to the sick and to the doctors. The present species takes its name from dulcis, sweet, and amaras, bitter, referring to the taste of the juice; the generic