Part 44 (1/2)
The facility with which insects are enabled to collect both pollen and nectar makes the goldenrods exceedingly popular restaurants. Finally, the visits of.insects are more likely to prove effectual, because any one that alights must touch several or many florets, and cross-pollinate them simply by crawling over a head. The disk florets mostly contain both stamens and pistil, while the ray florets in one series are all male. Immense numbers of wasps, hornets, bees, flies, beetles, and ”bugs” feast without effort here indeed, the budding entomologist might form a large collection of Hymenoptera, Diptera, Coleoptera, and Hemiptera from among the. visitors to a single field of goldenrod alone.
Usually to be discovered among the throng are the velvety black Lytta or Cantharis, that impostor wasp-beetle, the black and yellow wavy-banded, red-legged locust-tree borer, and the painted Clytus, banded with yellow and sable, squeaking contentedly as he gnaws the florets that feed him.
Where the slender, brown, plume-tipped wands etch their charming outline above the snow-covered fields, how the sparrows, finches, buntings, and juncos love to congregate, of course helping to scatter the seeds to the wind while satisfying their hunger on the swaying, down-curved stalks. Now that the leaves are gone, some of the goldenrod stems are seen to bulge as if a tiny ball were concealed under the bark. In spring a little winged tenant, a fly, will emerge from the gall that has been his cradle all winter.
ELECAMPANE; HORSEHEAL; YELLOW STARWORT (Inula Helenium) Thistle family
Flower-heads - Large, yellow, solitary or a few, 2 to 4 in.
across; on long, stout peduncles; the scaly green involucre nearly 1 in. high, holding disk florets surrounded by a fringe of long, very narrow, 3-toothed ray florets. Stem: Usually unbranched, 2 to 6 ft. high, hairy above. Leaves: Alternate, large, broadly oblong, pointed, saw-edged, rough above, woolly beneath some with heart-shaped, clasping bases.
Preferred Habitat - Roadsides, fields, fence rows, damp pastures.
Flowering Season - July-September.
Distribution - Nova Scotia to the Carolinas, and westward to Minnesota and Missouri.
”September may be described as the month of tall weeds;” says John Burroughs. ”Where they have been suffered to stand, along fences, by roadsides, and in forgotten corners,- redroot, ragweed, vervain, goldenrod, burdock, elecampane, thistles, teasels, nettles, asters, etc. - how they lift themselves up as if not afraid to be seen now! They are all outlaws; every man's hand is against them yet how surely they hold their own. They love the roadside, because here they are comparatively safe and ragged and dusty, like the common tramps that they are, they form one of the characteristic features of early fall.”
Yet the elecampane has not always led a vagabond existence. Once it had its pa.s.sage paid across the Atlantic, because special virtue was attributed to its thick, mucilaginous roots as a horse-medicine. For over two thousand years it has been employed by home doctors in Europe and Asia; and at first Old World immigrants thought they could not live here without the plant on their farms. Once given a chance to naturalize itself, no composite is slow in seizing it. The vigorous elecampane, rearing its fringy, yellow disks above lichen-covered stone walls in New England, the Virginia rail fence, and the rank weedy growth along barbed-wire barriers farther west, now bids fair to cross the continent.
CUP-PLANT; INDIAN-CUP; RAGGED CUP; ROSIN-PLANT (Silphium perfoliatum) Thistle family
Plower-heads - Yellow, nearly flat; 2 to 3 in. across; 20 to 30 narrow, pistillate ray florets, about 1 in. long, overlapping in 2 or 3 series around the perfect but sterile disk florets. Stem: 4 to 8 ft. tall, square, smooth, usually branched above.
Leaves: Opposite, ovate, upper ones united by their bases to form a cup; lower ones large, coa.r.s.ely toothed, and narrowed into margined petioles; all filled with resinous juice.
Preferred Habitat - Moist soil, low ground near streams.
Flowering Season - July-September.
Distribution - Ontario, New York, and Georgia, westward to Minnesota, Nebraska, and Louisiana.
It behooves a species related to the wonderful compa.s.s-plant (q.v.) to do something unusual with its leaves; hence this one makes cups to catch rain by uniting its upper pairs. Darwin's experiments with infinitesimal doses of ammonia in stimulating leaf activity may throw some light on this singular arrangement.
So many plants provide traps to catch rain, although fourteen gallons of it contain only one grain of ammonia, that we must believe there is a wise physiological reason for calling upon the leaves to a.s.sist the roots in absorbing it, A native of Western prairies, the cup-plant has now become naturalized so far east as the neighborhood 6f New York City.
FALSE SUNFLOWER; OX-EYE (Heliopsis helianthoides; H. laevis of Gray) Thistle family
Flower-heads - Entirely golden yellow, daisy-like, 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 in. across, the perfect disk florets inserted on a convex, chaffy receptacle, and surrounded by pistillate, fertile, 3-toothed ray florets; usually numerous solitary heads borne on long peduncles from axils of upper leaves. Stem: 3 to 5 ft. tall, branching above, smooth. Leaves: Opposite, ovate, and tapering to a sharp point, sharply and evenly toothed.
Preferred Habitat - Open places; rich, low ground; beside streams.
Flowering Season - July-September.
Distribution - Southern Canada to Florida, westward to Illinois and Kentucky.
Along the streams the numerous flower-heads of this gorgeous sunbearer s.h.i.+ne out from afar, brightening a long, meandering course across the low-lying meadows. Like heralds of good things to come, they march a little in advance of the brilliant pageant of wild flowers that sweeps across the country from midsummer till killing frost. Most people mistake them for true, yellow-disked sunflowers, whose ray florets are neutral, not fertile as these long persistent ones are, But no one should confuse them with the dark cone-centered ox-eye daisy. Small bees, wasps, hornets, flies, little b.u.t.terflies, beetles, and lower insects come to feast on the nectar and pollen within the minute tubular disk florets. The bright fulvous and black pearl crescent b.u.t.terfly, with a trifle over an inch wing expanse; the common hairstreak; the even commoner little white b.u.t.terfly; and the tiny black sooty wing, among others, appear to find generous entertainment here. The last named little fellow, when in the caterpillar stage, formed a cradle for himself by folding together a leaf of the ubiquitous green-flowered pigweed or lamb's quarters (Cizenopodium alb.u.m) and st.i.tching the edges together with a few silken threads. Here it slept by day, emerging only at night to feed. Usually one has not long to wait before discovering the white-dotted sooty wing among the midsummer composites.
BLACK-EYED SUSAN; YELLOW or OX-EYE DAISY; n.i.g.g.e.r-HEAD; GOLDEN JERUSALEM; PURPLE CONE-FLOWER (Rudbeckia hirta) Thistle family
Flower-heads - From 10 to 20 orange-yellow neutral rays around a conical, dark purplish-brown disk of florets containing both stamens and pistil. Stem: 1 to 3 ft. tall, hairy, rough, usually unbranched, often tufted. Leaves: Oblong to lance-shaped, thick, sparingly notched, rough.
Preferred Habitat - Open sunny places; dry fields.
Flowering Season - May-September.
Distribution - Ontario and the Northwest Territory south to Colorado and the Gulf States.
So very many weeds having come to our Eastern sh.o.r.es from Europe, and marched farther and farther west year by year, it is but fair that black-eyed Susan, a native of Western clover fields, should travel toward the Atlantic in bundles of hay whenever she gets the chance, to repay Eastern farmers in their own coin. Do these gorgeous heads know that all our showy rudbeckias - some with orange red at the base of their ray florets - have become prime favorites of late years in European gardens, so offering them still another chance to overrun the Old World, to which so much American hay is s.h.i.+pped? Thrifty farmers may decry the importation into their mowing lots, but there is a glory to the cone-flower beside which the glitter of a gold coin fades into paltry nothingness. Having been instructed in the decorative usefulness of all this genus by European landscape gardeners, we Americans now importune the Department of Agriculture for seeds through members of Congress, even Representatives of States that have pa.s.sed stringent laws against the dissemination of ”weeds.”
Inasmuch as each black-eyed Susan puts into daily operation the business methods of the white daisy (q.v.), methods which have become a sort of creed for the entire composite horde to live by, it is plain that she may defy both farmers and legislators. Bees, wasps, flies, b.u.t.terflies, and beetles could not be kept away from an entertainer so generous; for while the nectar in the deep, tubular brown florets may be drained only by long, slender tongues, pollen is accessible to all. Anyone who has had a jar of these yellow daisies standing on a polished table indoors, and tried to keep its surface free from a ring of golden dust around the flowers, knows how abundant their pollen is. There are those who vainly imagine that the slaughter of dozens of English sparrows occasionally is going to save this land of liberty from being overrun with millions of the hardy little gamins that have proved themselves so fit in the struggle for survival. As vainly may farmers try to exterminate a composite that has once taken possession of their fields.