Large patches of the DOWNY PHLOX (P.pilosa) brighten dry prairie land with its pinkish blossoms in late spring.Britton and Brown's botany gives its range as "Ontario to Manitoba, New Jersey, Florida, Arkansas, and Texas." The plant does its best to attain a height of two feet; usually its flowers are much nearer the ground.Butterflies, the principal visitors of most phloxes, although long-tongued bees and even flies can sip their nectar, are ever seen hovering above them and transferring pollen, although in this species the style is so short pollen must often fall into the tube and self-fertilize the stigma.To protect the flowers from useless crawling visitors, the calices are coated with sticky matter, and the stems are downy.
OBEDIENT PLANT; FALSE DRAGONHEAD; LION'S HEART(Physostegia Virginiana) Mint family Flowers - Pale magenta, purplish rose, or flesh-colored, often variegated with white, 1 in.long or over, in dense spikes from 4to 8 in.long.Calyx a 5-toothed oblong bell, swollen and remaining open in fruit, held up by lance-shaped bracts.Corolla tubular and much enlarged where it divides into 2 lips, the upper lip concave, rounded, entire, the lower lip 3 lobed.Stamens 4, in two pairs under roof of upper lip, the filaments hairy; 1pistil.Stem: 1 to 4 ft.high, ****** or branched above, leafy.
Leaves: Opposite, firm, oblong to oblong-lanceolate, narrowing at base, deeply saw-edged.
Preferred Habitat - Moist soil.
Flowering Season - July-September.
Distribution - Quebec to the Northwest Territory, southward to the Gulf of Mexico as far west as Texas.
Bright patches of this curious flower enliven railroad ditches, gutters, moist meadows and brooksides - curious, for it has the peculiarity of remaining in any position in which it is placed.
With one puff a child can easily blow the blossoms to the opposite side of the spike, there to stay in meek obedience to his will."The flowers are made to assume their definite position," says Professor W.W.Bailey in the "Botanical Gazette," "by friction of the pedicels against the subtending bracts.Remove the bracts, and they at once fall limp."Qf course the plant has some better reason for this peculiar obedience to every breath that blows than to amuse windy-cheeked boys and girls.Is not the ready movement useful during stormy weather in turning the mouth of the flower away from driving rain, and in fair days, when insects are abroad, in presenting its gaping lips where they can best alight? We all know that insects, like birds, make long flights most easily with the wind, but in rising and alighting it is their practice to turn against it.When bees, for example, are out for food on windy days, and must make frequent stops for refreshment among the flowers, they will be found going against the wind, possibly to catch the whiffs of fragrance borne on it that guide them to feast, but more likely that they may rise and alight readily.One always sees bumblebees conspicuous among the obedient plant's visitors.
After the anthers have shed their pollen - and tiny teeth at the edges of the outer pair aid its complete removal by insects - the stigma comes up to occupy their place under the roof.Certainly this flower; which is so ill-adapted to fertilize itself, has every reason to court insect messengers in fair and stormy 'weather.
MOTHERWORT
(Leonurus Cardiaca) Mint family.
Flowers - Dull purple pink, pale purple, or white, small, clustered in axils of upper leaves.Calyx tubular, bell-shaped, with 5 rigid awl-like teeth; corolla 2-lipped, upper lip arched, woolly without; lower lip 3-lobed, spreading, mottled; the tube with oblique ring of hairs inside.Four twin-like stamens, anterior pair longer, reaching under upper lip; style 2-cleft at summit.Stem: 2 to 5 ft.tall, straight, branched, leafy, purplish.Leaves: Opposite, on slender petioles; lower ones rounded, 2 to 4 in.broad, palmately cut into 2 to 5 lobes; upper leaves narrower, 3-cleft or 3- toothed.
Preferred Habitat - Waste places near dwellings.
Flowering Season - June-September.
Distribution - Nova Scotia southward to North Carolina, west to Minnesota and Nebraska.Naturalized from Europe and Asia.
"One is tempted to say that the most human plants, after all, are the weeds," says John Burroughs."How they cling to man and follow him around the world, and spring up wherever he sets foot How they crowd around his barns and dwellings, and throng his garden, and jostle and override each other in their strife to be near him! Some of them are so domestic and familiar, and so harmless withal, that one comes to regard them with positive affection.Motherwort, catnip, plantain, tansy, wild mustard -what a homely, human look they have! They are an integral part of every old homestead.Your smart, new place will wait long before they draw near it."How the bees love this generous, old-fashioned entertainer! One nearly always sees them clinging to the close whorls of flowers that are strung along the stem, and of course transferring pollen, in recompense, as they journey on.A more credulous generation imported the plant for its alleged healing virtues.
What is the significance of its Greek name, meaning a lion's tail? Let no one suggest, by a far-stretched metaphor, that our grandmothers, in Revolutionary days, enjoyed pulling it to vent their animosity against the British.
WILD BERGAMOT