The very common GREEN ARROW-ARUM (Peltandra Virginica), found in shallow water, ditches, swamps, and the muddy shores of ponds throughout the eastern half of the United States, attracts us more by its stately growth and the beauty of its bright, lustrous green arrow-shaped leaves (which have been found thirty inches long), than by the insignificant florets clustered on the spadix within a long pointed green sheath that closely enfolds it.
Pistillate florets cover it for only about one-fourth its length.
To them flies carry pollen from the staminate florets covering the rest of the spadix.After the club is set with green berries - green, for this plant has no need to attract birds with bright red ones - the flower stalk curves, bends downward, and the pointed leathery sheath acting as an auger, it bores a hole into the soft mud in which the seeds germinate with the help of their surrounding jelly as a fertilizer.
AMERICAN WHITE HELLEBORE; INDIAN POKE; ITCH-WEED(Veratrum viride) Bunch-flower family Flowers - Dingy, pale yellowish or whitish green, growing greener with age, 1 in.or less across, very numerous, in stiff-branching, spike-like, dense-flowered panicles.Perianth of 6 oblong segments; 6 short curved stamens; 3 styles.Stem: Stout, leafy, 2 to 8 ft.tall.Leaves: Plaited, lower ones broadly oval, pointed, 6 to 12 in.long; parallel ribbed, sheathing the stem where they clasp it; upper leaves gradually narrowing; those among flowers small.
Preferred Habitat - Swamps, wet woods, low meadows.
Flowering Season - May-July.
Distribution - British Possessions from ocean to ocean; southward in the United States to Georgia, Tennessee, and Minnesota.
"Borage and hellebore fill two scenes -
Sovereign plants to purge the veins Of melancholy, and cheer the heart Of those black fumes which make it smart."Such are the antidotes for madness prescribed by Burton in his "Anatomie of Melancholy." But like most medicines, so the homeopaths have taught us, the plant that heals may also poison;and the coarse, thick rootstock of this hellebore sometimes does deadly work.The shining plaited leaves, put forth so early in the spring they are especially tempting to grazing cattle on that account, are too well known by most animals, however, to be touched by them - precisely the end desired, of course, by the hellebore, nightshade, aconite, cyclamen, Jamestown weed, and a host of others that resort, for protection, to the low trick of mixing poisonous chemicals with their cellular juices.Pliny told how the horses, oxen, and swine of his day were killed by eating the foliage of the black hellebore.Flies, which visit the dirty, yellowish-green flowers in abundance, must cross-fertilize them, as the anthers mature before the stigmas are ready to receive pollen.Apparently the visitors suffer no ill effects from the nectar.We nave just seen how the green arrow-arum bores a hole in the mud and plants its own seeds in autumn.The hellebore uses its auger in the spring, when we find the stout, shining, solid tool above ground with the early skunk-cabbage.
STAR OF BETHLEHEM; TEN O'CLOCK
(Ornithogalum umbellatum) Lily family Flowers - Opening in the sunshine, white within, greenish on the outside, veined, borne on slender pedicels in an erect, loose cluster.Perianth of 6 narrowly oblong divisions, 1/2 in.long or over, or about twice as long as the flattened stamens; style short, 3-sided.Scape: Slender, 4 to 12 in.high, with narrow, blade-like bracts above.Leaves: Narrow, grass-like with white midvein, fleshy, all from coated, egg-shaped bulb.
Preferred Habitat - Moist, grassy meadows, old lawns.Flowering Season - May-June.
Distribution - Escaped from gardens from Massachusetts to Virginia.
The finding of these exquisite little flowers, growing wild among the lush grass of a meadow not far from some old homestead where their ancestors, with crocuses and grape hyacinths, once brightened the lawn in early spring, makes one long to start a Parkinson Society instantly.Some school children not far from New York, receiving their inspiration from Mrs.Ewing's little book, "Mary's Meadow," have spread the gospel of beauty, like the true missionaries they are, by systematically planting in lanes and fields sweet violets, golden coreopsis, hardy poppies, blue corn-flowers, Japanese roses, orange day-lilies, larkspurs, and many other charming garden flowers that need only the slightest encouragement to run wild.Immense quantities of seed, that go to loss in every garden, might so easily be sprinkled at large on our walks.Nearly all the beautiful hardy perennials cultivated here grow in Nature's garden in Europe or Asia, and will do so in America if they are but given the chance.The Star of Bethlehem is a case in point.Several members of the large group of charming spring flowers to which it belongs grow in such abundance in the Old World that for centuries the bulbs have furnished food to the omnivorous Italian and Asiatic peasants.If we cannot spare offsets from the garden, and will wait a few years for seeds to bear, the rich, light loam of our grassy meadows, too, will be streaked with a Milky Way of floral stars, as they are in Italy.
The Greek generic name of the Star of Bethlehem, meaning "bird's milk" (a popular folk expression in Europe for some marvellous thing) was applied by Linnaeus because of the flower's likeness to the wonderful star in the East which guided the Wise Men to the manger where Jesus lay.
STAR-GRASS; COLIC-ROOT
(Aletris farinosa) Lily family Flowers - Small, oblong-tubular, pure white or yellowish, about 1/4 in.long, set obliquely in a long, wand-like, spiked raceme, at the end of a slender scape 2 to 3 ft.tall.Perianth somewhat bell-shaped, 6-pointed, rough or mealy outside; 6 stamens, inserted below each point; style 3-cleft at tip.(A Southern form or distinct species (?) has yellower, fragrant flowers.) Leaves: