Wild Flowers / Natures Garden | Page 7

earth in American sitting-rooms. In a shady
lane within New York city limits, where a few stems were thrown out
one spring about five years ago, the entire bank is now covered with the
vine, that has rooted by its hairy joints, and, in spite of frosts and
blizzards, continues to bear its true-blue flowers throughout the
summer.
PICKEREL WEED (Pontederia cordata) Pickerel-weed family
Flowers - Bright purplish blue, including filaments, anthers, and style;
crowded in a dense spike; quickly fading; unpleasantly odorous.
Perianth tubular, 2-lipped, parted into 6 irregular lobes, free from ovary;
middle lobe of upper lip with 2 yellow spots at base within. Stamens 6,

placed at unequal distances on tube, 3 opposite each lip. Pistil 1, the
stigma minutely toothed. Stem: Erect, stout, fleshy, to 4 ft. tall, not
often over 2 ft. above water line. Leaves: Several bract-like, sheathing
stem at base; leaf only, midway on flower-stalk, thick, polished,
triangular, or arrow-shaped, 4 to 8 in. long, 2 to 6 in. across base.
Preferred Habitat - Shallow water of ponds and streams. Flowering
Season - June-October. Distribution - Eastern half of United States and
Canada.
Grace of habit and the bright beauty of its long blue spikes of ragged
flowers above rich, glossy leaves give a charm to this vigorous wader.
Backwoodsmen will tell you that pickerels lay their eggs among the
leaves; but so they do among the sedges, arums, wild rice, and various
aquatic plants, like many another fish. Bees and flies, that congregate
about the blossoms to feed, may sometimes fly too low, and so give a
plausible reason for the pickerel's choice of haunt. Each blossom lasts
but a single day; the upper portion, withering, leaves the base of the
perianth to harden about the ovary and protect the solitary seed. But as
the gradually lengthened spike keeps up an uninterrupted succession of
bloom for months, more than ample provision is made for the
perpetuation of the race - a necessity to any plant that refuses to thrive
unless it stands in water. Ponds and streams have an unpleasant habit of
drying up in summer, and often the pickerel weed looks as brown as a
bulrush where it is stranded in the baked mud in August. When seed
falls on such ground, if indeed it germinates at all, the young plant
naturally withers away.
In the Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club, Mr. W. H. Leggett, who
made a careful study of the flower, tells that three forms occur, not on
the same, but on different plants, being even more distinctly trimorphic
than the purple Loosestrife. As these flowers set no seed without
insects' aid, the provisions made to secure the greatest benefit from
their visits are marvelous. Of the three kinds of blossoms, one raises its
stigma on a long style reaching to the top of the flower; a second form
lifts its stigma only halfway up, and the third keeps its stigma in the
bottom of the tube. Now, there are two sets of stamens, three in each set
bearing pollen grains of different size and value. Whenever the stigma

is high, the two sets of stamens keep out of its way by occupying the
lowest and middle positions, or just where the stigmas occur in the two
other forms; or, let us say, whenever the stigma is in one of the three
positions, the different sets of stamens occupy the other two. In a long
series of experiments on flowers occurring in two and three forms -
dimorphic and trimorphic - Darwin proved that perfect fertility can be
obtained only when the stigma in each form is pollenized with grains
carried from the stamens of a corresponding height. For example, a bee
on entering the flower must get his abdomen dusted with pollen from
the long stamens, his chest covered from the middle-length stamens,
and his tongue and chin from the set in the bottom of the tube nearest
the nectary. When he flies off to visit another flower, these parts of his
body coming in contact with the stigmas that occupy precisely the
position where the stamens were in other individuals, he necessarily
brushes off each lot of pollen just where it will do the most good.
Pollen brought from high stamens, for example, to a low stigma, even
should it reach it, which is scarcely likely, takes little or no effect. Thus
cross-fertilization is absolutely essential, and in three-formed flowers
there are two chances to one of securing it.
WILD HYACINTH, SCILLA or SQUILL. QUAMASH (Quamasia
kyacinthina; Scilla Fraseri of Gray) Lily family
Flowers - Several or many, pale violet blue, or rarely white, in a long,
loose raceme; perianth of 6 equal, narrowly oblong, widely spreading
divisions, the thread-like filaments inserted at their bases; style
thread-like, with