Wild Flowers / Natures Garden | Page 8

3-lobed stigma. Scape: 1 to 2 ft. high, from
egg-shaped, nearly black bulb, 1 to 1 1/2 in. long. Leaves: Grass-like,
shorter than flowering scape, from the base. Fruit: A 3-angled, oval
capsule containing shining black seeds. Preferred Habitat - Meadows,
prairies, and along banks of streams. Flowering Season - April-May.
Distribution - Pennsylvania and Ohio westward to Minnesota, south to
Alabama and Texas.
Coming with the crocuses, before the snow is off the ground, and
remaining long after their regal gold and purple chalices have withered,
the Siberian scillas sold by seedsmen here deserve a place in every

garden, for their porcelain-blue color is rare as it is charming; the early
date when they bloom makes them especially welcome; and, once
planted and left undisturbed, the bulbs increase rapidly, without injury
from overcrowding. Evidently they need little encouragement to run
wild. Nevertheless they are not wild scillas, however commonly they
may be miscalled so. Certainly ladies' tresses, known as wild hyacinth
in parts of New England, has even less right to the name.
Our true native wild hyacinth, or scilla, is quite a different flower, not
so pure a blue as the Siberian scilla, and paler; yet in the middle West,
where it abounds, there are few lovelier sights in spring than a colony
of these blossoms directed obliquely upward from slender, swaying
scapes among the lush grass. Their upward slant brings the stigma in
immediate contact with an incoming visitor's pollen-laden body. As the
stamens diverge with the spreading of the divisions of the perianth, to
which they are attached, the stigma receives pollen brought from
another flower, before the visitor dusts himself anew in searching for
refreshment, thus effecting cross-pollination. Ants, bees, wasps, flies,
butterflies, and beetles may be seen about the wild hyacinth, which is
obviously best adapted to the bees. The smallest insects that visit it may
possibly defeat Nature's plan and obtain nectar without fertilizing the
flower, owing to the wide passage between stamens and stigma. In
about an hour, one May morning, Professor Charles Robertson
captured over six hundred insects, representing thirty-eight distinct
species, on a patch of wild hyacinths in Illinois.
The bulb of a MEDITERRANEAN SCILLA (S. maritima) furnishes
the sourish-sweet syrup of squills used in medicine for bronchial
troubles.
The GRAPE HYACINTH (Muscari botrycides), also known as Baby's
Breath, because of its delicate faint fragrance, escapes from gardens at
slight encouragement to grow wild in the roadsides and meadows from
Massachusetts to Virginia and westward to Ohio. Its tiny, deep-blue,
globular flowers, stiffly set around a fleshy scape that rises between
erect, blade-like, channeled leaves, appear spring after spring wherever
the small bulbs have been planted. On the east end of Long Island there

are certain meadows literally blued with the little runaways.
PURPLE TRILLIUM, ILL-SCENTED WAKE-ROBIN or
BIRTH-ROOT (Trillium erectum) Lily-of-the-Valley family
Flowers - Solitary, dark, dull purple, or purplish red; rarely greenish,
white, or pinkish; on erect or slightly inclined footstalk. Calyx of 3
spreading sepals, 1 to 1 1/2 in. long, or about length of 3 pointed, oval
petals; stamens 6; anthers longer than filaments; pistil spreading into 3
short, recurved stigmas. Stem: Stout, 8 to i6 in. high, from tuber-like
rootstock. Leaves: In a whorl of 3; broadly ovate, abruptly pointed,
netted-veined. Fruit: A 6-angled, ovate, reddish berry. Preferred Habitat
- Rich, moist woods. Flowering Season - April-June. Distribution -
Nova Scotia westward to Manitoba, southward to North Carolina and
Missouri.
Some weeks after the jubilant, alert robins have returned from the
South, the purple trillium unfurls its unattractive, carrion-scented
flower. In the variable colors found in different regions, one can almost
trace its evolution from green, white, and red to purple, which, we are
told, is the course all flowers must follow to attain to blue. The white
and pink forms, however attractive to the eye, are never more agreeable
to the nose than the reddish-purple ones. Bees and butterflies, with
delicate appreciation of color and fragrance, let the blossom alone,
since it secretes no nectar; and one would naturally infer either that it
can fertilize itself without insect aid - a theory which closer study of its
organs goes far to disprove - or that the carrion-scent, so repellent to us,
is in itself an attraction to certain insects needful for cross-pollination.
Which are they? Beetles have been observed crawling over the flower,
but without effecting any methodical result. One inclines to accept Mr.
Clarence M. Weed's theory of special adaptation to the common green
flesh-flies (Lucilia carnicina), which would naturally be attracted to a
flower resembling in color and odor a raw beefsteak of uncertain age.
These little creatures, seen in every butcher shop throughout the
summer, the flower furnishes with a free lunch of pollen in
consideration of the transportation of a few grains