(Clintonia borealis) Lily-of-the-valley family Flowers - Straw color or greenish yellow, less than 1 in.long, 3to 6 nodding on slender pedicels from the summit of a leafless scape 6 to 15 in.tall.Perianth of 6 spreading divisions, the 6stamens attached; style, 3-lobed.Leaves: Dark, glossy, large, oval to oblong, 2 to 5 (usually 3), sheathing at the base.Fruit.
Oval blue berries on upright pedicels.
Preferred Habitat - Moist, rich, cool woods and thickets.
Flowering Season - May-June.
Distribution - From the Carolinas and Wisconsin far northward.
To name canals, bridges, city thoroughfares, booming factory towns after DeWitt Clinton seems to many appropriate enough; but why a shy little woodland flower? As fitly might a wee white violet carry down the name of Theodore Roosevelt to posterity!
"Gray should not have named the flower from the Governor of New York," complains Thoreau."What is he to the lovers of flowers in Massachusetts? If named after a man, it must be a man of flowers." So completely has Clinton, the practical man of affairs, obliterated Clinton, the naturalist, from the popular mind, that, were it not for this plant keeping his memory green, we should be in danger of forgetting the weary, overworked governor, fleeing from care to the woods and fields; pursuing in the open air the study which above all others delighted and refreshed him; revealing in every leisure moment a too-often forgotten side of his many-sided greatness.
INDIAN CUCUMBER-ROOT
(Medeola Virginiana) Lily-of-the-valley family Flowers - Greenish yellow, on fine, curving footstalks, in a loose cluster above a circle of leaves.Perianth of 6 wide-spread divisions about 1/4 in.long; 6 reddish-brown stamens; 3 long reddish-brown styles, stigmatic on inner side.Stem: 1 to 2 1/2ft.high, unbranched, cottony when young.Leaves: Of flowering plants, in 2 whorls; lower whorl of 5 to 9 large, thin, oblong, taper-pointed leaves above the middle of stem; upper whorl of 3to 5 small, oval, pointed leaves 1 to 2 in.long, immediately under flowers.Flowerless plants with a whorl at summit.Fruit:
Round, dark-purple berries.
Preferred Habitat - Moist woods and thickets.
Flowering Season - May-June.
Distribution - Nova Scotia and Minnesota, southward nearly to the Gulf of Mexico.
Again we see the leaves of a plant coming to the aid of otherwise inconspicuous flowers to render them more attractive.By placing themselves in a circle just below these little spidery blossoms of weak and uncertain coloring, some of the Indian cucumber's leaves certainly make them at least noticeable, if not showy.It would be short-sighted philanthropy on the leaves' part to help the flowers win insect wooers at the expense of the plant's general health; therefore those in the upper whorl are fewer and much smaller than the leaves in the lower circle, and a sufficient length of stem separates them to allow the sunlight and rain to conjure with the chlorophyll in the group below.
While there is a chance of nectar being pilfered from the flowers by ants, the stem is cottony and ensnares their feet.In September, when small clusters of dark-purple berries replace the flowers, and rich tints dye the leaves, the plant is truly beautiful - of course to invite migrating birds to disperse its seeds.It is said the Indians used to eat the horizontal, white, fleshy rootstock, which has a flavor like a cucumber's.
CARRION-FLOWER
(Smilax herbacea) Smilax family Flowers - Carrion-scented, yellowish-green, 15 to 80 small, 6-parted ones clustered in an umbel on a long peduncle.Stem:
Smooth, unarmed, climbing with the help of tendril-like appendages from the base of leafstalks.Leaves: Egg-shaped, heart-shaped, or rounded, pointed tipped, parallel-nerved, petioled.Fruit: Bluish-black berries.
Preferred Habitat - Moist soil, thickets, woods, roadside fences.
Flowering Season - April-June.
Distribution - Northern Canada to the Gulf States, westward to Nebraska.
"It would be safe to say," says John Burroughs, "that there is a species of smilax with an unsavory name, that the bee does not visit, herbacea.The production of this plant is a curious freak of nature....It would be a cruel joke to offer it to any person not acquainted with it, to smell.It is like the vent of a charnel-house." (Thoreau compared its odor to that of a dead rat in a wall!) "It is first cousin to the trilliums, among the prettiest of our native wild flowers," continues Burroughs, "and the same bad blood crops out in the purple trillium or birthroot."Strange that so close an observer as Burroughs or Thoreau should not have credited the carrion-flower with being something more intelligent than a mere repellent freak! Like the purple trillium (q.v.), it has deliberately adapted itself to please its benefactors, the little green flesh flies so commonly seen about untidy butcher shops in summer.These, sharing with many beetles the unthankful task of removing putrid flesh and fowl from the earth, acting the part of scavengers for nature, are naturally attracted to carrion-scented flowers.Of these they have an ungrudged monopoly.But the purple trillium has an additional advantage in both smelling and looking like the same thing - a piece of raw meat past its prime.Bees and butterflies, with their highly developed aesthetic sense, ever delighting in beautiful colors, perfume, and nectar, naturally let such flowers as these alone - another object aimed at by them, for then the flies get all the pollen they can eat.Some they transfer, of course, from the larger staminate flowers to the smaller pistillate ones as they crawl over one umbel of the carrion-flower, then alight on another.