Everyone crossing dry fields in the eastern United States and Canada at least must have trod on a carpet of cinquefoil (cinque = five, feuilles = leaves), and have noticed the bright little blossoms among the pretty foliage, possibly mistaking the plant for its cousin, the trefoliate barren strawberry (q.v.).Both have flowers like miniature wild yellow roses.During the Middle Ages, when misdirected zeal credited almost any plant with healing virtues for every ill that flesh is heir to, the cinquefoils were considered most potent remedies, hence their generic name.
The SHRUBBY CINQUEFOIL, or PRAIRIE WEED (P.fructicosa), becomes fairly troublesome in certain parts of its range, which extends from Greenland to Alaska, and southward to New Jersey, Arizona, and California; as well as over northern Europe and Asia.It is a bushy, much branched, and leafy shrub, six inches to four feet high), with bright yellow, five-parted flowers an inch across, more or less, either solitary or in cymes at the tips of the branches.They appear from June to September.The honeybee, alighting in the center of a blossom and turning around, passes its tongue over the entire nectar-bearing ring at the base of the stamens, then proceeding to another flower to do likewise, effects cross-fertilization regularly.On a sunny day the bright blossoms attract many visitors of the lower grade out after nectar and pollen, the beetles often devouring the anthers in their greed.The leaves on this cinquefoil are usually compounded of one terminal and four side leaflets that are narrowly oblong, an inch or less in length, and silky hairy.Sometimes there may be seven leaflets pinnately, not digitately, arranged.Although the shrubby cinquefoil prefers swamps and moist, rocky places to dwell in, it wisely adapts itself, as globe-trotters should, to whatever conditions it meets.
SILVERY or HOARY CINQUEFOIL (P.argentea), found in dry soil, blooming from May to September from Canada to Delaware, Indiana, Kansas, and Dakota, also in Europe and Asia, has yellow flowers only about a quarter of an inch across, but foliage of special beauty.From the tufted, branching, ascending stems, four to twelve inches long, the finely cleft, five-foliate leaves are spread on foot stems that diminish in size as they ascend, not to let the upper leaves shut off the light from the lower ones.
These leaves are smooth and green above, silvery on the under side, with fine white hairs, adapted for protection from excessive sunlight and too rapid transpiration of precious moisture.They entirely conceal the sensitive epidermis from which they grow.
YELLOW AVENS; FIELD AVENS
(Geum strictum) Rose family Flowers - Golden yellow, otherwise much resembling the lower growing white avens (q.v.).
Preferred Habitat - Low ground, moist meadows, swamps.
Flowering Season - June-August.
Distribution - Pennsylvania, Missouri, and Arizona, far northward.
After the marsh marigolds have withdrawn their brightness from low-lying meadows, blossoms of yellow avens twinkle in their stead.In autumn the jointed, barbed styles, protruding from the seed clusters, steal a ride by the same successful method of travel to new colonizing ground adopted by burdocks, goose-grass, tick-trefoils (q.v.), agrimony, and a score of other "tramps of the vegetable world."TALL or HAIRY AGRIMONY
(Agrimonia hirsuta; Eupatoria of Gray) Rose family Flowers - Yellow, small, 5-parted, in narrow, spike-like racemes.
Stem: Usua11y 3 to 4 ft.tall, sometimes less or more clothed, with long, soft hairs.Leaves: Large, thin, bright green, compounded of (mostly) 7 principal oblong, coarsely saw-edged leaflets, with pairs of tiny leaflets between.
Preferred Habitat - Woods, thickets, edges of fields.
Flowering Season - June-August.
Distribution - North Carolina, westward to California, and far north.
Quite a different species, not found in this country, is the common European Agrimony - A.Eupatoria of Linnaeus - which figures so prominently in the writings of medieval herbalists as a cure-all.Slender spires of green fruit below and yellow flowers above curve and bend at the borders of woodlands here apparently for no better reason than to enjoy life.Very few insects visit them, owing to the absence of nectar - certainly not the highly specialized and intelligent "Humble-Bee," to whom Emerson addressed the lines:
"Succory to match the sky, Columbine with horn of honey, Scented fern and agrimony, Clover, catch-fly, adder's-tongue, And brier-roses, dwelt among."It is true the bumblebee may dwell among almost any flowers, but he has decided preferences for such showy ones as have adapted themselves to please his love of certain colors (not yellow), or have secreted nectar so deeply hidden from the mob that his long tongue may find plenty preserved when he calls.Occasional visitors alighting on the agrimony for pollen may distribute some, but the little blossoms chiefly fertilize themselves.When crushed they give forth a faint, pleasant odor.Pretty, nodding seed urns, encircled with a rim of hooks, grapple the clothing of man or beast passing their way, in the hope of dropping off in a suitable place to found another colony.
SENSITIVE PEA; WILD or SMALL-FLOWERED SENSITIVE PLANT(Cassia nictitans) Senna family Flowers - Yellow, regular, 5-parted, about 1/4 in.across; 2 or 3together in the axils.Stem: Weak, 6 to 15 in.tall, branching, leafy.Leaves: Alternate, sensitive, compounded of 12 to 44small, narrowly oblong leaflets; a cup-shaped gland below lowest pair; stipules persistent.Fruit: A pod, an inch long or more, containing numerous seeds.
Preferred Habitat - Dry fields, sandy wasteland, roadsides.
Flowering Season - July-October.
Distribution - New England westward to Indiana, south to Georgia and Texas.