Flowering Season - March-May.
Distribution - New Jersey, south to North Carolina.
Curiously enough, this creeping, tufted, mat-like little plant is botanically known as a shrub, yet it is lower than many mosses, and would seem to the untrained eye to be certainly of their kin.
In earliest spring, when Lenten penitents, jaded with the winter's frivolities in the large cities, seek the salubrious pine lands of southern New Jersey and beyond, they are amazed and delighted to find the abundant little evergreen mounds of pyxie already starred with blossoms.The dense mossy cushions, plentifully sprinkled with pink buds and white flowers, are so beautiful, one cannot resist taking a few tuffets home to naturalize in the rock garden.Planted in a mixture of clear sand and leaf-mould, with exposure to the morning sun, pyxie will smile up at us from under our very windows, spring after spring, with increased charms; whereas the arbutus, that untamable wildling, carried home from the pinewoods at the same time, soon sulks itself to death.
STARFLOWER; CHICKWEED-WINTERGREEN; STAR ANEMONE(Trientalis Americana) Primrose family Flowers - White, solitary, or a few rising on slender, wiry foot-stalks above a whorl of leaves.Calyx of 5 to 9 (usually 7)narrow sepals.Corolla wheel-shaped, 1/2 in.across or less, deeply cut into (usually) 7 tapering, spreading, petal-like segments.Stem: A long horizontal rootstock, sending up smooth stem-like branches 3 to 9 in.high, usually with a scale or two below.(Trientalis = one-third of a foot, the usual height of a plant.) Leaves: 5 to 10, in a whorl at summit; thin, tapering at both ends, of unequal size, 1 1/2 to 4 in.long.
Preferred Habitat - Moist shade of woods and thickets.
Flowering Season - May-June.
Distribution - From Virginia and Illinois far north.
Is any other blossom poised quite so airily above its whorl of leaves as the delicate, frosty-white little starflower? It is none of the anemone kin, of course, in spite of one of its misleading folk names; but only the wind-flower has a similar lightness and grace.No nectar rewards the small bee and fly visitors; they get pollen only.Those coming from older blossoms to a newly opened one leave some of the vitalizing dust clinging to them on the moist and sticky stigma, which will wither to prevent self-fertilization before the flower's own curved anthers mature and shed their grains.Sometimes, when the blossoms do not run on schedule time, or the insects are not flying in stormy weather, this well laid plan may gang a-gley.An occasional lapse matters little; it is perpetual self-fertilization that Nature abhors.
INDIAN HEMP: AMY-ROOT
(Apocynum cannabinum) Dogbane family Flowers - Greenish white, about 1/4 in.across, on short pedicels, in dense clusters at ends of branches and from the axils.Calyx of 5 segments; corolla nearly erect, bell-shaped, 5-lobed, with 5 small triangular appendages alternating with the stamens within its tube.Stem: 1 to 4 ft.high, branching, smooth, often dull reddish, from a deep, vertical root.Leaves:
Opposite, entire, 2 to 6 in.long, mostly oblong, abruptly pointed, variable.Fruit: A pair of slender pods, the numerous seeds tipped with tufts of hairs.
Preferred Habitat - Gravelly soil, banks of streams, low fields.
Flowering Season - June-August.
Distribution - Almost throughout the United States and British Possessions.
Instead of setting a trap to catch flies and hold them by the tongue in a vise-like grip until death alone releases them, as its heartless sister the spreading dogbane does (q.v.), this awkward, rank herb lifts clusters of smaller, less conspicuous, but innocent, flowers, with nectar secreted in rather shallow receptacles, that even short-tongued insects may feast without harm.Honey and mining bees, among others; wasps and flies in variety, and great numbers of the spangled fritillary (Argynnis cybele) and the banded hair-streak (Thecla calanus) among the butterfly tribe; destructive bugs and beetles attracted by the white color, a faint odor, and liberal entertainment, may be seen about the clusters.Many visitors are useless pilferers, no doubt; but certainly the bees which depart with pollen masses cemented to their lips or tongues, to leave them in the stigmatic cavities of the next blossoms their heads enter, pay a fair price for all they get.
>From the fact that Indians used to substitute this very common plant's tough fiber for hemp in ****** their fishnets, mats, baskets, and clothing, came its popular name; and from their use of the juices to poison mangy old dogs about their camps, its scientific one.
WHORLED or GREEN-FLOWERED MILKWEED
(Asclepias verticillata) Milkweed family Flowers - White or greenish, on short pedicels, in several small terminal clusters.Calyx inferior; corolla deeply 5-parted, the oblong segments turned back; a 5-parted, erect crown of hooded nectaries between them and the stamens, each shorter than the incurved horn within.Stem: 1 to 2 1/2 ft.tall, ****** or sparingly branched, hairy, leafy to summit, containing milky juice.Leaves: In upright groups, very narrow, almost thread-like, from 3 to 7 in each whorl.Fruit: 2 smooth, narrow, spindle-shaped, upright pods, the seeds attached to silky fluff;1 pod usually abortive.
Preferred Habitat - Dry fields, hills, uplands.
Flowering Season - July-September.
Distribution - Maine and far westward, south to Florida and Mexico.