The TALL WILD LARKSPUR (D.urceolatum; D.exaltatum of Gray)waves long, crowded, downy wands of intense purplish blue in the rich woods of Western Pennsylvania, southward to the Carolinas and Alabama, and westward to Nebraska.Its spur is nearly straight, not to increase the difficulty a bee must have in pressing his lips through the upper and lower petals to reach the nectar at the end of it.First, the stamens successively raise themselves in the passage back of the petals to dust his head;then, when each has shed its pollen and bent down again, the pistil takes its turn in occupying the place, so that a pollen-laden bee, coming to visit the blossom from an earlier flower; can scarcely help fertilizing it.It is said there are but two insects in Europe with lips long enough to reach the bottom of the long horn of plenty hung by the BEE LARKSPUR (D.
elatum), that we know only in gardens here.Its yellowish bearded lower petals readily deceive one into thinking a bee has just alighted there.
>From April to June the DWARF LARKSPUR or STAGGER-WEED (D.
tricorne), which, however, may sometimes grow three feet high, lifts a loose raceme of blue, rarely white, flowers an inch or more long, at the end of a stout stem rising from a tuberous root.Its slightly ascending spur, its three widely spreading seed vessels, and the deeply cut leaf of from five to seven divisions are distinguishing characteristics.From Western Pennsylvania and Georgia to Arkansas and Minnesota it is found in rather stiff soil.Butterflies, which prefer erect flowers, have some difficulty to cling while they drain the almost upright spurs, especially the Papilios, which usually suck with their wings in motion.But the bees, to which the delphinium are best adapted, although butterflies visit them quite as frequently, find a convenient landing place prepared for them, and fertilize the flower while they sip with ease.
More slender, downy, and dwarf of stem than the preceding is the CAROLINA LARKSPUR (D.Carolinianum), whose blue flowers, varying to white, and its very finely cleft leaves, may be found in the South, on prairies in the North and West, and in the Rocky Mountain region.
LIVER-LEAF; HEPATICA; LIVERWORT; ROUND-LOBED or KIDNEYLIVER-LEAF; NOBLE LIVER-WORT; SQUIRREL CUP(Hepalica Hepatica; H.triloba of Gray) Crowfoot family Flowers - Blue, lavender, purple, pinkish, or white;occasionally, not always, fragrant; 6 to 12 petal-like, colored sepals (not petals, as they appear to be), oval or oblong;numerous stamens, all bearing anthers; pistils numerous 3 small, sessile leaves, forming an involucre directly under flower, simulate a calyx, for which they might be mistaken.Stems:
Spreading from the root, 4 to 6 in.high, a solitary flower or leaf borne at end of each furry stem.Leaves: 3-lobed and rounded, leathery, evergreen; sometimes mottled with, or entirely, reddish purple; spreading on ground, rusty at blooming time, the new leaves appearing after the flowers.Fruit: Usually as many as pistils, dry, 1-seeded, oblong, sharply pointed, never opening.
Preferred Habitat - Woods; light soil on hillsides.
Flowering Season - December-May.
Distribution - Canada to Northern Florida, Manitoba to Iowa and Missouri.Most common East.
Even under the snow itself bravely blooms the delicate hepatica, wrapped in fuzzy furs as if to protect its stems and nodding buds from cold.After the plebeian skunk cabbage, that ought scarcely to be reckoned among true flowers - and William Hamilton Gibson claimed even before it - it is the first blossom to appear.
Winter sunshine, warming the hillsides and edges of woods, opens its eyes, "Blue as the heaven it gates at, Startling the loiterer in the naked groves With unexpected beauty; for the time Of blossoms and green leaves is yet afar.""There are many things left for May," says John Burroughs, "but nothing fairer, if as fair, as the first flower, the hepatica.Ifind I have never admired this little firstling half enough.When at the maturity of its charms, it is certainly the gem of the woods.What an individuality it has! No two clusters alike; all shades and sizes....A solitary blue-purple one, fully expanded and rising over the brown leaves or the green moss, its cluster of minute anthers showing like a group of pale stars on its little firmament, is enough to arrest and hold the dullest eye.
Then,...there are individual hepaticas, or individual families among them, that are sweet scented.The gift seems as capricious as the gift of genius in families.You cannot tell which the fragrant ones are till you try them.Sometimes it is the large white ones, sometimes the large purple ones, sometimes the small pink ones.The odor is faint and recalls that of the sweet violets.A correspondent, who seems to have carefully observed these fragrant hepaticas, writes me that this gift of odor is constant in the same plant; that the plant which bears sweet-scented flowers this year will bear them next."It is not evident that insect aid is necessary to transfer the tiny, hairy spiral ejected from each cell of the antherid, after it has burst from ripeness, to the canal of the flask-shaped organ at whose base the germ-cell is located.Perfect flowers can fertilize themselves.But pollen-feeding flies, and female hive bees which collect it, and the earliest butterflies trifle about the blossoms when the first warm days come.Whether they are rewarded by finding nectar or not is still a mooted question.
Possibly the papillae which cover the receptacle secrete nectar, for almost without exception the insect visitors thrust their proboscides down between the spreading filaments as if certain of a sip.None merely feed on the pollen except the flies and the hive bee.