An imaginary blossom that never fades has been the dream of poets from Milton's day; but seeing one, who loves it? Our amaranth has the aspect of an artificial flower - stiff, dry, soulless, quite in keeping with the decorations on the average farmhouse mantelpiece.Here it forms the most uncheering of winter bouquets, or a wreath about flowers made from the lifeless hair of some dear departed.
In open, rocky places, moist or dry, the CLAMMY EVERLASTING, SWEET BALSAM, OR WINGED CUDWEED (Gnaphalium decurrens) prefers to dwell.A wholesome fragrance, usually mingled with that of sweet fern, pervades its neighborhood.Its yellowish-white little flower-heads clustered at the top of an erect stem, and its pale sage-green leaves, densely woolly beneath, the lower ones seeming to run along the stem, need no further description: every one knows the common everlasting.Its right to the Greek generic name, meaning a lock of wool, no one will dispute.From Pennsylvania and Arizona, north to Nova Scotia and British Columbia, its amaranthine flowers are displayed from July to September, the staminate and the pistillate heads on distinct plants.Many insect visitors approach the flowers; some, like the bees, are working for them in transferring pollen; others, like the ants, which are trying to steal nectar, usually getting killed on the sticky, cottony stem; and, hovering near, ever conspicuous among the larger visitors, is the beautiful hunter's butterfly (Pyrameis huntera), to be distinguished from its sister the painted lady, always seen about thistles, by the two large eye-like spots on the under side of the hind wings.What are these butterflies doing about their chosen plants? Certainly the minute florets of the everlasting offer no great inducements to a creature that lives only on nectar.But that cocoon, compactly woven with silk and petals, which hangs from the stem, tells the story of the hunter's butterfly's presence.A brownish-drab chrysalis, or a slate-colored and black-banded little caterpillar with tufts of hairs on its back, and pretty red and white dots on the dark stripes, shows our butterfly in the earlier stages of its existence, when the everlastings form its staple diet.
When the hepatica, arbutus, saxifrage, and adder's tongue are running for first place among the earliest spring flowers, another modest little competitor joins the race - the DWARFEVERLASTING (Antennaria plantaginifolia), also known as PLANTAIN-LEAVED, MOUSE-EAR, SPRING or EARLY EVERLASTING, WHITEPLANTAIN, PUSSY-TOES and LADIES' TOBACCO.From March to June, in different parts of its wide range, rocky fields, hillsides, and dry, open woods are whitened with broad patches of it, formed by runners; the fertile plants from six to eighteen inches high; the male plants, in distinct patches, smaller throughout.At the base the tufted leaves, which are green on the upper side, but silvery beneath, often woolly when young, are broadly oval or spatulate, the upper leaves oblong to lance-shaped, seated on the woolly stem.Charming little rosettes remain all winter, ready to send up the first flowers displayed by the vast host of composites.
Several little heads of fertile florets, resembling tufts of silvery-white silk, are set in pale-greenish cups in a broad cluster at the top of the stem; the staminate florets in whiter cups with more rounded scales.Small bees, chiefly those of the Andrena and Halictus tribe, and many flies, attend to transferring pollen.Our friend, the hunter's butterfly, also hovers near.Range from Labrador to the Gulf of Mexico, westward to Nebraska.
YARROW; MILFOIL; OLD MAN'S PEPPER; NOSEBLEED(Achillea Millefolium) Thistle family Flower-heads - Grayish-white, rarely pinkish, in a hard, close, flat-topped, compound cluster.Ray florets 4 to 6, pistillate, fertile; disk florets yellow, afterward brown, perfect, fertile.
Stem: Erect, from horizontal rootstalk, 1 to 2 ft.high, leafy, sometimes hairy.Leaves: Very finely dissected (Millefolium =thousand leaf), narrowly oblong in outline.
Preferred Habitat - Waste land, dry fields, banks, roadsides.
Flowering Season - June-November.
Distribution - Naturalized from Europe and Asia throughout North America.
Everywhere this commonest of common weeds confronts us; the compact, dusty-looking clusters appearing not by waysides only, around the world, but in the mythology, folklore, medicine, and literature of many peoples.Chiron, the centaur, who taught its virtues to Achilles that he might make an ointment to heal his Myrmidons wounded in the siege of Troy, named the plant for this favorite pupil, giving his own to the beautiful blue corn-flower (Centaurea Cyanus).As a love-charm; as an herb-tea brewed by crones to cure divers ailments, from loss of hair to the ague; as an inducement to nosebleed for the relief of congestive headache;as an ingredient of an especially intoxicating beer made by the Swedes, it is mentioned in old books.Nowadays we are satisfied merely to admire the feathery masses of lace-like foliage formed by young plants, to whiff the wholesome, nutty, autumnal odor of its flowers, or to wonder at the marvelous scheme it employs to overrun the earth.