Wolf, rat, mouse, sow, cow, cat, snake, dragon, dog, toad, are among the many animal prefixes to the names of flowers that the English country people have given for various and often most interesting reasons.Just as dog, used as a prefix, expresses an idea of worthlessness to them, so toad suggests a spurious plant;the toadflax being made to bear what is meant to be an odious name because before flowering it resembles the true flax, linum, from which the generic title is derived.
MARYLAND FIGWORT; BEE PLANT; KNOTTED FIGWORT; HEAL-ALL; PILEWORT(Scrophularia Marylandica; S.nodosa of Gray) Figwort family Flowers - Very small, dull green on outside; vivid, shining brownish purple within; borne in almost leafless terminal clusters on slender stems; Calyx 5-parted.; corolla of 5 rounded lobes, the 2 upper ones erect, side ones ascending, lower one bent downward; 5 staroens, 4 of them twin-like and bearing anthers, the fifth sterile, a mere scale on roof of the globular corolla tube; style with knot-like stigma.Stem: From 3 to 10 ft.
high, square, with grooved sides, widely.branching.Leaves: From 3 to 12 in.long, oblong, pointed, coarsely toothed, on slender stems, strong smelling.
Preferred Habitat - Moist, shady ground.
Flowering Season - July-September.
Distribution - New York to the Carolinas, westward to Tennessee and Kansas; possibly beyond.
An insignificant little flower by itself, conspicuous only because it rears itself in clusters on a level with one's eyes, lacking beauty, perfume, and all that makes a blossom charming to the human mind - why has it been elevated by the botanists to the dignity of lending its name to a large and important family, and why is it mentioned at all in a popular flower book beside the more showy ornaments of nature's garden? Both questions have the same answer: Because it is the typical flower of the family, and therefore serves as an illustration of the manner in which many others are fertilized.Beautiful blossoms are by no means always the most important ones.
It well repays one to observe the relative times of maturing anthers and stigmas in the flowers, as thereby hangs a tale in which some insect plays an interesting role.The figwort matures its stigma at the lip of the style before its anthers have ripened their pollen.Why? By having the stigma of a newly opened flower thrust forward to the mouth of the corolla, an insect alighting on the lip, which forms his only convenient landing place, must brush against it and leave upon it some pollen brought from an older flower, whose anthers are already matured.
At this early stage of the flower's development its stamens lie curved over in the tube of the corolla; but presently, as the already fertilized style begins to wither, and its stigma is dry and no longer receptive to pollen, then, since there can be no longer any fear of self-pollination - the horror of so many flowers - the figwort uncurls and elevates its stamens.The insect visitor in search of nectar must get dusted with pollen from the late maturing anthers now ready for him.By this ingenious method the flower becomes cross-fertilized and wastes the least pollen.
Bees and wasps evidently pursue opposite routes in going to work, the former beginning at the bottom of a spike or raceme, where the older, more mature flowers are, and working upward; the wasps commencing at the top, among the newly opened ones.In spite of the fact that we usually see hive bees about this plant, pilfering the generous supply of nectar in each tiny cup, it is undoubtedly the wasp that is the flower's truest benefactor, since he carries pollen from the older blossoms of the last raceme visited to the projecting stigmas of the newly opened flowers at the top of the next cluster.Manifestly no flower, even though it were especially adapted to wasps, as this one is, could exclude bees.About one-third of all its visitors are wasps.
HAIRY BEARD-TONGUE
(Pentstemon hirsutus; P.pubescens of Gray) Figwort family Flowers - Dull violet or lilac and white, about 1 in.long, borne in a loose spike.Calyx 5-parted, the sharply pointed sepals overlapping; corolla, a gradually inflated tube widening where the mouth divides into a 2-lobed upper lip and a 3-lobed lower lip; the throat nearly closed by hairy palate at base of lower lip; sterile fifth stamen densely bearded for half its length; 4anther-bearing stamens, the anthers divergent.Stem: 1 to 3 ft.
high, erect, downy above.Leaves: Oblong to lance shape, upper ones seated on stem; lower ones narrowed into petioles.
Preferred Habitat - Dry or rocky fields, thickets, and open woods.
Flowering Season - May-July.
Distribution - Ontario to Florida, Manitoba to Texas.
It is the densely bearded, yellow, fifth stamen (pente =five, stemon = a stamen) which gives this flower its scientific name and its chief interest to the structural botanist.From the fact that a blossom has a lip in the center of the lower half of its corolla, that an insect must use as its landing place, comes the necessity for the pistil to occupy a central position.Naturally, a fifth stamen would be only in its way, an encumbrance to be banished in time.In the figwort, for example, we have seen the fifth stamen reduced, from long sterility, to a mere scale on the roof of the corolla tube in other lipped flowers, the useless organ has disappeared; but in the beard-tongue, it goes through a series of curious curves from the upper to the under side of the flower to get out of the way of the pistil.Yet it serves an admirable purpose in helping close the mouth of the flower, which the hairy lip alone could not adequately guard against pilferers.
A long-tongued bee, thrusting in his head up to his eyes only, receives the pollen in his face.The blossom is male (staminate)in its first stage and female (pistillate) in its second.