Swinging outward from a leaf-clasped stem, this orchid attracts us by its flaunted beauty and decorative form from tip to root, not less than the aesthetic little bees for which its adornment and mechanism are so marvelously adapted. Doubtless the heavy, oily odor is an additional attraction to them. Parallel purplish lines, converging toward the circular opening of the pale yellow, inflated pouch, guide the visitor into a spacious banquet-hall (labellum) such as the pink lady's slipper (q.v.) also entertains her guests in. Fine hairs within secrete tiny drops of fluid at their tips - a secretion which hardens into a brittle crust, like a syrup's, when it dries. Darwin became especially interested in this flower through a delightful correspondence with Professor Asa Gray, who was the first to understand it, and he finally secured a specimen to experiment on.

"I first introduced some flies into the labellum through the large upper opening," Darwin wrote, "but they were either too large or too stupid, and did not crawl out properly. I then caught and placed within the labellum a very small bee which seemed of about the right size, namely Andrena parvula.... The bee vainly endeavored to crawl out again the same way it entered, but always fell backwards, owing to the margins being inflected. The labellum thus acts like one of those conical traps with the edges turned inwards, which are sold to catch beetles and cockroaches in London kitchens. It could not creep out through the slit between the folded edges of the basal part of the labellum, as the elongated, triangular, rudimentary stamen here closes the passage. Ultimately it forced its way out through one of the small orifices close to one of the anthers, and was found when caught to be smeared with the glutinous pollen. I then put the same bee into another labellum; and again it crawled out through one of the small orifices, always covered with pollen. I repeated the operation five times, always with the same result. I afterwards cut away the labellum, so as to examine the stigma, and found its whole surface covered with pollen. It should be noticed that an insect in making its escape, must first brush past the stigma and afterwards one of the anthers, so that it cannot leave pollen on the stigma, until being already smeared with pollen from one flower it enters another; and thus there will be a good chance of cross-fertilization between two distinct plants.... Thus the use of all parts of the flower, - namely, the inflected edges, or the polished inner sides of the labellum; the two orifices and their position close to the anthers and stigma, - the large size of the medial rudimentary stamen, - are rendered intelligible. An insect which enters the labellum is thus compelled to crawl out by one of the two narrow passages, on the sides of which the pollen-masses and stigma are placed."

These common orchids, which are not at all difficult to naturalize in a well-drained, shady spot in the garden, should be lifted with a good ball of earth and plenty of leaf-mould immediately after flowering. Here we can note little American Andrena bees unwittingly becoming the flower's slaves. Several species of exotic cypripediums are so common in the city florist's shops every one has an opportunity to study their marvelous structure.

The similar SMALL YELLOW LADY'S SLIPPER (C. parviflorum), a delicately fragrant orchid about half the size of its big sister, has a brighter yellow pouch, and occasionally its sepals and petals are purplish. As they usually grow in the same localities, and have the same blooming season, opportunities for comparison are not lacking. This fairer, sweeter, little orchid roams westward as far as the State of Washington.

YELLOW FRINGED ORCHIS (Habenaria ciliaris) Orchid family

Flowers - Bright yellow or orange, borne in a showy, closely set, oblong spike, 3 to 6 in. long. The lip of each flower copiously fringed; the slender spur 1 to 1 1/2 in. long; similar to white fringed orchis (q.v.); and between the two, intermediate pale yellow hybrids may be found. Stem: Slender, leafy, 1 to 2 1/2 feet high. Leaves: Lance-shaped, clasping. Preferred Habitat - Moist meadows and sandy bogs. Flowering Season - July-August. Distribution - Vermont to Florida; Ontario to Texas.

Where this brilliant, beautiful orchid and its lovely white sister grow together in the bog - which cannot be through a very wide range, since one is common northward, where the other is rare, and vice versa - the yellow fringed orchis will be found blooming a few days later. In general structure the plants closely resemble each other. Their similar method of enforcing payment for a sip of nectar concealed in a tube so narrow and deep none but a sphinx moth or butterfly may drain it all (though large bumblebees occasionally get some too, from brimming nectaries) has been described (q.v.), to which the interested reader is referred. Both these orchids have their sticky discs projecting unusually far, as if raised on a pedicel - an arrangement which indicates that they "are to be stuck to the face or head of some nectar-sucking insect of appropriate size that visits the flowers," wrote Dr. Asa Gray over forty years ago. Various species of hawk moths, common in different parts of our area, of course have tongues of various lengths, and naturally every visitor does not receive his load of pollen on the same identical spot. At dusk, when sphinx moths begin their rounds, it will be noticed that the white and yellow flowers remain conspicuous long after blossoms of other colors have melted into the general darkness. Such flowers as cater to these moths, if they have fragrance, emit it then most strongly, as an additional attraction. Again, it will be noticed that few such flowers provide a strong projecting petal-platform for visitors to alight on; that would be superfluous, since sphinx moths suck while hovering over a tube, with their wings in exceedingly rapid motion, just like a hummingbird, for which the larger species are so often mistaken at twilight. This deep-hued orchid apparently attracts as many butterflies as sphinx moths, which show a predilection for the white species.

>From Ontario and the Mississippi eastward, and southward to the Gulf, the TUBERCLED or SMALL PALE GREEN ORCHIS (H. flava) lifts a spire of inconspicuous greenish-yellow flowers, more attractive to the eye of the structural botanist than to the aesthete. It blooms in moist places, as most orchids do, since water with which to manufacture nectar enough to fill their deep spurs is a prime necessity. Orchids have arrived at that pinnacle of achievement that it is impossible for them to fertilize themselves. More than that, some are absolutely sterile to their own pollen when it is applied to their stigmas artificially with insect aid, however, a single plant has produced over 1,000,700 seeds. No wonder, then, that, as a family, they have adopted the most marvelous blandishments and mechanism in the whole floral kingdom to secure the visits of that special insect to which each is adapted, and, having secured him, to compel him unwittingly to do their bidding. In the steaming tropical jungles, where vegetation is luxuriant to the point of suffocation, and where insect life swarms in mvriads undreamed of here, we can see the best of reasons for orchids mounting into trees and living on air to escape strangulation on the ground, and for donning larger and more gorgeous apparel to attract attention in the fierce competition for insect trade waged about them. Here, where the struggle for survival is incomparably easier, we have terrestrial orchids, small, and quietly clad, for the most part.

Having the gorgeous, exotic air plants of the hothouse in mind, this little tubercled orchis seems a very poor relation indeed. In June and July, about a week before the ragged orchis comes out, we may look for this small, fringeless sister. Its clasping leaves, which decrease in size as they ascend the stem (not to shut off the light and rain from the lower ones), are parallel-veined, elliptic, or, the higher ones, lance-shaped. A prominent tubercle, or palate, growing upward from the lip, almost conceals the entrance to the nectary. and makes a side approach necessary. Why? Usually an insect has free, straight access down the center of a flower's throat, but here he cannot have it. A slender tongue must be directed obliquely from above into the spur, and it will enter the discal groove as a thread enters the eye of a needle. By this arrangement the tongue must certainly come in contact with one of the sticky discs to which an elongated pollen gland is attached. The cement on the disc hardening even while the visitor sucks, the pollen gland is therefore drawn out, because firmly attached to his tongue. At first the pollen mass stands erect on the proboscis; but in the fraction of a moment which it takes a butterfly to flit to another blossom, it has bent forward automatically into the exact position required for it to come in contact with the sticky stigma of the next tubercled orchis entered, where it will be broken off. Now we understand the use of the palate. Butterfly collectors often take specimens with remnants of these pollen stumps stuck to their tongues. In his classical work "On the Fertilization of Orchids by Insects," Darwin tells of finding a mottled rustic butterfly whose proboscis was decorated with eleven pairs of pollen masses, taken from as many blossoms of the pyramidal orchis. Have these flowers no mercy on their long-suffering friends? A bee with some orchid pollen-stumps attached to its head was once sent to Mr. Frank Cheshire, the English expert who had just discovered some strange bee diseases. He was requested to name the malady that had caused so abnormal an outgrowth on the bee's forehead!

Often found growing in the same bog with the tubercled species is the RAGGED or FRINGED GREEN ORCHIS (H. lacera), so inconspicuous we often overlook it unawares. Examine one of the dingy, greenish-yellow flowers that are set along the stern in a spike to make all the show in the world possible, each with its three-parted, spreading lip finely and irregularly cut into thread-like fringe to hail the passing butterfly, and we shall see that it, too, has made ingenious provision against the draining of its spur by a visitor without proper pay for his entertainment. Even without the gay color that butterflies ever delight in, these flowers contain so much nectar in their spurs, neither butterflies nor large bumblebees are long in hunting them out. In swamps and wet woodland from Nova Scotia to Georgia, and westward to the Mississippi, the ragged orchis blooms in June or July.

LARGE YELLOW POND or WATER LILY; COW LILY; SPATTER-DOCK (Nymphaea advena; Nupisar advena of Gray) Water-lily family

Flowers - Yellow or greenish outside, rarely purple tinged, round, depressed, 1 1/2 to 3 1/2 in. across. Sepals 6, unequal, concave, thick, fleshy; petals stamen-like, oblong, fleshy, short; stamens very numerous, in 5 to 7 rows; pistil compounded of many carpels, its stigmatic disc pale red or yellow, with 12 to 24 rays. Leaves: Floating, or some immersed, large, thick, sometimes a foot long, egg-shaped or oval, with a deep cleft at base, the lobes rounded. Preferred Habitat - Standing water, ponds, slow streams. Flowering Season - April-September. Distribution - Rocky Mountains eastward, south to the Gulf of Mexico, north to Nova Scotia.

Comparisons were ever odious. Because the yellow water lily has the misfortune to claim relationship with the sweet-scented white species (q.v.), must it never receive its just meed of praise? Hiawatha's canoe, let it be remembered,

"Floated on the river Like a yellow leaf in autumn, Like a yellow water-lily."

But even those who admire Longfellow's lines see no beauty in the golden flower-bowls floating among the large, lustrous, leathery leaves.

By assuming the functions of petals, the colored sepals advertise for insects. Beetles, which answer the first summons to a free lunch, crowd in as the sepals begin to spread. In the center the star-like disc, already sticky, is revealed, and on it any pollen they have carried with them from older flowers necessarily rubs off. At first, or while the stigma is freshly receptive to pollen, an insect cannot make his entrance except by crawling over this large, sticky plate. At this time, the anthers being closed, self-fertilization is impossible. A day or two later, after the pollen begins to ripen on countless anthers, the flower is so widely open that visitors have no cause to alight in the center; anyway, no harm could result if they did, cross-fertilization having been presumably accomplished. While beetles (especially Donacia) are ever abundant visitors, it is likely they do much more harm than good. So eagerly do they gnaw both petals and stamens, which look like loops of narrow yellow ribbon within the bowl of an older flower, that, although they must carry some pollen to younger flowers as they travel on, it is probable they destroy ten times more than their share. Flies transport pollen too. The smaller bees (Halictus and Andrena chiefly) find some nectar secreted on the outer faces of the stamen-like petals, which they mix with pollen to make their babies' bread.

The very beautiful native AMERICAN LOTUS (Nelumbo lutea), also known as WATER CHINKAPIN or WANKAPIN, found locally in Ontario, the Connecticut River, some lakes, slow streams, and ponds in New Jersey, southward to Florida, and westward to Michigan and Illinois, Indian Territory and Louisiana, displays its pale yellow flowers in July and August. They measure from four to ten inches across, and suggest a yellow form of the sweet-scented white water lily; but there are fewer petals, gradually passing into an indefinite number of stamens. The great round, ribbed leaves, smooth above, hairy beneath, may be raised high above the water, immersed or floating. Both leaf and flower stalks contain several large air canals. The flowers which are female when they expand far enough for a pollen-laden guest to crawl into the center, are afterward male, securing cross-fertilization by this means, just as the yellow pond lily does; only the small bees must content themselves here with pollen only - a diet that pleases the destructive beetles and the flies (Syrphidae) perfectly.

Japanese artists especially have taught us how much of the beauty of a Nelumbo we should lose if it ripened its decorative seed-vessel below the surface as the sweet-scented white water lily does. This flat-topped receptacle, held erect, has its little round nuts imbedded in pits in its surface, ready to be picked out by aquatic birds, and distributed by them in their wanderings. Both seeds and tubers are farinaceous and edible. In some places it is known the Indians introduced the plant for food. Professor Charles Goodyear has written an elaborate, plausible argument, illustrated, with many reproductions of sculpture, pottery, and mural painting in the civilized world of the ancients to prove that all decorative ornamental design has been evolved from the sacred Egyptian lotus (Nelumbo Nelumubo), still revered throughout the East (q.v.).

MARSH MARIGOLD; MEADOW-GOWAN; AMERICAN COWSLIP (Caltha palustris) Crowfoot family'

Flowers - Bright, shining yellow, 1 to 1 1/2 in. across, a few in terminal and axillary groups. No petals; usually 5 (often more) oval, petal-like sepals; stamens numerous; many pistils (carpels) without styles. Stem: Stout, smooth, hollow, branching, 1 to 2 ft. high. Leaves: Mostly from root, rounded, broad, and heart-shaped at base, or kidney-shaped, upper ones almost sessile, lower ones on fleshy petioles. Preferred Habitat - Springy ground, low meadows, swamps, river banks, ditches. Flowering Season - April-June. Distribution - Carolina to Iowa, the Rocky Mountains, and very far north.

Not a true marigold, and even less a cowslip, it is by these names that this flower, which looks most like a buttercup, will continue to be called, in spite of the protests of scientific classifiers. Doubtless the first of these folk-names refers to its use in church festivals during the Middle Ages as one of the blossoms devoted to the Virgin Mary.

"And winking Mary-buds begin To ope their golden eyes,"

sing the musicians in "Cymbeline." Whoever has seen the watery Avon meadows in April, yellow and twinkling with marsh marigolds when "the lark at heaven's gate sings," appreciates why the commentators incline to identify Shakespeare's Mary-buds with the Caltha of these and our own marshes.

Not for poet's rhapsodies, but for the more welcome hum of small bees and flies intent on breakfasting do these flowers open in the morning sunshine. Nectar secreted on the sides of each of the many carpels invites a conscientious bee all around the center, on which she should alight to truly benefit her entertainer. Honey bees may be seen sucking only enough nectar to aid them in storing pollen; bumblebees feasting for their own benefit, not their descendants'; little mining bees and quantities of flies also, although not many species are represented among the visitors, owing to the flower's early blooming season. Always conspicuous among the throng are the brilliant Syrphidae flies - gorgeous little creatures which show a fondness for blossoms as gaily colored as their own lustrous bodies. Indeed, these are the principal pollinators.

Some country people who boil the young plants declare these "greens" are as good as spinach. What sacrilege to reduce crisp, glossy, beautiful leaves like these to a slimy mess in a pot! The tender buds, often used in white sauce as a substitute for capers, probably do not give it the same piquancy where piquancy is surely most needed - on boiled mutton, said to be Queen Victoria's favorite dish. Hawked about the streets in tight bunches, the marsh-marigold blossoms - with half their yellow sepals already dropped - and the fragrant, pearly-pink arbutus are the most familiar spring wild flowers seen in Eastern cities.

COMMON MEADOW BUTTERCUP; TALL CROWFOOT; KINGCUPS; CUCKOO FLOWER; GOLDCUPS; BUTTER-FLOWERS; BLISTER-FLOWERS

(Ranunculus acris) Crowfoot family

Flowers - Bright, shining yellow, about 1 in. across, numerous, terminating long slender footstalks. Calyx of 5 spreading sepals; corolla of 5 petals; yellow stamens and carpels. Stem: Erect, branched above, hairy (sometimes nearly smooth), 2 to 3 feet tall, from fibrous roots. Leaves: In a tuft from the base, long petioled, of 3 to 7 divisions cleft into numerous lobes; stem leaves nearly sessile, distant, 3-parted. Preferred Habitat - Meadows, fields, roadsides, grassy places. Flowering Season - May-September. Distribution - Naturalized from Europe in Canada and the United States; most common North.

What youngster has not held these shining golden flowers under his chin to test his fondness for butter? Dandelions and marsh-marigolds may reflect their color in his clear skin too, but the buttercup is every child's favorite. When

"Cuckoo-buds of yellow hue Do paint the meadows with delight,"

daisies, pink clover, and waving timothy bear them company here; not the "daisies pied," violets, and lady-smocks of Shakespeare's England. How incomparably beautiful are our own meadows in June! But the glitter of the buttercup, which is as nothing to the glitter of a gold dollar in the eyes of a practical farmer, fills him with wrath when this immigrant takes possession of his pastures. Cattle will not eat the acrid, caustic plant - a sufficient reason for most members of the Ranunculaceae to stoop to the low trick of secreting poisonous or bitter juices. Self-preservation leads a cousin, the garden monk's hood, even to murderous practices. Since children will put everything within reach into their mouths, they should be warned against biting the buttercup's stem and leaves, that are capable of raising blisters. "Beggars use the juice to produce sores upon their skin," says Mrs. Creevy. A designer might employ these exquisitely formed leaves far more profitably.

This and the bulbous buttercup, having so much else in common, have also the same visitors. "It is a remarkable fact," says Sir John Lubbock, "as Aristotle long ago mentioned, that in most cases bees confine themselves in each journey to a single species of plant; though in the case of some very nearly allied forms this is not so; for instance, it is stated on good authority (Muller) that Ranunculus acris, R. repens, and R. bulbosus are not distinguished by the bees, or at least are visited indifferently by them, as is also the case with two of the species of clover." From what we already know of the brilliant Syrphidae flies' fondness for equally brilliant colors, it is not surprising to find great numbers of them about the buttercups, with bees, wasps, and beetles - upwards of sixty species. Modern scientists believe that the habit of feeding on flowers has called out the color-sense of insects and the taste for bright colors, and that sexual selection has been guided by this taste. The most unscientific among us soon finds evidence on every hand that flowers and insects have developed together through mutual dependence.

By having its nourishment thriftily stored up underground all winter, the BULBOUS BUTTERCUP (R. bulbosus) is able to steal a march on its fibrous-rooted sister that must accumulate hers all spring; consequently it is first to flower, coming in early May, and lasting through June. It is a low and generally more hairy plant, but closely resembling the tall buttercup in most respects, and, like it, a naturalized European immigrant now thoroughly at home in fields and roadsides in most sections of the United States and Canada.

Much less common is the CREEPING BUTTERCUP (R. repens), which spreads by runners until it forms large patches in fields and roadsides, chiefly in the Eastern States. Its leaves, which are sometimes blotched, are divided into three parts, the terminal one, often all three, stalked. May-July.

First to bloom in the vicinity of New York (from March to May) is the HISPID BUTTERCUP (R. hispidus), densely hairy when young. The leaves, which are pinnately divided into from three to five leaflets, cleft or lobed, chiefly arise on long petioles from a cluster of thickened fibrous roots. The flower may be only half an inch or an inch and a half across. It is found in dry woods and thickets throughout the eastern half of the United States; whereas the much smaller flowered BRISTLY BUTTERCUP (R. Pennsylvanicus) shows a preference for low-lying meadows and wet, open ground through a wider, more westerly range. Its stout, hollow, leafy stem, beset with stiff hairs, discourages the tongues of grazing animals. June-August.

Commonest of the early buttercups is the TUFTED BUTTERCUP (R. fascicularis), a little plant seldom a foot high, found in the woods and on rocky hillsides from Texas and Manitoba, east to the Atlantic, flowering in April or May. The long-stalked leaves are divided into from three to five parts; the bright yellow flowers, with rather narrow, distant petals, measure about an inch across. They open sparingly, usually only one or two at a time on each plant, to favor pollination from another one.

Scattered patches of the SWAMP or MARSH BUTTERCUP (P. septentrionalis) brighten low, rich meadows also with their-large satiny yellow flowers, whose place in the botany even the untrained eye knows at sight. The smooth, spreading plant sometimes takes root at the joints of its branches and sends forth runners, but the stems mostly ascend. The large lower mottled leaves are raised well out of the wet, or above the grass, on long petioles. They have three divisions, each lobed and cleft. From Georgia and Kentucky far northward this buttercup blooms from April to July, opening only a few flowers at a time-a method which may make it less showy, but more certain to secure cross-pollination between distinct plants.

The YELLOW WATER BUTTERCUP or CROWFOOT (R. deiphinifolius; R. multifidus of Gray) found blooming in ponds through the summer months, certainly justifies the family name derived from rana = a frog. Many other members grow in marshes, it is true, but this ranunculus lives after the manner of its namesake, sometimes immersed, sometimes stranded on the muddy shore. Two types of leaves occur on the same stem. Their waving filaments, which make the immersed leaves look fringy, take every advantage of what little carbonic acid gas is dissolved under the surface. Moreover, they are better adapted to withstand the water's pressure and possible currents than solid blades would be. The floating leaves which loll upon the surface to take advantage of the air and sunlight, expand three, four, or five divisions, variously lobed. On this plant we see one set of leaves perfectly adapted to immersion, and another set to aerial existence. The stem, which may measure several feet in length, roots at the joints when it can. Range from the Mississippi and Ontario eastward to the Atlantic Ocean.

The WHITE WATER-CROWFOOT (Batrachium trichophyllum; Ranunculus aquatilis of Gray) has its fine thread-like leaves entirely submerged; but the flowers, like a whale, as the old conundrum put it, come to the surface to blow. The latter are small, white, or only yellow at the base, where each petal bears a spot or little pit that serves as a pathfinder to the flies. When the water rises unusually high, the blossoms never open, but remain submerged, and fertilize themselves. Seen underwater, the delicate leaves, which are little more than forked hairs, spread abroad in dainty patterns; lifted cut of the water these flaccid filaments utterly collapse. In ponds and shallow, slow streams, this common plant flowers from June to September almost throughout the Union, the British Possessions north of us, and in Europe and Asia.

The WATER PLANTAIN SPEARWORT (K. obtusiusculus; R. a/isrnaefoiius of Gray) flecks the marshes from June to August with its small golden flowers, which the merest novice knows must be kin to the buttercup. The smooth, hollow stem, especially thick at the base, likes to root from the lower joints. A peculiarity of the lance-shaped or oblong lance-shaped leaves is that the lower ones have petioles so broad where they clasp the stem that they appear to be long blades suddenly contracted just above their base.

BARBERRY; PEPPERIDGE-BUSH (Berberis vulgaris) Barberry family

Flowers - Yellow, small, odor disagreeable, 6-parted, borne in drooping, many-flowered racemes from the leaf axils along arching twigs. Stem: A much branched, smooth, gray shrub, to 8 ft. tall, armed with sharp spines. Leaves: From the 3-pronged spines (thorns); oval or obovate, bristly edged. Fruit: Oblong, scarlet, acid berries. Preferred Habitat - Thickets; roadsides; dry or gravelly soil. Flowering Season - May-June. Distribution - Naturalized in New England and Middle States; less common in Canada and the West. Europe and Asia.

When the twigs of barberry bushes arch with the weight of clusters of beautiful bright berries in September, everyone must take notice of a shrub so decorative, which receives scant attention from us, however, when its insignificant little flowers are out. Yet these blossoms, small as they are, are up to a marvelous trick, quite as remarkable as the laurel's (q.v.) or the calopogon's (q.v.), to compel insects to do their bidding. Three of the six sepals, by their size and color, attend to the advertising, playing the part of a corolla; and partly by curving inward at the tip, partly by the drooping posture of the flower, help protect the stamens, pistil, and nectar glands within from rain. Did the flowers hang vertically, not obliquely, such curvature of the tips of sepals and petals would be unnecessary. Six stamens surround a pistil, but each of their six anthers, which are in reality little pollen boxes opening by trap-doors on either side, is tucked under the curving tip of a petal at whose base lie two orange-colored nectar glands. A small bee or fly enters the flower: what happens? To reach the nectar, he must probe between the bases of two exceedingly irritable stamens. The merest touch of a visitor's tongue against them releases two anthers, just as the nibbling mouse all unsuspectingly releases the wire from the hook of the wooden trap he is caught in. As the two stamens spring upward on being released, pollen instantly flies out of the trap-doors of the anther boxes on the bee, which suffers no greater penalty than being obliged to carry it to the stigma of another flower. So short are the stamens, it is improbable that a flower's pollen ever reaches its own stigma except through the occasional confused fumbling of a visitor. Usually he is so startled by the sudden shower of pollen that he flies away instantly.

In the barberry bushes, as in the gorse, when grown in dry, gravelly situations, we see many leaves and twigs modified into thorns to diminish the loss of water through evaporation by exposing too much leaf surface to the sun and air. That such spines protect the plants which bear them from the ravages of grazing cattle is, of course, an additional motive for their presence. Under cultivation, in well-watered garden soil - and how many charming varieties of barberries are cultivated - the thorny shrub loses much of its armor, putting forth many more leaves, in rosettes, along more numerous twigs, instead. Even the prickly-pear cactus might become mild as a lamb were it to forswear sandy deserts and live in marshes instead. Country people sometimes rob the birds of the acid berries to make preserves. The wood furnishes a yellow dye.

Curiously enough it is the EUROPEAN BARBERRY that is the common species here. The AMERICAN BARBERRY (B. Canadensis), a lower shrub, with dark reddish-brown twigs; its leaves more distantly toothed; its flowers, and consequently its berries, in smaller clusters, keeps almost exclusively to the woods in the Alleghany region and in the southwest, in spite of its specific name.

SPICE-BUSH; BENJAMIN-BUSH; WILD ALLSPICE; FEVER-BUSH (Benzoin Benzoin; Lindera Benzoin of Gray) Laurel family

Flowers - Before the leaves, lemon yellow, fragrant, small, in clusters close to the slender, brittle twigs. Six petal-like sepals; sterile flowers with 9 stamens in 3 series; fertile flowers with a round ovary encircled by abortive stamens. Stem: A smooth shrub 4 to 20 ft. tall. Leaves: Alternate, entire, oval or elliptic, 2 to 5 in, long. Fruit: Oblong, red, berry-like drupes. Preferred Habitat - Moist woodlands, thickets, beside streams. Flowering Season - March-May. Distribution - Central New England, Ontario, and Michigan, southward to Carolina and Kansas.

Even before the scaly catkins on the alders become yellow, or the silvery velvet pussy willows expand to welcome the earliest bees that fly, this leafless bush breathes a faint spicy fragrance in the bleak gray woods. Its only rivals among the shrubbery, the service-berry and its twin sister the shad-bush, have scarcely had the temerity to burst into bloom when the little clusters of lemon-yellow flowers, cuddled close to the naked branches, give us our first delightful spring surprise. All the favor they ask of the few insects then flying is that they shall transfer the pollen from the sterile to the fertile flowers as a recompense for the early feast spread. Inasmuch as no single blossom contains both stamens and pistil, little wonder the flowers should woo with color and fragrance the guests on whose ministrations the continuance of the species absolutely depends. Later, when the leaves appear, we may know as soon as we crush them in the hand that the aromatic sassafras is next of kin. But ages before Linnaeus published "Species Plantarum" butterflies had discovered floral relationships.

Sharp eyes may have noticed how often the leaves on both the spice-bush and the sassafras tree are curled. Have you ever drawn apart the leaf edges and been startled by the large, fat green caterpillar, speckled with blue, whose two great black "eyes" stare up at you as he reposes in his comfortable nest - a cradle which also combines the advantages of a restaurant? This is the caterpillar of the common spice-bush swallow-tail butterfly (Papilio troilus), an exquisite, dark, velvety creature with pale greenish-blue markings on its hind wings. (See Dr. Holland's "Butterfly Book," Plate XLI.) The yellow stage of this caterpillar (which William Hamilton Gibson calls the "spice-bush bugaboo") indicates, he says, that "its period of transformation is close at hand. Selecting a suitable situation, it spins a tiny tuft of silk, into which it entangles its hindmost pair of feet, after which it forms a V-shaped loop about the front portion of its body, and hangs thus suspended, soon changing to a chrysalis of a pale wood color. These chrysalides commonly survive the winter, and in the following June the beautiful 'blue swallow-tail' will emerge, and may be seen suggestively fluttering and poising about the spice and sassafras bushes." After the eggs she lays on them hatch, the caterpillars live upon the leaves. Mrs. Starr Dana says the leaves were used as a substitute for tea during the Rebellion; and the powdered berries for allspice by housekeepers in Revolutionary days.

GREATER CELANDINE; SWALLOW-WORT (Chelidonium majus) Poppy family

Flowers - Lustreless yellow, about 1/2 in. across, on slender pedicels, in a small umbel-like cluster. Sepals 2, soon falling; 4 petals, many yellow stamens, pistil prominent. Stem: Weak, to 2 ft. high, branching, slightly hairy, containing bright orange acrid juice. Leaves: Thin, 4 to 8 in. long, deeply cleft into 5 (usually) irregular oval lobes, the terminal one largest. Fruit: Smooth, slender, erect pods, 1 to 2 in, long, tipped with the persistent style. Preferred Habitat - Dry waste land, fields, roadsides, gardens, near dwellings. Flowering Season - April-September. Distribution - Naturalized from Europe in Eastern United States.

Not this weak invader of our roadsides, whose four yellow petals suggest one of the cross-bearing mustard tribe, but the pert little LESSER CELANDINE, PILEWORT, or FIGWORT BUTTERCUP (Ficaria Ficaria), one of the Crowfoot family, whose larger solitary satiny yellow flowers so commonly star European pastures, was Wordsworth's special delight - a tiny, turf-loving plant, about which much poetical association clusters. Having stolen passage across the Atlantic, it is now making itself at home about College Point, Long Island; on Staten Island; near Philadelphia, and maybe elsewhere. Doubtless it will one day overrun our fields, as so many other European immigrants have done.

The generic Greek name of the greater celandine, meaning a swallow, was given it because it begins to bloom when the first returning swallows are seen skimming over the water and freshly ploughed fields in a perfect ecstasy of flight, and continues in flower among its erect seed capsules until the first cool days of autumn kill the gnats and small winged insects not driven to cover. Then the swallows, dependent on such fare, must go to warmer climes where plenty still fly. Quaint old Gerarde claims that the swallow-wort was so called because "with this herbe the dams restore eye-sight to their young ones when their eye be put out" by swallows. Coles asserts "the swallow cureth her dim eyes with celandine."

There can be little satisfaction in picking a weed which droops immediately, poppy fashion, and whose saffron juice stains whatever it touches. A drop of this acrid fluid on the tip of the tongue is not soon forgotten. The luminous experiments of Darwin, Lubbock, Wallace, Muller, and Sprengel, among others, have proved that color in flowers exists for the purpose of attracting insects. But how about colored juices in the blood-roots' and poppies' stems, for example; the bright stalk of the pokeweed, the orange-yellow root of the carrot, the exquisite tints of autumn leaves, fungi, and seaweed? Besides the green color (chlorophyll), the most necessary of all ingredients to a plant are the lipochromes, which vary from yellow to red. These are most conspicuous when they displace the chlorophyll in autumn foliage. Then there are the anthocyans, ranging from magenta to blue and violet. These vary according to the amount of acid or alkali in the sap. Try the effect of immersing a blue morning glory in an acid solution, or a deep pink one in an alkaline solution. One theory to account for the presence of color is that it exists to screen the plant's protoplasm from light; that it has a physiological function with which insects have nothing whatever to do; and that by its presence the temperature is raised and the plant is protected from cold. Every one who has handled the colorless Indian pipe knows how cold and clammy it is.

The YELLOW or CELANDINE POPPY (Stylophorum diphyllum), with shining yellow flowers double the size of the greater celandine's, and similar pinnatifid leaves springing chiefly from the base, blooms even in March and through the spring in the Middle States and westward to Wisconsin and Missouri. Usually only one of the few terminal blossoms opens at a time, but in low, open woodlands it gleams like a miniature sun. Alas! that the glorious CALIFORNIA POPPY, so commonly grown in Eastern gardens (Eschscholtzia Californica), should confine itself to a limited range on the Pacific Coast. We have no true native poppies (Papaver) in America; such as are rarely to be seen in a wild state, have only locally escaped from cultivation.

GOLDEN CORYDALIS (Capnoides aureum; Corydalis aurea of Gray) Poppy family

Flowers - Bright yellow, about 1/2 in. long, with a spur half the length of the tubular corolla; irregular, lipped; each upheld by a little bract, mostly at a horizontal; borne in a terminal, short raceme. Stem: Smooth, 6 to 14 in. high, branching. Leaves: Finely dissected, decom pound, petioled. Fruit: Sickle-shaped, drooping pods, wavy lumped, and tipped with the style. Preferred Habitat - Woods, rocky banks. Flowering Season - March-May. Distribution - Minnesota to Nova Scotia and Pennsylvania.

A dainty little plant, next of kin to the pink corydalis (q.v.).

BLACK MUSTARD (Brassica nigra) Mustard family

Flowers - Bright yellow, fading pale, 1/4 to 1/2 in. across, 4-parted, in elongated racemes; quickly followed by narrow upright 4-sided pods about 1/2 in. long appressed against the stem. Stem: Erect, 2 to 7 ft. tall, branching. Leaves: Variously lobed and divided, finely toothed, the terminal lobe larger than the 2 to 4 side ones. Preferred Habitat - Roadsides, fields, neglected gardens. Flowering Season - June-November. Distribution - Common throughout our area; naturalized from Europe and Asia.

"The kingdom of heaven is like unto a grain of mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field which indeed is less than all seeds but when it is grown, it is greater than the herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof."

Commentators differ as to which is the mustard of the parable - this common black mustard, or a rarer shrub-like tree (Salvadora Persica), with an equivalent Arabic name, a pungent odor, and a very small seed. Inasmuch as the mustard which is systematically planted for fodder by Old World farmers grows with the greatest luxuriance in Palestine, and the comparison between the size of its seed and the plant's great height was already proverbial in the East when Jesus used it, evidence strongly favors this wayside weed. Indeed, the late Dr. Royle, who endeavored to prove that it was the shrub that was referred to, finally found that it does not grow in Galilee.

Now, there are two species which furnish the most powerfully pungent condiment known to commerce; but the tiny dark brown seeds of the black mustard are sharper than the serpent's tooth, whereas the pale brown seeds of the WHITE MUSTARD, often mixed with them, are far more mild. The latter (Sinapis alba) is a similar, but more hairy, plant, with slightly larger yellow flowers. Its pods are constricted like a necklace between the seeds.

The coarse HEDGE MUSTARD (Sisymbrium officinale), with rigid, spreading branches, and spikes of tiny pale yellow flowers, quickly followed by awl-shaped pods that are closely appressed to the stem, abounds in waste places throughout our area. It blooms from May to November, like the next species.

Another common and most troublesome weed from Europe is the FIELD or CORN MUSTARD, CHARLOCK or FIELD KALE (Brassica arvensis; Sinapis arvensis of Gray) found in grain fields, gardens, rich waste lands, and rubbish heaps. The alternate leaves, which stand boldly out from the stem, are oval, coarsely saw-toothed, or the lower ones more irregular, and lobed at their bases, all rough to the touch, and conspicuously veined. The four-parted yellow flowers, measuring half an inch or more across, have six stamens (like the other members of this cross-bearing family), containing nectar at their bases. Two of them are shorter than the other four. Honey-bees, ever abundant, the brilliant Syrphidae flies which love yellow, and other small visitors after pollen and nectar, to obtain the latter insert their tongues between the stamens, and usually cross-fertilize the flowers. In stormy weather, when few insects fly, the anthers finally turn their pollen-covered tips upward; then, by a curvature of the tip of the stamens, they are brought in contact with the flower's own stigma; for it is obviously better that even self-fertilized seed should be set than none at all. (See Ladies'-smock.) "The birds of the air" may not lodge in the charlock's few and feeble branches; nevertheless they come seeking the mild seeds in the strongly nerved, smooth pods that spread in a loose raceme. Domestic pigeons eat the seeds greedily.

The highly intelligent honey-bee, which usually confines itself to one species of plant on its flights, apparently does not know the difference between the field mustard and the WILD RADISH, or JOINTED or WHITE CHARLOCK (Raphanus Raphanistrum); or, knowing it, does not care to make distinctions, for it may be seen visiting these similar flowers indiscriminately. At first the blossoms of the radish are yellow, but they quickly fade to white, and their purplish veins become more conspicuous. Rarely the flowers are all purplish. The entire plant is rough to the touch; the leaves, similar to those of the garden radish, are deeply cleft (lyrate-pinnatifid); the seed pods, which soon follow the flowers up the spike, are nearly cylindric when fresh, but become constricted between the seeds, as they dry, until each little pod looks like a section of a bead necklace.

The GARDEN RADISH of the market (R. sativus), occasionally escaped from cultivation, although credited to China, is entirely unknown in its native state. "It has long been held in high esteem," wrote Peter Henderson, "and before the Christian era a volume was written on this plant alone. The ancient Greeks, in offering their oblations to Apollo, presented turnips in lead, beets in silver, and radishes in vessels of beaten gold." Pliny describes a radish eaten in Rome as being so transparent one might see through the root. It was not until the sixteenth century that the plant was introduced into England. Gerarde mentions cultivating four varieties for Queen Elizabeth in Lord Burleigh's garden.

The YELLOW ROCKET, HERB OF ST. BARBARA, YELLOW BITTER-CRESS, WINTER- or ROCKET-CRESS (Barbarca Barbarea; B. vulgaris of Gray) sends up spikes of little flowers like a yellow sweet alyssum as early as April, and continues in bloom through June. Smooth pods about one inch long quickly follow. The thickish, shining, tufted leaves, very like the familiar WATER-CRESS (Roripa Nasturtium), were formerly even more commonly eaten as a salad. In rich but dry soil the plant flourishes from Virginia far northward, locally in the interior of the United States and on the Pacific Coast.

WITCH-HAZEL (Hamamelis Virginiana) Witch-hazel family

Flowers - Yellow, fringy, clustered in the axils of branches. Calyx 4-parted; 4 very narrow curving petals about 34 in. long; 4 short stamens, also 4 that are scale-like; 2 styles. Stem: A tall, crooked shrub. Leaves: Broadly oval, thick, wavy-toothed, mostly fallen at flowering time. Fruit: Woody capsules maturing the next season and remaining with flowers of the succeeding year (Hama = together with; mela = fruit). Preferred Habitat - Moist woods or thickets near streams. Flowering Season - August-December. Distribution - Nova Scotia and Minnesota, southward to the Gulf States.

To find a stray. apple blossom among the fruit in autumn, or an occasional violet deceived by caressing Indian Summer into thinking another spring has come, surprises no one; but when the witch-hazel bursts into bloom for the first time in November, as if it were April, its leafless twigs conspicuous in the gray woods with their clusters of spidery pale yellow flowers, we cannot but wonder with Edward Rowland Sill:

"Has time grown sleepy at his post And let the exiled Summer back? Or is it her regretful ghost, Or witchcraft of the almanac?"

Not to the blue gentian but to the witch-hazel should Bryant have addressed at least the first stanza of his familiar lines (See Fringed Gentian). The shrub doubtless gives the small bees and flies their last feast of the season in consideration of their services in transferring pollen from the staminate to the fertile flowers. Very slowly through the succeeding year the seeds within the woody capsules mature until, by the following autumn, when fresh flowers appear, they are ready to bombard the neighborhood after the violets' method, in the hope of landing in moist yielding soil far from the parent shrub to found a new colony. Just as a watermelon seed shoots from between the thumb and forefinger pinching it, so the large, bony, shining black, white-tipped witch-hazel seeds are discharged through the elastic rupture of their capsule whose walls pinch them out. To be suddenly hit in the face by such a missile brings no smile while the sting lasts. Witch-hazel twigs ripening indoors transform a peaceful living room into a defenseless target for light artillery practice.

Nowhere more than in the naming of wild flowers can we trace the homesickness of the early English colonists in America. Any plant even remotely resembling one they had known at home was given the dear familiar name. Now our witch-hazel, named for an English hazel tree of elm lineage, has similar leaves it is true, but likeness stops there; nevertheless, all the folklore clustered about that mystic tree has been imported here with the title. By the help of the hazel's divining-rod the location of hidden springs of water, precious ore, treasure, and thieves may be revealed, according to old superstition. Cornish miners, who live in a land so plentifully stored with tin and copper lodes they can have had little difficulty in locating seams of ore with or without a hazel rod, scarcely ever sink a shaft except by its direction.

The literature of Europe is filled with allusions to it. Swift wrote:

"They tell us something strange and odd About a certain magic rod That, bending down its top divines Where'er the soil has hidden mines Where there are none, it stands erect Scorning to show the least respect."

A good story is told on Linnaeus in Baring-Gould's "Curious Myths of the Middle Ages": "When the great botanist was on one of his voyages, hearing his secretary highly extol the virtues of his divining-wand, he was willing to convince him of its insufficiency, and for that purpose concealed a purse of one hundred ducats under a ranunculus, which grew by itself in a meadow, and bid the secretary find it if he could. The wand discovered nothing, and Linnaeus's mark was soon trampled down by the company present, so that when he went to finish the experiment by fetching the gold himself, he was utterly at a loss where to find it. The man with the wand assisted him, and informed him that it could not lie in the way they were going, but quite the contrary so they pursued the direction of the wand, and actually dug out the gold. Linnaeus said that another such experiment would be sufficient to make a proselyte of him."

Many a well has been dug even in this land of liberty where our witch-hazel indicated; but here its kindly magic is directed chiefly through the soothing extract distilled from its juices.

FIVE-FINGER; COMMON CINQUEFOIL (Potentilla Canadensis) Rose family

Flowers - Yellow, 1/4 to 1/2 in. across, growing singly on long peduncles from the leaf axils. Five petals longer than the 5 acute calyx lobes with 5 linear bracts between them; about 20 stamens; pistils numerous, forming a head. Stem: Spreading over ground by slender runners or ascending. Leaves: 5-fingered, the digitate, saw-edged leaflets (rarely 3 or 4) spreading from a common point, petioled; some in a tuft at base. Preferred Habitat - Dry fields, roadsides, hills, banks. Flowering Season - April-August. Distribution - Quebec to Georgia, and westward beyond the Mississippi.

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 3 together in the axils. Stem: Weak, 6 to 15 in. tall, branching, leafy. Leaves: Alternate, sensitive, compounded of 12 to 44 small, 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.

How many of us ever pause to test the sensitiveness of this exquisite foliage that borders the roadsides, and in appearance is almost identical with the South American sensitive plant's, so commonly cultivated in hothouses here? Failing to see its fine little leaflets fold together instantly when brushed with the hand, as they do in the tropical species (Mimosa pudica), many pass on, concluding its title a misnomer. By simply touching the leaves, however roughly, only a tardy and slight movement follows. A sharp blow produces quicker effect, while if the whole plant be shaken by forcibly snapping the stem with the finger, all the leaves will be strongly affected; their sensitiveness being apparently more aroused by vibration through jarring than by contact with foreign bodies. The leaves, which ordinarily spread out flat, partly close in bright sunshine and "go to sleep" at night, not to expose their sensitive upper surfaces to fierce heat in the first case, and to cold by radiation in the second. "Lifeless things may be moved or acted on," says Asa Gray; "living beings move and act - plants less conspicuously, but no less really than animals. In sharing the mysterious gift of life they share some of its simpler powers."

The PARTRIDGE PEA or LARGE-FLOWERED SENSITIVE PLANT (C. Chamaecrista) likewise goes to sleep; the ten to fifteen pairs of leaflets which, with a terminal one, make up each pinnate leaf, slowly turning their outer edges uppermost after sunset, and overlapping as they flatten themselves against their common stem until the entire aspect of the plant is changed. By day the expanded foliage is feathery, fine, acacia-like; at night the bushy, branching, spreading plant, that measures only a foot or two high, appears to produce nothing but pods. These leaves respond slowly to vibration, just as the sensitive pea's do. In spite of their names, neither produces the butterfly-shaped (papilionaceous) blossom of true peas. The partridge pea bears from two to four showy flowers together, each measuring an inch or more across, on a slender pedicel from the axils. It fully expands only four of its five bright yellow petals; they are somewhat unequal in size, the upper ones, with touches of red at the base, as pathfinders, not, however, as nectar-guides, since no sweets are secreted here. Curiously enough, both right and left hand flowers are found upon the same plant; that is to say, the sickle-shaped pistil turns either to the right or the left. One lateral petal, instead of being flexible and spread like the rest, stands so stiffly erect and incurved that it commonly breaks on being bent back. Why? The pistil, it will be noticed, points away from the ten long black anthers. Obviously, then, the flower cannot fertilize itself. Its benefactors are bumblebee females and workers out after pollen. Cup-shaped nectaries ("extra nuptial") are situated on the upper side and near the base of the leaf stalks on these cassia plants, where they can have no direct influence on the fertilization of the blossoms. Apparently, they are free lunch-counters, kept open out of pure charity. Landing upon the long black anthers with pores in their tips to let out the pollen, the bumblebees "seize them between their mandibles, says Professor Robertson, "and stroke them downward with a sort of milking motion. The pollen...falls either directly upon the bee or upon the erect lateral petal which is pressed close against the bee's side. In this way the side of the bee which is next to the incurved petal receives the most pollen.... A bee visiting a left-hand flower receives pollen upon the right side, and then flying to a right-hand flower, strikes the same side against the stigma." When we find circular holes in these petals we may know the leaf-cutter or upholsterer bee (Megachile brevis) has been at work collecting roofs for her nurseries (see Hairy Ruellia). The partridge pea, which has a more westerly range than the sensitive pea's, extends it southward even to Bolivia. Game birds, migrants and rovers, which feed upon the seeds, have of course helped in their wider distribution. The plant blooms from July to September.

WILD or AMERICAN SENNA (Cassia Marylandica) Senna family

Flowers - Yellow, about 3/4 in. broad, numerous, in short axillary clusters on the upper part of plant. Calyx of 5 oblong lobes; 5 petals, 3 forming an upper lip, 2 a lower one; 10 stamens of 3 different kinds; 1 pistil. Stem: 3 to 8 ft. high, little branched. Leaves: Alternate, pinnately compounded of 6 to 10 pairs of oblong leaflets. Fruit: A narrow, flat curving pod, 3 to 4 in. long. Preferred Habitat - Alluvial or moist, rich soil, swamps, roadsides. Flowering Season - July-August. Distribution - New England, westward to Nebraska, south to the Gulf States.

Whoever has seen certain Long Island roadsides bordered with wild senna, the brilliant flower clusters contrasted with the deep green of the beautiful foliage, knows that no effect produced by art along the drives of public park or private garden can match these country lanes in simple charm. Bumblebees, buzzing about the blossoms, may be observed "milking" the anthers just as they do those of the partridge pea. No red spots on any of these petals guide the visitors, as in the previous species, however; for do not the three small, dark stamens, which are reduced to mere scales, answer every purpose as pathfinders here? The stigma, turned sometimes to the right, sometimes to the left, strikes the bee on the side; the senna being what Delpino, the Italian botanist, calls a pleurotribe flower.

While leaves of certain African and East Indian species of senna are most valued for their medicinal properties, those of this plant are largely collected in the Middle and Southern States as a substitute. Caterpillars of several sulphur butterflies, which live exclusively on cassia foliage, appear to feel no evil effects from overdoses.

WILD INDIGO; YELLOW or INDIGO BROOM; HORSEFLY-WEED (Baptisia tinctoria) Pea family

Flowers - Bright yellow, papilionaceous, about 1/2 in. long, on short pedicels, in numerous but few flowered terminal racemes. Calyx light green, 4 or 5-toothed; corolla of 5 oblong petals, the standard erect, the keel enclosing 10 incurved stamens and pistil. Stem: Smooth, branched, 2 to 4 ft. high. Leaves: Compounded of 3 ovate leaflets. Fruit: A many-seeded round or egg-shaped pod tipped with the awl-shaped style. Preferred Habitat - Dry, sandy soil. Flowering Season - June-September. Distribution - Maine and Minnesota to the Gulf States.

Dark grayish green, clover-like leaves, and small, bright yellow flowers growing in loose clusters at the ends of the branches of a bushy little plant, are so commonly met with they need little description. A relative, the true indigo-bearer, a native of Asia, once commonly grown in the Southern States when slavery made competition with Oriental labor possible, has locally escaped and become naturalized. But the false species, although, as Dr. Gray says, it yields "a poor sort of indigo," yields a most valuable medicine employed by the homeopathists in malarial fevers. The plant turns black in drying. As in the case of other papilionaceous blossoms, bees are the visitors best adapted to fertilize the flowers. When we see the little, sleepy, dusky-winged butterfly (Thanaos brizo) around the plant we may know she is there only to lay eggs, that the larvae and caterpillars may find their favorite food at hand on waking into life.

RATTLE-BOX (Crotalaria sagittalis) Pea family

Flowers - Yellow, 1/2 in. long or less, usually only 2 or 3 on a long peduncle. Calyx 5-toothed, slightly 2-lipped; corolla papilionaceous. Stem: 3 to 10 in. high, weak, hairy. Leaves: Alternate, simple, oval to lance-shaped; stipules arrow-shaped above and running along stem. Fruit: An inflated oblong pod 1 in, long, blackish, seedy. Preferred Habitat - Dry, sandy, open situations. Flowering Season - June-September. Distribution - New England and Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico.

These insignificant little yellow flowers attract scant notice from human observers accustomed to associate their generic name with some particularly beautiful relatives from the West Indies grown in hothouses here. But did not small bees alight on the keel and depress it, as in the lupine, next of kin (q.v.) there might be no seeds to rattle in the dark inflated pods that so delight children. (Krotalon = a castanet.)

YELLOW SWEET CLOVER; YELLOW MELILOT (Melilotus officinalis) Pea family

Resembling the white sweet clover, except in color. (q.v.)

YELLOW or HOP CLOVER (Trifotium agrarium) Pea family

Flowers - Yellow, scale-like, overlapping in a densely many-flowered oblong head about 1/2 in. long, becoming brown with age. Stem: Ascending, branched, 6 to 18 in. high. Leaves: 3-foliate, very finely toothed. Preferred Habitat - Waste places, fields, roadsides. Flowering Season - May-September. Distribution - Virginia to Iowa, and far northward.

What did the sulphur butterflies provide as food for their caterpillar babies before the commonest clovers came over from the Old World to possess the soil? Wherever a trifolium grows, there one is sure to see

"gallow-yellow butterflies, Like blooms of lorn primroses blowing loose, when autumn winds arise."

The BLACKSEED HOP CLOVER, BLACK or HOP MEDIC (Medicago lupulina), with even smaller, bright yellow oblong heads which turn black when ripe, lies on the ground, its branches spreading where they leave the root. A native of Europe and Asia, it is now distributed as a common weed throughout our area, for there is scarcely a month in the year when it does not bloom and set seed. It is still another of the many plants known as the shamrock.

YELLOW WOOD-SORREL; LADY'S SORREL (Oxalis stricta) Wood-sorrel family

Flowers - Golden, fragrant, in long peduncled, small, terminal groups. Calyx of 5 sepals; corolla of 5 petals, usually reddish at base; stamens, 10; 1 pistil with 5 styles; followed by slender pods. Stem: Pale, erect, 3 to 12 in. high, the sap sour. Leaves: Palmately compound, of 3 heart-shaped, clover-like leaflets on long petioles. Preferred Habitat - Open woodlands, waste or cultivated soil, roadsides. Flowering Season - April-October. Distribution - Nova Scotia and Dakota westward to the Gulf of Mexico.

An extremely common little weed, whose peculiarly sensitive leaves children delight to set in motion by rubbing, or to chew for the sour juice. Concerning the night "sleep" of wood-sorrel leaves and the two kinds of flowers these plants bear, see the white and violet wood-sorrels.

WILD or SLENDER YELLOW FLAX (Linum Virginianum) Flax family

Flowers - Yellow, about 1/3 in. across, each from a leaf axil, scattered along the slender branches. Sepals, 5; 5 petals, 5 stamens. Stem: 1 to 2 ft. high, branching, leafy. Leaves. Alternate, seated on the stem; small, oblong, or lance-shaped, 1 nerved. Preferred Habitat - Dry woodlands and borders; shady places. Flowering Season - June-August. Distribution - New England to Georgia.

Certainly in the Atlantic States this is the commonest of its slender, dainty tribe; but in bogs and swamps farther southward and westward to Texas the RIDGED YELLOW FLAX (L. striatum), with leaves arranged opposite each other up to the branches and an angled stem so sticky it "adheres to paper in which it is dried," takes its place.

"Blue were her eyes as the fairy flax,"

wrote Longfellow, as if blue flax were a familiar sight on this side of the Atlantic. The charming little European plant (L. usitatissimum), which has furnished the fiber for linen and the oily seeds for poultices from time immemorial, is only a fugitive from cultivation here. Unhappily, it is rarely met with along the roadsides and railways as it struggles to gain a foothold in our waste places. Possibly Longfellow had in mind the blue toad flax (q.v.).

JEWEL-WEED; SPOTTED TOUCH-ME-NOT: SILVER CAP; WILD BALSAM: LADY'S EARDROPS; SNAP WEED; WILD LADY'S SLIPPER (Impatiens biflora; I. fulva of Gray) Jewel-weed family

Flowers - Orange yellow, spotted with reddish-brown, irregular, 1 in. long or less, horizontal, 2 to 4 pendent by slender footstalks on a long peduncle from leaf axils. Sepals, 3, colored; 1 large, sac-shaped, contracted into a slender incurved spur and 2-toothed at apex; 2 other sepals small. Petals, 3; 2 of them 2-cleft into dissimilar lobes; 5 short stamens, 1 pistil. Stem: 2 to 5 ft. high, smooth, branched, colored, succulent. Leaves: Alternate, thin, pale beneath, ovate, coarsely toothed, petioled. Fruit: An oblong capsule, its 5 valves opening elastically to expel the seeds. Preferred Habitat - Beside streams, ponds, ditches; moist ground. Flowering Season - July-October. Distribution - Nova Scotia to Oregon, south to Missouri and Florida.

These exquisite, bright flowers, hanging at a horizontal, like jewels from a lady's ear, may be responsible for the plant's folk name; but whoever is abroad early on a dewy morning, or after a shower, and finds notched edges of the drooping leaves hung with scintillating gems, dancing, sparkling in the sunshine, sees still another reason for naming this the jewel-weed. In a brook, pond, spring, or wayside trough, which can never be far from its haunts, dip a spray of the plant to transform the leaves into glistening silver. They shed water much as the nasturtium's do.

When the tiny ruby-throated hummingbird flashes northward out of the tropics to spend the summer, where can he hope to find nectar so deeply secreted that not even the long-tongued bumblebee may rob him of it all? Beyond the bird's bill his tongue can be run out and around curves no other creature can reach. Now the early blooming columbine, its slender cornucopias brimming with sweets, welcomes the messenger whose needle-like bill will carry pollen from flower to flower; presently the coral honeysuckle and the scarlet painted-cup attract him by wearing his favorite color; next the jewel-weed hangs horns of plenty to lure his eye; and the trumpet vine and cardinal flower continue to feed him successively in Nature's garden; albeit cannas, nasturtiums, salvia, gladioli, and such deep, irregular showy flowers in men's flower beds sometimes lure him away. These are bird flowers dependent in the main on the ruby-throat, which is not to say that insects never enter them, for they do; only they are not the visitors catered to. Watch the big, velvety bumblebee approach a roomy jewel-weed blossom and nearly disappear within. The large bunch of united stamens, suspended directly over the entrance, bears copious white pollen. So much comes off on his back that after visiting a flower or two he becomes annoyed; clings to a leaf with his fore legs while he thoroughly brushes his back and wings with his middle and hind pairs, and then collects the sticky grains into a wad on his feet which he presently kicks off with disgust to the ground. Examine a jewel-weed blossom to see that the clumsy bumblebee's pollen-laden back is not so likely to come in contact with the short five-parted stigma concealed beneath the stamens, as a hummingbird's slender bill that is thrust obliquely into the spur while he hovers above.

But, as if the plant had not sufficient confidence in its visitors to rely exclusively on them for help in continuing the lovely species, it bears also cleistogamous blossoms that never open - economical products without petals, which ripen abundant self-fertilized seed (see white wood sorrel). It is calculated that each jewel-weed blossom produces about two hundred and fifty pollen grains; yet each is by no means able to produce seed in spite of its prodigality. Nevertheless, enough cross-fertilized seed is set to save the species from the degeneracy that follows close inbreeding among plants as well as animals. In England, where this jewel-weed is rapidly becoming naturalized, Darwin recorded there are twenty plants producing cleistogamous flowers to one having showy blossoms which, even when produced, seldom set seed. What more likely, since hummingbirds are confined to the New World? Therefore why should the plant waste its energy on a product useless in England? It can never attain perfection there until hummingbirds are imported, as bumblebees had to be into Australia before the farmers could harvest seed from their clover fields (see red clover).

Familiar as we may be with the nervous little seedpods of the touch-me-not, which children ever love to pop and see the seeds fly, as they do from balsam pods in grandmother's garden, they still startle with the suddenness of their volley. Touch the delicate hair-trigger at the end of a capsule, and the lightning response of the flying seeds makes one jump. They sometimes land four feet away. At this rate of progress a year, and with the other odds against which all plants have to contend, how many generations must it take to fringe even one mill pond with jewel-weed; yet this is rapid transit indeed compared with many of Nature's processes. The plant is a conspicuous sufferer from the dodder (q.v.).

The PALE TOUCH-ME-NOT (I. aurea; I. pallida of Gray) most abundant northward, a larger, stouter species found in similar situations, but with paler yellow flowers only sparingly dotted if at all, has its broader sac-shaped sepal abruptly contracted into a short, notched, but not incurved spur. It shares its sister's popular names.

VELVET LEAF; INDIAN MALLOW; AMERICAN JUTE (Abutilon Abulilon; A. Avicennae of Gray) Mallow family

Flowers - Deep yellow, 1/2 to 3/4 in. broad, 5-parted, regular, solitary on stout peduncles from the leaf axils. Stem: 3 to 6 ft. high, velvety, branched. Leaves: Soft velvety, heart-shaped, the lobes rounded, long petioled. Fruit: In a head about 1 in. across, 12 to 15 erect hairy carpels, with spreading sharp beaks. Preferred Habitat - Escaped from cultivation to waste sandy loam, fields, roadsides. Flowering Season - August-October. Distribution - Common or frequent, except at the extreme North.

There was a time, not many years ago, when this now common and often troublesome weed was imported from India and tenderly cultivated in flower gardens. In the Orient it and allied species are grown for their fiber, which is utilized for cordage and cloth; but the equally valuable plant now running wild here has yet to furnish American men with a profitable industry. Although the blossom is next of kin to the veiny Chinese bell-flower, or striped abutilon, so common in greenhouses, its appearance is quite different.

ST. ANDREW'S CROSS (Ascyrum hypericoides; A. Crux-Andreae of Gray) St. John's-wort family

Flowers - Yellow, 1/2 to 3/4 in. across, terminal and from the leaf axils. Calyx of 4 sepals in 2 pairs; 4 narrow, oblong petals; stamens numerous; 2 styles. Stem: Much branched and spreading from base, 5 to 10 in. high, leafy. Leaves: Opposite, oblong, small, seated on stem. Preferred Habitat - Dry, sandy soil; pine barrens. Flowering Season - July-August. Distribution - Nantucket Island (Mass.), westward to Illinois, south to Florida and Texas.

Because the four pale yellow petals of this flower approach each other in pairs, suggesting a cross with equals arms, the plant was given its name by Linnaeus in 1753. ST. PETER'S-WORT (A. stans), a similar plant, found in the same localities, in bloom at the same time, has larger flowers in small clusters at the tips only of its upright branches.

COMMON ST. JOHN'S-WORT (Hypericum perforatum) St. John's-wort family

Flowers - Bright yellow, 1 in. across or less, several or many in terminal clusters. Calyx of 5 lance-shaped sepals; 5 petals dotted with black; numerous stamens in 3 sets 3 styles. Stem: to 2 ft. high, erect, much branched. Leaves: Small, opposite, oblong, more or less black-dotted. Preferred Habitat - Fields, waste lands, roadsides. Flowering Season - June-September. Distribution - Throughout our area, except the extreme North; Europe, and Asia.

"Gathered upon a Friday, in the hour of Jupiter when he comes to his operation, so gathered, or borne, or hung upon the neck, it mightily helps to drive away all phantastical spirits." These are the blossoms which have been hung in the windows of European peasants for ages on St. John's eve, to avert the evil eye and the spells of the spirits of darkness. "Devil chaser" its Italian name signifies. To cure demoniacs, to ward off destruction by lightning, to reveal the presence of witches, and to expose their nefarious practices, are some of the virtues ascribed to this plant, which superstitious farmers have spared from the scythe and encouraged to grow near their houses until it has become, even in this land of liberty, a troublesome weed at times. "The flower gets its name," says F. Schuyler Mathews, "from the superstition that on St. John's day, the 24th of June, the dew which fell on the plant the evening before was efficacious in preserving the eyes from disease. So the plant was collected, dipped in oil, and thus transformed into a balm for every wound." Here it is a naturalized, not a native, immigrant. A blooming plant, usually with many sterile shoots about its base, has an unkempt, untidy look; the seed capsules and the brown petals of withered flowers remaining among the bright yellow buds through a long season. No nectar is secreted by the St. John's-worts, therefore only pollen collectors visit them regularly, and occasionally cross-fertilize the blossoms, which are best adapted, however, to pollinate themselves.

The SHRUBBY ST. JOHN'S-WORT (H. prolificum) bears yellow blossoms, about half an inch across, which are provided with stamens so numerous, the many flowered terminal clusters have a soft, feathery effect. In the axils of the oblong, opposite leaves are tufts of smaller ones, the stout stems being often concealed under a wealth of foliage. Sandy or rocky places from New Jersey southward best suit this low, dense, diffusely branched shrub which blooms prolifically from July to September.

Farther north, and westward to Iowa, the GREAT or GIANT ST. JOHN'S-WORT (H. Ascyron) brightens the banks of streams at midsummer with large blossoms, each on a long footstalk in a few-flowered cluster.

LONG-BRANCHED FROST-WEED; FROST-FLOWER; FROST-WORT; CANADIAN ROCK-ROSE (Helianthemum Canadense) Rock-rose family

Flowers - Solitary, or rarely 2; about 1 in. across, 5-parted, with showy yellow petals; the 5 unequal sepals hairy. Also abundant small flowers lacking petals, produced from the axils later. Stem: Erect, 3 in. to 2 ft. high; at first simple, later with elongated branches. Leaves: Alternate, oblong, almost seated on stem. Preferred Habitat - Dry fields, sandy or rocky soil. Flowering Season - Petal-bearing flowers, May-July. Distribution - New England to the Carolinas, westward to Wisconsin and Kentucky.

Only for a day, and that must be a bright sunny one, does the solitary frost-flower expand its delicate yellow petals. On the next, after pollen has been brought to it by insect messengers and its own carried away, the now useless petal advertisements fall, and the numerous stamens, inserted upon the receptacle with them, also drop off, leaving the club-shaped pistil to develop with the ovary into a rounded, ovoid, three-valved capsule. Notice how flat the stamens lie upon the petals to keep safely out of reach of the stigma. Another flower, exactly like the first, now expands, and the bloom continues for weeks. Why does only one blossom open at a time? Because the whole aim of the showy flowers is to set cross-fertilized seed, and when only one at a time appears, pollination not only between distinct blossoms but between distinct plants insures the healthiest, most vigorous offspring - a wise precaution against degeneracy, in view of the quantities of self-fertilized seed that will be set late in summer by the tiny apetalous flowers that never open (see white wood sorrel). Surely two kinds of blossoms should be enough for any species; but why call this the frost-flower when its bloom is ended by autumn? Only the witch-hazel may be said to flower for the first time after frost. When the stubble in the dry fields is white some cold November morning, comparatively few notice the ice crystals, like specks of glistening quartz, at the base of the stems of this plant. The similar HOARY FROST-WEED (H. majus), whose showy flowers appear in clusters at the hoary stein's summit, in June and July, also bears them. Often this ice formation assumes exquisite feathery, whimsical forms, bursting the bark asunder where an astonishing quantity of sap gushes forth and freezes. Indeed, so much sap sometimes goes to the making of this crystal flower, that it would seem as if an extra reservoir in the soil must pump some up to supply it with its large fantastic corolla.

BEACH or FALSE HEATHER; POVERTY GRASS (Hudsonia tomentosa) Rock-rose family

Flowers - Bright yellow, small, about 1/4 in. across, numerous, closely ascending the upper part of the heath-like branches. Sepals 5, unequal; 5 petals; stamens, 9 to 18. Stem: 4 to 8 in. tall, tufted, densely branched and matted, hoary hairy, pale. Leaves: Overlapping like scales, very small. Preferred Habitat - Sands of the seashore, pine barrens, beaches of rivers and lakes. Flowering Season - May-July. Distribution - New Brunswick to Maryland, west to Lake of the Woods.

Like the showy flowers of the frost-weed, these minute ones open in the sunshine only, and then but for a single day. Nevertheless, the hoary, heath-like little shrub, by growing in large colonies and keeping up a succession of bright bloom, tinges the sand dunes back of the beach with charming color that artists delight to paint in the foreground of their marine pictures.

YELLOW VIOLETS (Viola) Violet family

Fine hairs on the erect, leafy, usually single stem of the DOWNY YELLOW VIOLET (V. pubescens), whose dark veined, bright yellow petals gleam in dry woods in April and May, easily distinguish it from the SMOOTH YELLOW VIOLET (V. scabriuscula), formerly considered a mere variety in spite of its being an earlier bloomer, a lover of moisture, and well equipped with basal leaves at flowering time, which the downy species is not. Moreover, it bears a paler blossom, more coarsely dentate leaves, often decidedly taper-pointed, and usually several stems together.

Our other common yellow species, the ROUND-LEAVED VIOLET (V. rotundifolia), lifts smaller, pale, brown-veined, and bearded blossoms above a tuffet of broad, shining leaves close to the ground. The veins on the petals serve as pathfinders to the nectary for the bee, and the beard as footholds, while she probes the inverted blossoms. Such violets as have their side petals bearded are most frequently visited by small greenish mason bees (Osmia), with collecting brushes on their abdomen that receive the pollen as it falls. Abundant cleistogamous flowers (see blue violets and white wood sorrel) are borne on the runners late in the season. Bryant, whose botanical lore did not always keep step with his Muse, wrote of the yellow violet as the first spring flower, because he found it "by the snowbank's edges cold," one April day, when the hepaticas about his home at Roslyn, Long Island, had doubtless been in bloom a month.

"Of all her train the hands of Spring First plant thee in the watery mould,"

he wrote, regardless of the fact that the round-leaved violet's preferences are for dry, wooded, or rocky hillsides. Muller believed that all violets were originally yellow, not white, after they evoluted from the green stage.

EASTERN CACTUS; PRICKLY PEAR; INDIAN FIG (Opuntia Opuntia; 0. vulgaris of Gray) Cactus family

Flowers -Yellow, sometimes reddish at center, 2 to 3 in. across, solitary, mostly seated at the side of joints. Calyx tube not prolonged beyond ovary, its numerous lobes spreading. Petals numerous; stamens very numerous; ovary cylindric; the style longer than stamens, and with several stigmas. Stem: Prostrate or ascending, fleshy, juicy, branching, the thick, flattened joints oblong or rounded, 2 to 5 in. long. Leaves: Tiny, awl-shaped, dotting the joints, but usually falling early; tufts of yellowish bristles at their base. Plant unarmed, or with few solitary stout spines. Fruit: Pear-shaped, pulpy, red, nearly smooth, 1 in. long or over, edible. Preferred Habitat - Sandy or dry or rocky places. Flowering Season - June-August. Distribution - Massachusetts to Florida.

Upwards of one hundred and fifty species of Opuntia, which elect to grow in parching sands, beneath a scorching sun, often prostrate on baking hot rocks, on glaring plains, beaches, and deserts, from Massachusetts to Peru - for all are natives of the New World - show so marvelous an adaptation to environment in each instance that no group of plants is more interesting to the botanist, more decorative in form and color from an artistic standpoint, more distinctively characteristic. Plants choosing such habitats as they have adopted, usually in tropical or semi-tropical regions, had to resort to various expedients to save loss of water through transpiration and evaporation. Now, as leaves are the natural outlets for moisture thrown off by any plant, manifestly the first thing to do was either to reduce the number of branches and leaves, or to modify them into sharp spines (not surface prickles like the rose's); to cultivate a low habit of growth, not to expose unnecessary surface to sun and air; to thicken the skin until little moisture could evaporate through the leathery coat; and, finally, to utilize the material thus saved in developing stems so large, fleshy, and juicy that they should become wells in a desert, with powers of sustenance great enough to support the plant through its fiery trials. A common expedient of plants in dry situations, even at the north, is to modify their leaves into spines, as the gorse and the barberry, for example, have done. That such an armor also serves to protect them against the ravages of grazing animals is an additional advantage, of course; but not their sole motive in wearing it. Popular to destruction would the cool juices of the cacti be in thirsty lands, if only they might be obtained without painful and often poisonous scratches. Given moist soil and greater humidity of atmosphere to grow in, spiny plants at once show a tendency to grow taller, to branch and become leafy. A covering of hairs which reflect the light, thus diminishing the amount that might reach the juicy interior area, has likewise been employed by many cacti, among other denizens of dry soil.