Why is the under side of the leaves so woolly? Not as a protection against wingless insects crawling upward, that is certain; for such could only benefit these tiny clustered flowers.Not against the sun's rays, for it is only the under surface that is coated.When the upper leaf surface is hairy, we know that the plant is protected in this way from perspiring too freely.Doubtless these leaves of the steeple bush, like those of other plants that choose a similar habitat, have woolly hairs beneath as an absorbent to protect their pores from clogging with the vapors that must rise from the damp ground where the plant grows.If these pores were filled with moisture from without, how could they possibly throw off the waste of the plant? All plants are largely dependent upon free perspiration for health, but especially those whose roots, struck in wet ground, are constantly sending up moisture through the stem and leaves.
PURPLE-FLOWERING OR VIRGINIA RASPBERRY
(Rubus odoratus) Rose family Flowers - Royal purple or bluish pink, showy, fragrant, 1 to 2in.broad, loosely clustered at top of stem.Calyx sticky-hairy, deeply 5-parted, with long pointed tips; corolla of 5 rounded petals; stamens and pistils very numerous.Stem: 3 to 5 ft.high, erect, branched, shrubby, bristly, not prickly.Leaves:
Alternate, petioled, 3 to 5 lobed, middle lobe largest, and all pointed; saw-edged lower leaves immense.Fruit: A depressed red berry, scarcely edible.
Preferred Habitat - Rocky woods, dells, shady roadsides.
Flowering Season - June-August.
Distribution - Northern Canada south to Georgia, westward to Michigan and Tennessee.
To be an unappreciated, unloved relative of the exquisite wild rose, with which this flower is so often likened, must be a similar misfortune to being the untalented son of a great man, or the unhappy author of a successful first book never equaled in later attempts.But where the bright blossoms of the Virginia raspberry burst forth above the roadside tangle and shady woodland dells, even those who despise magenta see beauty in them where abundant green tones all discordant notes into harmony.
Purple, as we of today understand the color, the flower is not;but rather the purple of ancient Orientals.On cool, cloudy days the petals are a deep, clear purplish rose, that soon fades and dulls with age, or changes into pale, bluish pink when the sun is hot.
Many yellow stamens help conceal the nectar secreted in a narrow ring between the filaments and the base of the receptacle.
Bumblebees, the principal and most efficient visitors, which can reach sweets more readily than most insects, although numerous others help to self-fertilize the flower, bring to the mature stigmas of a newly opened blossom pollen carried on their undersides from the anthers of a flower a day or two older.When the inner row of anthers shed their pollen, some doubtless falls on the stigmas below them, and so spontaneous self-fertilization may occur.Fruit sets quickly; nevertheless the shrub keeps on flowering nearly all summer.Children often fold the lower leaves, which sometimes measure a foot across, to make drinking-cups.
QUEEN-OF-THE-PRAIRIE
(Ulmaria rubra; Spirea lobata of Gray) Rose family Flowers - Deep pink, like the peach blossom, fragrant, about 1/3in.across, clustered in large cymose panicles on a long footstalk.Calyx 5-lobed; 5-clawed, rose-like petals; stamens numerous; pistils 5 to 15, usually 10.Stem: 2 to 8 ft.tall, smooth, grooved, branched.Leaves: Mostly near the ground, large, rarely measuring 3 ft.long, compounded of from 3 to 7 leaflets;end leaflet, of 7 to 9 divisions, much the largest; side leaflets opposite, seated on stem, 3 to 5 lobed or parted; all lobes acute, and edges unequally incised.Prominent kidney-shaped stipules.
Preferred Habitat - Moist meadows and prairies.
Flowering Season - June-July.
Distribution - Western Pennsylvania to Michigan and Iowa, and southward.
A stately, beautiful native plant, seen to perfection where it rears bright panicles of bloom above the ranker growth in the low moist meadows of the Ohio Valley.When we find it in the East, it has only recently escaped from man's gardens into Nature's.
Butterflies and bees pay grateful homage to this queen.Indeed, butterflies appear to have a special fondness for pink, as bees have for blue flowers.Cattle delight to chew the leaves, which, when crushed, give out a fragrance like sweet birch.
WILD ROSES
(Rosa) Rose family Just as many members of the lily tribe show a preference for the rule of three in the arrangements of their floral parts, so the wild roses cling to the quinary method of some primitive ancestor, a favorite one also with the buttercup and many of its kin, the geraniums, mallows, and various others.Most of our fruit trees and bushes are near relatives of the rose.Five petals and five sepals, then, we always find on roses in a state of nature; and although the progressive gardener of today has nowhere shown his skill more than in the development of a multitude of petals from stamens in the magnificent roses of fashionable society, the most highly cultivated darling of the greenhouses quickly reverts to the original wild type, setting his work of years at naught, if once it regain its natural liberties through neglect.
