That beautiful and valuable honey plant, from Minnesota, Colorado, and the Rocky Mountains, cleome, or the Rocky Mountain bee-plant, Cleome integrifolia ([Fig, 96]), if self-sown, or sown early in spring, blooms by the middle of July, and lasts for long weeks. Nor can anything be more gay than these brilliant flowers, alive with bees all through the long fall. This should be planted in fall or spring, in drills two feet apart, the plants six inches apart in the drills. The seeds, which grow in pods, are very numerous, and are said to be valuable for chickens. Now, too, commence to bloom the numerous eupatoriums, or bonesets, or thoroughworts ([Fig, 97]), which fill the marshes of our country, and the hives as well, with their rich golden nectar—precursors of that profusion of bloom of this composite order, whose many species are even now budding in preparation for the sea of flowers which will deck the marsh-lands of August and September. Wild bergamot, too, Monarda fistulosa, which, like the thistles, is of importance to the apiarist, blooms in July.
Fig. 95.—Button Bush.
Fig. 96.—Rocky Mountain Bee-Plant.
The little shrub of our marshes, appropriately named button-bush, Cephalanthus occidentalis, ([Fig, 95]), also shares the attention of the bees with the linden; while apiarists of the South find the sour-wood, or sorrel tree, Oxydendrum arboreum, a valuable honey tree. This belongs to the Heath family, which includes the far-famed heather bloom of England. It also includes our whortleberry, cranberry, blueberry, and one plant which has no enviable reputation, as furnishing honey, which is very poisonous, even fatal to those who eat, the mountain laurel, Kalmia latifolia. Yet, a near relative of the South Andromeda nitida, is said to furnish beautiful and wholesome honey in great quantities. The Virginia creeper also blooms in July. I wish I could say that this beautiful vine, transplendent in autumn, is a favorite with the honey-bee. Though it often, nay always, swarms with wild bees when in blossom, yet I never saw a honey-bee visit the ample bloom amidst its rich, green, vigorous foliage. Now, too, the St. John's wort, Hypericum, with its many species, both shrubby and herbaceous, offers bountiful contributions to the delicious stores of the honey-bee. The catnip, too, Nepeta cataria, and our cultivated asparagus—which if uncut in spring will bloom in June—so delectable for the table, and so elegant for trimming table meats and for banquets in autumn, come now to offer their nectarian gifts.
Fig. 97.—Boneset.
