One or two feet high. Leaves.—Opposite, long and narrow, hairy. Flowers.—Pink, with white dots, clustered. Calyx.—Five-toothed, cylindrical, with awl-shaped bracts beneath. Corolla.—Of five small petals. Stamens.—Ten. Pistil.—One, with two styles.
In July and August we find these little flowers in our eastern fields. The generic name, which signifies Jove’s own flower, hardly applies to these inconspicuous blossoms. Perhaps it was originally bestowed upon D. caryophyllus, a large and fragrant English member of the genus, which was the origin of our garden carnation.
Purple Loosestrife.
Lythrum Salicaria. Loosestrife Family.
Stem.—Tall and slender. Leaves.—Lance-shaped, with a heart-shaped base, sometimes whorled in threes. Flowers.—Deep purple-pink, crowded and whorled in an interrupted spike. Calyx.—Five to seven-toothed, with little processes between the teeth. Corolla.—Of five or six somewhat wrinkled petals. Stamens.—Usually twelve, in two sets, six longer and six shorter. Pistil.—One, varying in size in the different blossoms, being of three different lengths.
PLATE LXXI
PURPLE LOOSESTRIFE.—L. Salicaria.
One who has seen an inland marsh in August aglow with this beautiful plant, is almost ready to forgive the Old Country some of the many pests she has shipped to our shores in view of this radiant acquisition. The botany locates it anywhere between Nova Scotia and Delaware. It may be seen in the perfection of its beauty along the marshy shores of the Hudson and in the swamps of the Wallkill Valley.
When we learn that these flowers are called “long purples,” by the English country people, the scene of Ophelia’s tragic death rises before us:
There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream,