Perhaps this plant never attains far inland the same luxuriance of growth which is common to it in some of the New England lowlands near the coast. Its radiant, nodding blossoms are seen in great profusion as we travel by rail from New York to Boston.
PLATE LXXX
WOOD LILY.—L. Philadelphicum.
Hound’s Tongue.
Cynoglossum officinale. Borage Family.
Stem.—Clothed with soft hairs. Leaves.—Alternate, hairy, the upper ones lance-shaped, clasping somewhat by a rounded or heart-shaped base. Flowers.—Purplish-red, growing in a curved raceme-like cluster which straightens as the blossoms expand. Calyx.—Five-parted. Corolla.—Funnel-form, five-lobed. Stamens.—Five. Pistil.—One. Fruit.—A large nutlet roughened with barbed or hooked prickles.
This coarse plant, whose disagreeable odor strongly suggests mice, is not only a troublesome weed in pasture-land but a special annoyance to wool-growers, as its prickly fruit adheres with pertinacity to the fleece of sheep. Its common name is a translation of its generic title and refers to the shape and texture of the leaves. The dull red flowers appear in summer.
Butterfly-weed. Pleurisy-root.
Asclepias tuberosa. Milkweed Family.
Stem.—Rough and hairy, one or two feet high, erect, very leafy, branching at the summit, without milky juice. Leaves.—Linear to narrowly lance-shaped. Flowers.—Bright orange-red, in flat-topped, terminal clusters, otherwise closely resembling those of the common milkweed (p. [192].) Fruit.—Two hoary erect pods, one of them often stunted.
Few if any of our native plants add more to the beauty of the midsummer landscape than the milkweeds, and of this family no member is more satisfying to the color-craving eye than the gorgeous butterfly-weed, whose vivid flower-clusters flame from the dry sandy meadows with such luxuriance of growth as to seem almost tropical. Even in the tropics one hardly sees anything more brilliant than the great masses of color made by these flowers along some of our New England railways in July, while farther south they are said to grow even more profusely. Its gay coloring has given the plant its name of butterfly-weed, while that of pleurisy-root arose from the belief that the thick, deep root was a remedy for pleurisy. The Indians used it as food and prepared a crude sugar from the flowers; the young seed-pods they boiled and ate with buffalo-meat. The plant is worthy of cultivation and is easily transplanted, as the fleshy roots when broken in pieces form new plants. Oddly enough, at the Centennial much attention was attracted by a bed of these beautiful plants which were brought from Holland. Truly, flowers like prophets are not without honor save in their own country.
