In this family we find the common catnip and pennyroyal, the pretty ground ivy, and the handsome bee balm (Pl. LXXXII.).
Mustard Family.—The Mustard family is one which is abundantly represented in waste places everywhere by the little shepherd’s purse or pickpocket, and along the roadsides by the yellow mustard, wild radish, and winter-cress (Pl. XLII.).
Its members may be recognized by their alternate leaves, their biting harmless juice, and by their white, yellow, or purplish flowers, the structure of which at once betrays the family to which they belong.
The calyx of these flowers is divided into four sepals. The four petals are placed opposite each other in pairs, their spreading blades forming a cross which gives the Order its Latin name Cruciferæ. There are usually six stamens, two of which are inserted lower down than the others. The single pistil becomes in fruit a pod. Many of the Mustards are difficult of identification without a careful examination of their pods and seeds.
Orchis Family.—To the minds of many the term orchid only suggests a tropical air-plant, which is rendered conspicuous either by its beauty or by its unusual and noticeable structure.
This impression is, perhaps, partly due to the rude print in some old text-book which endeared itself to our childish minds by those startling and extravagant illustrations which are responsible for so many shattered illusions in later life; and partly to the various exhibitions of flowers in which only the exotic members of this family are displayed.
Consequently, when the dull clusters of the ragged fringed orchis, or the muddy racemes of the coral-root, or even the slender, graceful spires of the ladies’ tresses are brought from the woods or roadside and exhibited as one of so celebrated a tribe, they are usually viewed with scornful incredulity, or, if the authority of the exhibitor be sufficient to conquer disbelief, with unqualified disappointment. The marvellous mechanism which is exhibited by the humblest member of the Orchis family, and which suffices to secure the patient scrutiny and wondering admiration of the scientist, conveys to the uninitiated as little of interest or beauty as would a page of Homer in the original to one without scholarly attainments.
The uprooting of a popular theory must be the work of years, especially when it is impossible to offer as a substitute one which is equally capable of being tersely defined and readily apprehended; for many seem to hold it a righteous principle to cherish even a delusion till it be replaced by a belief which affords an equal amount of satisfaction. It is simpler to describe an orchid as a tropical air-plant which apes the appearance of an insect and never roots in the ground than it is to master by patient study and observation the various characteristics which so combine in such a plant as to make it finally recognizable and describable. Unfortunately, too, the enumeration of these unsensational details does not appeal to the popular mind, and so fails to win by its accuracy the place already occupied by the incorrect but pleasing conception of an orchid.
For the benefit of those who wish to be able to correctly place these curious and interesting flowers, as brief a description as seems compatible with their recognition is appended.
Leaves.—Alternate, parallel-nerved.