The second Larinus, the Bear, begins to vary her flora to some extent. I know that she has two establishments: the corymbed carlina in the plain and the acanthus-leaved carlina on the slopes of Mont Ventoux.[7]
To those who stop at the general aspect and do not have recourse to delicate floral analyses, the two plants have nothing in common. The countryman, clever though he be at distinguishing one plant from another, would never think of calling the two by the same generic name. As for the civilized townsman, unless he be a botanist, don’t speak of him: his testimony here would be worse than useless.
The corymbed carlina has a tall, slender stem; thin, sparse leaves; a bunch of average flowers, with a receptacle less than half the size of an acorn. The acanthus-leaved carlina spreads, level with the soil, a large, fierce rosette of broad leaves which in shape is not unlike the ornament of a Corinthian capital. There is no stem. In the centre of the leaf-cluster is a flower, one only, but a giant, big as a man’s fist.
The people of Mont Ventoux call this magnificent thistle the ‘mountain artichoke.’ They gather it and use the base of the flower in making omelettes not devoid of merit; this base is very fleshy, is saturated in milk with a nutty flavour and is delicious even when raw. [[67]]
Sometimes they use the plant as an hygrometer. Nailed to the lintel of the byre, the carlina closes its flower when the air is moist and opens it in a superb sun of golden scales when the air is dry. With beauty added, it is the inverse equivalent of the celebrated rose of Jericho, an unsightly bundle which expands in wet and shrivels in dry weather. If the rustic hygrometer were a foreigner, it would be famous; being an ordinary product of Mont Ventoux, it is slighted.
The Larinus, for her part, knows it very well, not as a meteorological apparatus, a very useless thing to her for foretelling the weather, but as provender for her family. Many a time, on my excursions in July and August, I have seen the Bear Weevil very busy on the mountain artichoke wide open in the sun. There is no doubt what she was doing there: she was attending to her eggs.
I regret that my then preoccupations, which were concerned with botany, did not permit me to observe the mother’s methods more closely. Does she lay several eggs in this rich morsel? There is enough to satisfy a numerous brood. Or does she lay only one, repeating here what she does on the corymbed carlina, a middling ration? There is nothing to tell us that the insect is not to some extent versed in domestic economy and does not proportion the number of the guests to the abundance of the provisions.
If this point is obscure, another and one of [[68]]greater interest is quite evident: the Bear Larinus is a clear-sighted botanist. She recognizes as carlina, the family food, two very dissimilar plants, which none of us, unless he were an expert, would have thought of grouping together; she accepts as botanical equivalents the gorgeous rosette, eighteen inches across, whose spokes lie on the ground, and the shabby-looking thistle that stands erect and spare.
The Spangled Larinus extends her domain still farther. Though she has not the fierce thistle with the white heads, she recognizes the good qualities of another vegetable horror, one with pink heads this time. This is the common horse-thistle (Cirsium lanceolatum, Scop.). The difference in the colour of the flowers causes her no hesitation.
Can she be apprised by the majestic stature, by the sturdy prickles? No, for we next see her established on a humble and much less savage plant, Carduus nigrescens, Vill., which rises hardly more than nine inches from the ground.