But usually several old corms - not always two, by any means - remain attached to the nearest one, a bulb being produced each year until Cain and Abel often join Adam and Eve to make up quite a family group. A strong, glutinous matter within the corms has been used as a cement, hence the plant's other popular name. From the newest bulb added, a solitary large leaf arises in late summer or autumn, to remain all winter. The flower stalk comes up at one side of it the following spring. Meantime the old corms retain their life, apparently to help nourish the young one still joined to them, while its system is taxed with flowering.
WILD GINGER; CANADA SNAKEROOT; ASARABACCA
(Asarum Canadense) Birthwort family
Flower - Solitary, dull purplish brown, creamy white within, about 1 in. broad when expanded, borne on a short peduncle close to or upon the ground. Calyx cup-shaped, deeply cleft, its 3 acutely pointed lobes spreading, curved; corolla wanting; 12 short, stout stamens inserted on ovary; the thick style 6-lobed, its stigmas radiating on the lobes. Leaves: A single pair, dark green, reniform, 4 to 7 in. broad, on downy petioles 6 to 12 in. high, from a creeping, thick, aromatic, pungent rootstock. Preferred Habitat - Rich, moist woods; hillsides. Flowering Season - March-May. Distribution - North Carolina, Missouri, and Kansas, northward, to New Brunswick and Manitoba.
Like the wicked servant who buried the one talent entrusted to his care, the wild ginger hides its solitary flower if not actually under the dry leaves that clothe the ground in the still leafless woodlands, then not far above them. Why? When most plants flaunt their showy blossoms aloft, where they may be seen of all, why should this one bear only one dull, firm cup, inconspicuous in color as in situation? In early spring - and it is one of the earliest flowers - gnats and small flies are warming into active life from the maggots that have lain under dead leaves and the bark of decaying logs all winter. To such guests a flower need offer few attractions to secure them in swarms. Bright, beautiful colors, sweet fragrance, luscious nectar, with which the highly specialized bees, butterflies, and moths are wooed, would all be lost on them, lacking as they do esthetic taste. For flies, a snug shelter from cold spring winds such as Jack-in-the-pulpit, the marsh calla, the pitcher-plant, or the skunk cabbage offers; sometimes a fetid odor like the latter's, or dull purplish red or brownish color resembling stale meat, which the purple trillium likewise wears as an additional attraction, are necessary when certain carrion flies must be catered to; and, above all, an abundance of pollen for food - with any or all of these seductions a flower dependent on flies has nothing to fear from neglect. Therefore the wild ginger does not even attempt to fertilize itself. Within the cozy cup one can usually find a contented fly seeking shelter or food. Close to the ground it is warm and less windy. When the cup first opens, only the stigmas are mature and sticky to receive any pollen the visitors may bring in on their bodies from other asylums where they have been hiding. These stigmas presently withering, up rise the twelve stamens beside them to dust with pollen the flies coming in search of it. Only one flower from a root compels cross-fertilizing between flowers of distinct plants - a means to insure the most vigorous seed, as Darwin proved. Evidently the ginger is striving to attain some day the ambitious mechanism for temporarily imprisoning its guests that its cousin the Dutchman's pipe has perfected. After fertilization the cup nods, inverted, and the leathery capsule following it bursts irregularly, discharging many seeds.
No ruminant will touch the leaves, owing to their bitter juices, nor will a grub or nibbling rodent molest the root, which bites like ginger; nevertheless credulous mankind once utilized the plant as a tonic medicine.
DUTCHMAN'S PIPE; PIPE-VINE
(Aristolochia macrophylla; A. Sipho of Gray))
Flower - An inflated, curved, yellowish-green, veiny tube (calyx), pipe-shaped, except that it abruptly broadens beyond the contracted throat into 3 flat, spreading, dark purplish or reddish-brown lobes; pipe 1 to 1 1/2 in. long, borne on a long, drooping peduncle, either solitary or 2 or 3 together, from the bracted leaf-axils; 6 anthers, without filaments, in united pairs under the 3 lobes of the short, thick stigma. Stem: A very long, twining vine, the branches smooth and green. Leaves: Thin, reniform to heart-shaped, slender petioled, downy underneath when young; 6 to 15 in. broad when mature. Fruit: An oblong, cylindric capsule, containing quantities of seeds within its six sections. Preferred Habitat - Rich, moist woods. Flowering Season - May-June. Distribution - Pennsylvania, westward to Minnesota, south to Georgia and Kansas. Escaped from cultivation further north.
After learning why the pitcher plant, Jack-in-the-pulpit, and skunk cabbage are colored and shaped as they are, no one will be surprised on opening this curious flower to find numbers of little flies within the pipe. Certain relatives of this vine produce flowers that are not only colored like livid, putrid meat around the entrance, but also emit a fetid odor to attract carrion flies especially. (See purple trillium.)
In May, when the pipe-vine blooms, gauzy-winged small flies and gnats gladly seek food and shelter from the wind within so attractive an asylum as the curving tube offers. They enter easily enough through the narrow throat, around which fine hairs point downward - an entrance resembling an eel trap's. Any pollen they may bring in on their bodies now rubs off on the sticky stigma lobes, already matured at the bottom of a newly opened flower, in which they buzz, crawl, slide, and slip, seeking an avenue of escape. None presents itself: they are imprisoned. The hairs at the entrance, approached from within, form an impenetrable stockade. Must the poor little creatures perish? Is the flower heartless enough to murder its benefactors, on which the continuance of its species depends? By no means is it so shortsighted! A few tiny drops of nectar exuding from the center table prevent the visitors from starving. Presently the fertilized stigmas wither, and when they have safely escaped the danger of self-fertilization, the pollen hidden under their lobes ripens and dusts afresh the little flies so impatiently awaiting the feast. Now, and not till now, it is to the advantage of the species that the prisoners be released, that they may carry the vitalizing dust to stigmas waiting for it in younger flowers. Accordingly, the slippery pipe begins to shrivel, thus offering a foothold; the once stiff hairs that guarded its exit grow limp, and the happy gnats, after a generous entertainment and snug protection, escape uninjured, and by no means unwilling to repeat the experience. Evidently the wild ginger, belonging to a genus next of kin, is striving to perfect a similar prison. In the language of the street, the ginger flower does not yet "work" its.visitors "for all they are worth."
Later, when we see the exquisite dark, velvety, blue-green, pipe-vine, swallow-tail butterfly (Papilio philenor) hovering about verandas or woodland bowers that are shaded with the pipe-vine's large leaves, we may know she is there only to lay eggs that her caterpillar descendants may find themselves on their favorite food store.