HERB ROBERT; RED ROBIN; RED SHANKS; DRAGON'S BLOOD
(Geranium Robertianum) Geranium family
Flowers - Purplish rose, about 1/2 in. across, borne chiefly in pairs on slender peduncles. Five sepals and petals; stamens 10; pistil with 5 styles. Stem: Weak, slender, much branched, forked, and spreading, slightly hairy, 6 to i8 in. high. Leaves: Strongly scented, opposite, thin, of 3 divisions, much subdivided and cleft. Fruit: Capsular, elastic, the beak 1 in. long, awn-pointed. Preferreed Habitat - Rocky, moist woods and shady roadsides Flowering Season - May-October Distribution - Nova Scotia to Pennsylvania, and westward to Missouri.
Who was the Robert for whom this his "holy herb" was named? Many suppose that he was St. Robert, a Benedictine monk, to whom the twenty-ninth of April - the day the plant comes into flower in Europe - is dedicated. Others assert that Robert Duke of Normandy, for whom the "Ortus Sanitatis," a standard medical guide for some hundred of years, was written, is the man honored; and since there is now no way of deciding the mooted question, we may take our choice.
Only when the stems are young are they green; later the plant well earns the name of red shanks, and when its leaves show crimson stains, of dragon's blood.
At any time the herb gives forth a disagreeable odor, but especially when its leaves and stem have been crushed until they emit a resinous secretion once an alleged cure for the plague. Flies, that never object to a noxious smell, constantly visit the flower, and have their tongues guided through passages between little ridge-like processes on each petal to the nectar secreted by the base of the filaments at the base of each sepal. To prevent self-fertilization the five stigmas are folded close together when the flower opens, nor do they spread apart and become receptive until after the outer row of anthers, then the inner row, have shed their pollen. When the elastic carpels have ripened their seed, bang! go the little guns, scattering them far and wide.
WHITE OR TRUE WOOD~SORREL; ALLELULA
(Oxalis acetosella) Wood-sorrel family
Flowers - White or delicate pink, veined with deep pink, about 1/2 in. long. Five sepals; 5 spreading petals rounded at tips; 10 stamens, 5 longer, 5 shorter, all anther-bearing; 1 pistil with 5 stigmatic styles. Scape: Slender, leafless, 1-flowered, 2 to 5 in, high. Leaf: Clover-like, of 3 leaflets, on long petioles from scaly, creeping rootstock. Preferred Habitat - Cold, damp woods. Flowering Season - May-July. Distribution - Nova Scotia and Manitoba, southward to North Carolina. Also a native of Europe.
Clumps of these delicate little pinkish blossoms and abundant leaves, cuddled close to the cold earth of northern forests, usually conceal near the dry leaves or moss from which they spring blind flowers that never open - cleistogamous the botanists call them - flowers that lack petals, as if they were immature buds; that lack odor, nectar, and entrance; yet they are perfectly mature, self-fertilized, and abundantly fruitful. Fifty-five genera of plants contain one or more species on which these peculiar products are found, the pea family having more than any other, although violets offer perhaps the most familiar instance to most of us. Many of these species bury their offspring below ground; but the wood-sorrel bears its blind flowers nodding from the top of a curved scape at the base of the plant, where we can readily find them. By having no petals, and other features assumed by an ordinary flower to attract insects, and chiefly in saving pollen, they produce seed with literally the closest economy. It is estimated that the average blind flower of the wood-sorrel does its work with four hundred pollen grains, while the prodigal peony scatters with the help of wind and insect visitors over three and a half millions!
Yet no plant, however economically inclined, can afford to deteriorate its species through self-fertilization; therefore, to overcome the evils of in-breeding, the wood-sorrel, like other plants that bear cleistogamous flowers, takes special pains to produce showy blossoms to attract insects, on which they absolutely depend to transfer their pollen from flower to flower. These have their organs so arranged as to make self-fertilization impossible.
Every child knows how the wood-sorrel "goes to sleep" by drooping its three leaflets until they touch back to back at evening, regaining the horizontal at sunrise - a performance most scientists now agree protects the peculiarly sensitive leaf from cold by radiation. During the day, as well, seedling, scape, and leaves go through some interesting movements, closely followed by Darwin in his "Power of Movement in Plants," which should be read by all interested.