"There are many things left for May," says John Burroughs, "but nothing fairer, if as fair, as the first flower, the hepatica. I find I have never admired this little firstling half enough. When at the maturity of its charms, it is certainly the gem of the woods. What an individuality it has! No two clusters alike; all shades and sizes…. A solitary blue-purple one, fully expanded and rising over the brown leaves or the green moss, its cluster of minute anthers showing like a group of pale stars on its little firmament, is enough to arrest and hold the dullest eye. Then,…there are individual hepaticas, or individual families among them, that are sweet scented. The gift seems as capricious as the gift of genius in families. You cannot tell which the fragrant ones are till you try them. Sometimes it is the large white ones, sometimes the large purple ones, sometimes the small pink ones. The odor is faint and recalls that of the sweet violets. A correspondent, who seems to have carefully observed these fragrant hepaticas, writes me that this gift of odor is constant in the same plant; that the plant which bears sweet-scented flowers this year will bear them next."
It is not evident that insect aid is necessary to transfer the tiny, hairy spiral ejected from each cell of the antherid, after it has burst from ripeness, to the canal of the flask-shaped organ at whose base the germ-cell is located. Perfect flowers can fertilize themselves. But pollen-feeding flies, and female hive bees which collect it, and the earliest butterflies trifle about the blossoms when the first warm days come. Whether they are rewarded by finding nectar or not is still a mooted question. Possibly the papillae which cover the receptacle secrete nectar, for almost without exception the insect visitors thrust their proboscides down between the spreading filaments as if certain of a sip. None merely feed on the pollen except the flies and the hive bee.
The SHARP-LOBED LIVER-LEAF (Hepatica acuta) differs chiefly from the preceding in having the ends of the lobes of its leaves and the tips of the three leaflets that form its involucre quite sharply pointed. Its range, while perhaps not actually more westerly, appears so, since it is rare in the East, where its cousin is so abundant; and common in the West, where the round-lobed liver-leaf is scarce. It blooms in March and April. Professor Halsted has noted that this species bears staminate flowers on one plant and pistillate flowers on another; whereas the Hepatica Hepatica usually bears flowers of both sexes above the same root. The blossoms, which close at night to keep warm, and open in the morning, remain on the beautiful plant for a long time to accommodate the bees and flies that, in this case, are essential to the perpetuation of the species.
PURPLE VIRGIN'S BOWER
(Atragene Americana) Crowfoot family
Flowers - Showy, purplish blue, about 3 in. across; 4 sepals, broadly expanded, thin, translucent, strongly veined, very large, simulating petals; petals small, spoon-shaped; stamens very numerous ; styles long, persistent, plumed throughout. Stem: Trailing or partly climbing with the help of leafstalks and leaflets. Leaves: Opposite, compounded of 3 egg-shaped, pointed leaflets on slender petioles. Preferred Habitat - - Rocky woodlands. Flowering Season - May-June. Distribution - Hudson Bay westward, south to Minnesota and Virginia.
The day on which one finds this rare and beautiful flower in some rocky ravine high among the hills or mountains becomes memorable to the budding botanist. At an elevation of three thousand feet in the Catskills it trails its way over the rocks, fallen trees, and undergrowth of the forest, suggesting some of the handsome Japanese species introduced by Sieboldt and Fortune to Occidental gardens. No one who sees this broadly expanded blossom could confuse it either with the thick and bell-shaped purple LEATHER-FLOWER (C. Viorna), so exquisitely feathery in fruit, that grows in rich, moist soil from Pennsylvania southward and westward; or with the far more graceful and deliciously fragrant purple MARSH CLEMATIS (C. crispa) of our Southern States. The latter, though bell-shaped also, has thin, recurved sepals, and its persistent styles are silky, not feathery at seed-time.
ORPINE; LIVE-FOREVER; MIDSUMMER-MEN; LIVE-LONG; PUDDING-BAG
PLANT; GARDEN STONECROP; WITCHES' MONEY
(Sedum Telephium) Orpine family
Flowers - Dull purplish, very pale or bright reddish purple in close, round, terminal clusters, each flower 1/3 in. or less across, 5-parted, the petals twice as long as the sepals; 10 stamens, alternate ones attached to petals; pistils 4 or 5. Stem: 2 ft. high or less, erect, simple, in tufts, very smooth, pale green, juicy, leafy. Leaves: Alternate, oval, slightly scalloped, thick, fleshy, smooth, juicy, pale gray green, with stout midrib, seated on stalk. Preferred Habitat - Fields, waysides, rocky soil, originally escaped from gardens. Flowering Season - June- September. Distribution - Quebec westward, south to Michigan and Maryland.
Children know the live-forever, not so well by the variable flower - for it is a niggardly bloomer - as by the thick leaf that they delight to hold in the mouth until, having loosened the membrane, they are able to inflate it like a paper bag. Sometimes dull, sometimes bright, the flower clusters never fail to attract many insects to their feast, which is accessible even to those of short tongues. Each blossom is perfect in itself, i.e., it contains both stamens and pistils; but to guard against self-fertilization it ripens its anthers and sheds its pollen on the insects that carry it away to older flowers before its own stigmas mature and become susceptible to imported pollen. After the seed-cases take on color, they might be mistaken for blossoms.
As if the plant did not already possess enough popular names, it needs must share with the European goldenrod and our common mullein the title of Aaron's rod. Sedere, to sit, the root of the generic name, applies with rare appropriateness to this entire group that we usually find seated on garden walls, rocks, or, in Europe, even on the roofs of old buildings. Rooting freely from the joints, our plant forms thrifty tufts where there is little apparent nourishment; yet its endurance through prolonged drought is remarkable. Long after the farmer's scythe, sweeping over the roadside, has laid it low, it thrives on the juices stored up in fleshy leaves and stem until it proves its title to the most lusty of all folk names.