The GINSENG (Panax quinquefolium; Aralia quinquefolia of Gray) found in rich woods from Quebec to Alabama, and westward to Nebraska - that is, where found at all, for much hunting has all but exterminated it in many regions - bears a solitary umbel of small yellowish-green, five-parted, polygamous flowers in July and August at the end of a smooth stem about a foot high. Bright crimson berries follow the clusters on the female plants in early autumn. Three long-petioled leaves, which grow in a whorl at the top of the low stem, are palmately divided into five thin, ovate, pointed, and irregularly toothed leaflets. But it is the deep fusiform root, simple or branched, about which the Americanized Chinese, at least, are most concerned. For centuries Chinese physicians have ascribed miraculous virtues to the Manchurian ginseng. Not only can it remove fatigue and restore lost powers, but by its use veterans became frisky youths again according to these wise men of the East. In short, they consider it the panacea for all ills (Panax: pan = all, akos = remedy) - the source of immortality. Naturally the roots were and are in great demand, especially such as branch so as to resemble the human form. (Both the Chinese name Schin-sen, and Garan-toguen, the Indian one, are said to mean like a man. Here is an interesting clue for the ethnologists to follow !) Imperial edict prohibited the Chinese from digging up their native plant lest it be exterminated. So Jesuit missionaries, who discovered our similar ginseng, were not slow in exporting it to China when it was literally worth its weight in gold. Indeed, it is always sold by weight - a fact on which the heathen Chinee "with ways that are dark and tricks that are vain" not infrequently relies. Chinamen, who gather large quantities in our Western States to sell to the wholesale druggists for export, sometimes drill holes into the largest roots, pour in melted lead, and plug up the drills so ingeniously that druggists refuse to pay for a Chinaman's diggings until they have handled and weighed each root separately.
The DWARF GINSENG, OR GROUND NUT (P. trifolium; Aralia trifolia of Gray) whose little white flowers are clustered in feathery, fluffy balls above the whorl of three compound leaves in April and May, chooses low thickets and moist woods for its habitat - often in the same neighborhood with its larger relative. Yellowish berries follow the fragrant white pompons. One must burrow deep, like the rabbits, to find its round, pungent, sweet, nut-like root, measuring about half an inch across, which few have ever seen.
WILD CARROT; QUEEN ANNE'S LACE; BIRD'S-NEST
(Daucus Carota) Carrot family
Flowers - Small, of unequal sizes (polygamous), white, rarely pinkish gray, 5-parted, in a compound, flat, circular umbel, the central floret often dark crimson; the umbels very concave in fruit. An involucre of narrow, pinnately cut bracts. Stem: 1 to 3 ft. high, with stiff hairs; from a deep, fleshy, conic root. Leaves: Cut into fine, fringy divisions; upper ones smaller and less dissected. Preferred Habitat - Wastelands, fields, roadsides. Flowering Season - June-September. Distribution - Eastern half of United States and Canada. Europe and Asia.
A pest to farmers, a joy to the flower lover, and a welcome signal for refreshment to hosts of flies, beetles, bees, and wasps, especially to the paper-nest builders, the sprangly wild carrot lifts its fringy foliage and exquisite lacy, blossoms above the dry soil of three continents. From Europe it has come to spread its delicate wheels over our summer landscape, until whole fields are whitened by them east of the Mississippi. Having proved fittest in the struggle for survival in the fiercer competition of plants in the over-cultivated Old World, it takes its course of empire westward year by year, Finding most favorable conditions for colonizing in our vast, uncultivated area; and the less aggressive, native occupants of our soil are only too readily crowded out. Would that the advocates of unrestricted immigration of foreign peasants studied the parallel examples among floral invaders!
What is the secret of the wild carrots' triumphal march? As usual, it is to be sought chiefly in the flower's scheme to attract and utilize visitors. Nectar being secreted in open disks near to one another, the shortest-tongued insects can lick it up from the Umbelliferae with even less loss of time than from the tubular florets of the Cornpositae. Over sixty distinct species of insects may be taken on the wild carrot by any amateur, since it blooms while insect life is at its height but, as might be expected, the long-tongued and color-loving, specialized bees and butterflies do not often waste time on florets so easily drained by the mob. Ants find the stiff hairs on the stem disagreeable obstacles to pilfering; but no visitors seem to object to the flowers' suffocating odor.
One of these lacy, white umbels must be examined under a lens before its delicate structure and perfection of detail can be appreciated. Naturally a visitor is attracted first by the largest, most showy florets situated around the outer edge of the wheel, on which he leaves pollen, brought from another umbel; and any vitalizing dust remaining on his under side may be left on the less conspicuous hermaphrodite blossoms as he makes his way toward the center, where the tiny, pollen-bearing florets are grouped. From the latter, as he flies away, he will carry fresh pollen to the outer row of florets on another umbel, and so on - at least this is the usual and highly advantageous method. After general fertilization, the slender flower-stalks curl inward, and the umbel forms a hollow nest that gradually contracts as it dries, almost, if not quite, closing at the top, albeit the fiction that bees and spiders make their home in the seeding umbels circulates freely.
Still another fiction is that the cultivated carrot, introduced to England by the Dutch in Queen Elizabeth's reign, was derived from this wild species. Miller, the celebrated English botanist and gardener, among many others, has disproved this statement by utterly failing again and again to produce an edible vegetable from this wild root. When cultivation of the garden carrot lapses for a few generations, it reverts to the ancestral type -a species quite distinct from Daucus Carota.
SMOOTHER SWEET CICELY
(Washingtonia longistylis; Osmorrhiza longistylis of Gray)
Carrot family
Flowers - Small, white, 5-parted; in few rayed, long-peduncled umbels, with small bracts below them. Stem: 1 1/2 to 3 ft. high, branching, from thick, fleshy, fragrant, edible roots. Leaves: Lower ones often very large, long-petioled, thrice-compound, and again divided, the leaflets ovate, pointed, deeply toothed, slightly downy; upper leaves less compound, nearly sessile. Preferred Habitat - Rich, moist woods and thickets. Flowering Season - May-June. Distribution - Nova Scotia to the Carolinas, westward to Dakota.