Next to the albinos the instances where the floral parts approach leaves in size and color are the most common. A few weeks ago while passing through a field once devoted to corn, but now overgrown with weeds, and therefore of special interest to a botanist, my eyes fell upon a daisy plant all the heads of which were with olive-green ray flowers instead of the ordinary pure white ones. These rays were smaller than the normal and quite inclined to roll, as shown in Fig. 1, and form quills, as seen in some of the fancy chrysanthemums. By the way, our common field daisy is a genuine chrysanthemum, and that which is produced in one species under the guiding, fostering hand of the skilled gardener was here shadowed forth in the field of waste land.
Fig. 1.—Green and Normal Oxeye Daisy Heads.
A week or so later, while going through a similar field in an adjoining county to the one where the daisy freak was found, I came upon nearly the same thing as seen in the heads of the "black-eyed Susan," or cone flower (Rudbeckia hirta L.). Here were the two leading weedy daisies, the white and the yellow, the former coming to our fields from the East and across the sea, while the latter, as a native of our Western prairies, journeys to make a home here and help to compensate by its pestiferous presence for the vile weeds that have gone West with the advance of civilization. Both of these daisies revealed that tendency in them to vary in their floral structures that if made use of by the floriculturist might result in forms and colors as attractive and profitable as met with in their cousins the chrysanthemums of the Orient.
Perhaps the season which we have had, with its excess of moisture and superheat, has made the abnormal forms more abundant than usual. The even current of life has been met by counter streams, so to say, and the channels were broken down. In walking through a meadow in early June it was a common thing to find the spikes of the narrow-leaved plantain (Plantago lanceolata L.) branched and compounded into curious shapes. Some of the normal and malformed spikes are shown in Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.—Malformed Heads of Plantago Lanceolata.
As a tailpiece to this portion of the subject it is a pleasure to introduce a freak among the native orchards, as shown in Fig. 3. A word of explanation is needed of the normal form of the lady's slipper here shown. As found in the moist woods, the plant above ground consists of two leaves and a single pink and strange-looking blossom terminating the stalk. This is the rule, and it has been strictly adhered to, so far as the writer knows, for centuries with a single exception, and that exception is the one here presented. It is as remarkable as a double-headed dog, and as difficult of explanation as the twin thumb.
Fig. 3.—A Twin-Flowered Cypripedium Acaule (Ait.).