The buttercup, as we have seen, is made up of four circles, each composed of several distinct parts.
A flower with several petals is called polypetalous.
Other flowers have but one petal; they are styled monopetalous. In fact, in such one-petaled flowers a number of petals have simply grown together. Let us take the morning-glory as an example. Pull off the calyx; it comes off as a whole, but is cleft half way down into five lobes, showing that it is truly composed of five united petals. Now pull the corolla from another calyx cup; it comes as a whole, and is not cleft as the calyx is, but it has five stripes, and at each stripe the margin has a little point, and we can make out very plainly that here are five prettily-pointed petals united into one, with a long tube made of the claws, and a beautiful wide margin made of the banners. Four-o’clocks, stramonium, Canterbury bells, phlox, and many other flowers have these one-petaled corollas. Such corollas differ greatly in shape, owing to the length and diameter of the tube and margin.
In the polypetalous corollas we have the rich splendors of roses, from single to the fullest double, where cultivation has changed all stamens and pistils into petals. The polypetalous tribe give us also the lovely, perfume-filled chalices of the lilies; the peas, with their many-colored banners; the charming violets, with their spurred petals; the columbine, with its horns of plenty.
Color of some kind is one of the distinguishing features of blossoms.
Fragrance is another marked characteristic of plants, and is chiefly in the flower.
There are plenty of scentless plants, yet the majority are full of perfume. Some few have a very disagreeable smell. Fragrance in plants comes from certain oils or resin laid up in different parts of the plant, whether in the leaves, bark, wood, fruit, seeds, or blossoms.
In the month of May flowers crowd upon us in numbers so great that we are at a loss for a time to study them. Even if April has been cold, the matchless arbutus has found time to bloom above last year’s protecting leaves and has passed away, leaving only a memory of its fragrance and rosy beauty. The dandelions—jolly, popular, child-beloved gold of the spring—have bloomed, and in May the grass is covered with their delicate clocks; we still, in early May, find the oxalis almost making a carpet for the pasture lands or sunny hillsides. When the oxalis grows in damp shade its flowers and leaves are larger and of a deeper color, but the blossoms are fewer. The leaf of the oxalis is three-divided, like the coarser leaf of the clover.
Some hold that it was the oxalis and not the shamrock leaf which good St. Patrick took to prove the possibility of Trinity—one in three. Some think that really the oxalis and not the clover was the shamrock of the ancient Irish.
May brings us an abundance of wild violets; the blue violets and the beautiful tri-colored pansies come in April, but the blue violets linger, growing larger and richer, while their cousins, the dainty white and the branching yellow violets, appear in the cool, damp woods. The wild violets are scentless, except for the spicy “woods odor” that seems to hang about all wild flowers.