Wild Flowers: An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and Their Insect VisitorsBlanchan, Neltje
Science
Wild Flowers: An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and Their Insect Visitors
Blanchan, Neltje
Wild flowers -- North America
Flowers - Buds and new flowers bright rose pink, afterward fading
white, and only lined with pink, 1 in. across, or less, numerous,
in terminal clusters. Calyx small, 5-parted, sticky corolla like
a 5-pointed saucer, with 10 projections on outside; 10 arching
stamens, an anther lodged in each projection; 1 pistil. Stem:
Shrubby, woody, stiffly branched, 2 to 20 ft. high. Leaves:
Evergreen, entire, oval to elliptic, pointed at both ends,
tapering into petioles. Fruit: A round, brown capsule, with the
style long remaining on it.
Preferred Habitat - Sandy or rocky woods, especially in hilly or
mountainous country.
Flowering Season - May-June.
Distribution - New Brunswick and Ontario, southward to the Gulf
of Mexico, and westward to Ohio.
It would be well if Americans, imitating the Japanese in making
pilgrimages to scenes of supreme natural beauty, visited the
mountains, rocky, woody hillsides, ravines, and tree-girt uplands
when the laurel is in its glory; when masses of its pink and
white blossoms, set among the dark evergreen leaves, flush the
landscape like Aurora, and are reflected from the pools of
streams and the serene depths of mountain lakes. Peter Kalm, a
Swedish pupil of Linnaeus, who traveled here early in the
eighteenth century, was more impressed by its beauty than that of
any other flower. He introduced the plant to Europe, where it is
known as kalmia, and extensively cultivated on fine estates that
are thrown open to the public during the flowering season. Even a
flower is not without honor, save in its own country. We have
only to prepare a border of leaf-mould, take up the young plant
without injuring the roots or allowing them to dry, hurry them
into the ground, and prune back the bush a little, to establish
it in our gardens, where it will bloom freely after the second
year.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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