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
Fuzzy, bright white foam-flowers are most conspicuous in the
forest when seen against their unevenly colored leaves that
carpet the ground. A relative, the TRUE MITERWORT or BISHOP'S CAP
(Mittella diphylla), with similar foliage, except that two
opposite leaves may be found almost seated near the middle of its
hairy stem, has its flowers rather distantly scattered on the
raceme, and their fine petals deeply cut like fringe. Both
species may be found in bloom at the same time, offering an
opportunity for comparison to the confused novice. Now, tiarella,
meaning a little tiara, and mitella, a little miter, refer, of
course, to the odd forms of their seed-cases; but all of us are
not gifted with the imaginative eyes of Linnaeus, who named the
plants. Xenophon's assertion that the royal tiara or turban of
the Persians was encircled with a crown helps us no more to see
what Linnaeus saw in the one case than the fact that the papal
miter is encircled by three crowns helps in the other. And as for
the lofty, two-peaked cap worn by bishops in the Roman Church, a
dozen plants, with equal propriety, might be said to wear it.
CAROLINA GRASS OF PARNASSUS
(Parnassia Caroliniana) Saxifrage family
Flowers - Creamy white, delicately veined with greenish,
solitary, 1 in. broad or over, at the end of a scape 8 in. to 2
ft. high, 1 ovate leaf clasping it. Calyx deeply 5-lobed; corolla
of 5 spreading, parallel veined petals; 5 fertile stamens
alternating with them, and 3 stout imperfect stamens clustered at
base of each petal; 1 very short pistil with 4 stigmas. Leaves:
>From the root, on long petioles, broadly oval or rounded,
heart-shaped at base, rather thick.
Preferred Habitat - Wet ground, low meadows, swamps.
Flowering Season - July-September.
Distribution - New Brunswick to Virginia, west to Iowa.
What's in a name? Certainly our common grass of Parnassus, which
is no grass at all, never starred the meadows round about the
home of the Muses, nor sought the steaming savannas of the
Carolinas. The European counterpart (P. palustris), fabled to
have sprung up on Mount Parnassus, is at home here only in the
Canadian border States and northward.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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