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
In light, dry, rocky woods, from North Carolina and Minnesota,
far northward, grows the common MAPLE-LEAVED ARROW-WOOD or
DOCKMACKIE (V. acerifolium), which one might easily mistake for a
maple sapling when it is not in flower or fruit. All the blossoms
in its slender peduncled, flat-topped, white clusters are
perfect; none are sterile for advertising purposes merely, as in
the cases of so many of its relatives. The five stamens protrude
from each five-lobed little flower for plain reasons. The
opposite leaves are broadly ovate, three-ribbed, three-lobed,
coarsely toothed, acute at the tip, and, except for their soft
hairiness underneath, are too like maple leaves to be mistaken.
In autumn, when they take on rich tints, and the clusters of
"berries" become first crimson, then nearly black, the shrub is a
delight to see.
To become familiar with one of the Viburnum bushes is to
recognize any member of the tribe when in blossom or fruit, for
all spread more or less flattened, compound cymes of white
flowers in late spring or early summer, followed by red or very
dark "berries" (drupes); but it is on the leaves that we depend
to name a species. The opposite, slender petioled, pale leaves of
the ARROW-WOOD or MEALY-TREE (V. dentalum), have no lobes; but
are ovate, coarsely toothed, pointed at the tip, prominently
pinnately veined. All the flowers in a cyme are perfect; and the
drupes, which are at first blue, become nearly black when fully
ripe. In moist, or even wet, ground, from the Georgia mountains,
western New York, and Minnesota far northward, this smooth,
slender, gray shrub is found. Its wood once furnished the Indians
with arrows.
A much lower growing, but similar, bush, the DOWNY-LEAVED
ARROW-WOOD (V. pubescens), formerly counted a mere variety of the
preceding, may be known by the velvety down on the under side of
its leaves. It grows in rocky, wooded places, often on some high
bank above a stream. Beetles and the less specialized bees visit
the flat-topped flower clusters abundantly in May. Short-tongued
visitors quickly lick up the abundant nectar secreted at the base
of each little style, cross-fertilizing their entertainers as
they journey across the cyme. So widely do the anthers diverge,
that pollen must often drop on the stigma of a neighboring
floret, and quite as often a flower is likely to be
self-fertilized through the curvature of the filaments.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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