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 open, rocky places, moist or dry, the CLAMMY EVERLASTING,
SWEET BALSAM, OR WINGED CUDWEED (Gnaphalium decurrens) prefers to
dwell. A wholesome fragrance, usually mingled with that of sweet
fern, pervades its neighborhood. Its yellowish-white little
flower-heads clustered at the top of an erect stem, and its pale
sage-green leaves, densely woolly beneath, the lower ones seeming
to run along the stem, need no further description: every one
knows the common everlasting. Its right to the Greek generic
name, meaning a lock of wool, no one will dispute. From
Pennsylvania and Arizona, north to Nova Scotia and British
Columbia, its amaranthine flowers are displayed from July to
September, the staminate and the pistillate heads on distinct
plants. Many insect visitors approach the flowers; some, like the
bees, are working for them in transferring pollen; others, like
the ants, which are trying to steal nectar, usually getting
killed on the sticky, cottony stem; and, hovering near, ever
conspicuous among the larger visitors, is the beautiful hunter's
butterfly (Pyrameis huntera), to be distinguished from its sister
the painted lady, always seen about thistles, by the two large
eye-like spots on the under side of the hind wings. What are
these butterflies doing about their chosen plants? Certainly the
minute florets of the everlasting offer no great inducements to a
creature that lives only on nectar. But that cocoon, compactly
woven with silk and petals, which hangs from the stem, tells the
story of the hunter's butterfly's presence. A brownish-drab
chrysalis, or a slate-colored and black-banded little caterpillar
with tufts of hairs on its back, and pretty red and white dots on
the dark stripes, shows our butterfly in the earlier stages of
its existence, when the everlastings form its staple diet.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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