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
The long, white, trumpet-shape type of lily chooses for her lover
the sphinx moth. For him she wears a spotless white robe -
speckles would be superfluous - that he may see it shine in the
dusk, when colored flowers melt into the prevailing blackness;
for him she breathes forth a fragrance almost overwhelming at
evening, to guide him to her neighborhood from afar; in
consideration of his very long, slender tongue she hides her
sweets so deep that none may rob him of it, taking the additional
precaution to weld her six once separate parts together into a
solid tube lest any pilferer thrust in his tongue from the side.
The common orange-tan DAY LILY (Hemerocallis fulva) and the
commoner speckled, orange-red TIGER LILY (L. tigrinum) are not
slow in seizing opportunities to escape from gardens into
roadsides and fence corners.
YELLOW ADDER'S TONGUE; TROUT LILY; DOG-TOOTH "VIOLET"
(Erythronium Americanum) Lily family
Flower - Solitary, pale russet yellow, rarely tinged with purple,
slightly fragrant, 1 to 2 in. long, nodding from the summit of a
footstalk 6 to 12 in. high, or about as tall as the leaves.
Perianth bell-shaped, of 6 petal-like, distinct segments,
spreading at tips, dark spotted within; 6 stamens; the
club-shaped style with 3 short, stigmatic ridges. Leaves: 2,
unequal, grayish green, mottled and streaked with brown or all
green, oblong, 3 to 8 in. long, narrowing into clasping petioles.
Preferred Habitat - Moist open woods and thickets, brooksides.
Flowering Season - March-May
Distribution - Nova Scotia to Florida, westward to the
Mississippi.
Colonies of these dainty little lilies, that so often grow beside
leaping brooks where and when the trout hide, justify at least
one of their names; but they have nothing in common with the
violet or a dog's tooth. Their faint fragrance rather suggests a
tulip; and as for the bulb, which in some of the lily-kin has
tooth-like scales, it is in this case a smooth, egg-shaped corm,
producing little round offsets from its base. Much fault is also
found with another name on the plea that the curiously mottled
and delicately pencilled leaves bring to mind, not a snake's
tongue, but its skin, as they surely do. Whoever sees the sharp
purplish point of a young plant darting above ground in earliest
spring, however, at once sees the fitting application of adder's
tongue. But how few recognize their plant friends at all seasons
of the year!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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