It is the densely bearded, yellow, fifth stamen (pente =five, stemon = a stamen) which gives this flower its scientific name and its chief interest to the structural botanist. From the fact that a blossom has a lip in the center of the lower half of its corolla, that an insect must use as its landing place, comes the necessity for the pistil to occupy a central position. Naturally, a fifth stamen would be only in its way, an encumbrance to be banished in time. In the figwort, for example, we have seen the fifth stamen reduced, from long sterility, to a mere scale on the roof of the corolla tube in other lipped flowers, the useless organ has disappeared; but in the beard-tongue, it goes through a series of curious curves from the upper to the under side of the flower to get out of the way of the pistil. Yet it serves an admirable purpose in helping close the mouth of the flower, which the hairy lip alone could not adequately guard against pilferers. A long-tongued bee, thrusting in his head up to his eyes only, receives the pollen in his face. The blossom is male (staminate) in its first stage and female (pistillate) in its second. While this is the beard-tongue commonly found in the Eastern United States, particularly southward, and one of the most beautiful of its clan, the western species have been selected by the gardeners for hybridizing into those more showy, but often less charming, flowers now quite extensively cultivated. Several varieties of these, having escaped from gardens in the East, are locally common wild. The LARGE-FLOWERED BEARD-TONGUE (P. grandiflorus), one of the finest prairie species, whose lavender-blue, bell-shaped corolla is abruptly dilated above the calyx, measures nearly two inches long. Its sterile filament, curved over at the summit, is bearded there only. Handsomest of all is the COBEA BEARD-TONGUE, a native of the Southwest, with a broadly rounded, bell-shaped corolla, hairy without, like the leaves, but smooth within. The pale purple blossom, delicately suffused with yellow, and pencilled with red lines - pathfinders for the bees - has the base of its tube creamy white. Few flowers hang from each stout clammy spike. The more densely crowded spikes of the large SMOOTH BEARD-TONGUE (P. glaber), a smaller blue or purple flowered, narrower-leaved species, that shows an unusual preference for moist soil throughout its range, is, like the other beard-tongues mentioned, better known to the British gardener, perhaps, than to Americans, who have yet to learn the value of many of their wild flowers under cultivation.