The TALL or SUMMER ANEMONE (A.Virginiana), called also THIMBLE-WEED from its oblong, thimble-like fruit-head, bears solitary, inconspicuous greenish or white flowers, often over an inch across, and generally with five rounded sepals, on erect, long stalks from June to August.Contrasted with the dainty tremulous little spring anemones, it is a rather coarse, stiff, hairy plant two or three feet tall.Its preference is for woodlands, whereas another summer bloomer, the LONG-FRUITEDANEMONE (A.cylindrica), a smaller, silky-hairy plant often confused with it, chooses open places, fields, and roadsides.The leaves of the thimble-weed, which are set in a whorl high up on the stem, and also spring from the root, after the true anemone fashion, are long petioled, three-parted, the divisions variously cut, lobed, and saw-edged.The flower-stalks which spring from this whorl continue to rise throughout the summer.The first, or middle of these peduncles, lacks leaves; later ones bear two leaves in the middle, from which more flower-stalks arise, and so on.
VIRGIN'S BOWER; VIRGINIA CLEMATIS; TRAVELLER'S JOY; OLD MAN'SBEARD
(Clematis Virginiana) Crowfoot family Flowers - White and greenish, about 1 in.across or less, in loose clusters from the axils.Calyx of 4 or 5 petal-like sepals;no petals; stamens and pistils numerous, of indefinite number;the staminate and pistillate flowers on separate plants; the styles feathery, and over 1 in.long in fruit.Stem: Climbing, slightly woody.Leaves: Opposite, slender petioled, divided into 3 pointed and widely toothed or lobed leaflets.
Preferred Habitat - Climbing over woodland borders, thickets, roadside shrubbery, fences, and walls; rich, moist soil.
Flowering Season - July-September.
Distribution - Georgia and Kansas northward less common beyond the Canadian border.
Fleecy white clusters of wild clematis, festooning woodland and roadside thickets, vary so much in size and attractiveness that one cannot but investigate the reason.Examination shows that comparatively few of the flowers are perfect, that is, few contain both stamens and pistils; the great majority are either male - the more showy ones - or female - the ones so conspicuous in fruit - and, like Quakers in meeting, the sexes are divided.
The plant that bears staminate blossoms produces none that are pistillate, and vice versa - another marvelous protection against that horror of the floral race, self-fertilization, and a case of absolute dependence on insect help to perpetuate the race.Since the clematis blooms while insect life is at its height, and after most, if not all, of the Ranunculaceae have withdrawn from the competition for trade; moreover, since its white color, so conspicuous in shady retreats, and its accessible nectar attract hosts of flies and the small, short-tongued bees chiefly, that are compelled to work for it by transferring pollen while they feed, it goes without saying that the vine is a winner in life's race.
Charles Darwin, who made so many interesting studies of the power of movement in various plants, devoted special attention to the clematis clan, of which about one hundred species exist but, alas! none to our traveller's joy, that flings out the right hand of good fellowship to every twig within reach, winds about the sapling in brotherly embrace, drapes a festoon of flowers from shrub to shrub, hooks even its sensitive leafstalks over any available support as it clambers and riots on its lovely way.By rubbing the footstalk of a young leaf with a twig a few times on any side, Darwin found a clematis leaf would bend to that side in the course of a few hours, but return to the straight again if nothing remained on which to hook itself."To show how sensitive the young petioles are," he wrote, "I may mention that I just touched the undersides of two with a little watercolor which, when dry, formed an excessively thin and minute crust but this sufficed in twenty-four hours to cause both to bend downwards."In early autumn, when the long, silvery, decorative plumes attached to a ball of seeds form feathery, hoary masses even more fascinating than the flower clusters, the name of old man's beard is most suggestive.These seeds never open, but, when ripe, each is borne on the autumn gales, to sink into the first moist, springy resting place.
The English counterpart of our virgin's bower is fragrant.
TALL MEADOW-RUE
(Thalictrum polyganum; T.Cornuti of Gray) Crowfoot family Flowers - Greenish white, the calyx of 4 or 5 sepals, falling early; no petals; numerous white, thread-like, green-tipped stamens, spreading in feathery tufts, borne in large, loose, compound terminal clusters 1 ft.long or more.Stem: Stout, erect, 3 to 11 ft.high, leafy, branching above.Leaves: Arranged in threes, compounded of various shaped leaflets, the lobes pointed or rounded, dark above, paler below.
Preferred Habitat- Open sunny swamps, beside sluggish water, low meadows.
Flowering Season - July-September.
Distribution - Quebec to Florida, westward to Ohio.
Masses of these soft, feathery flowers, towering above the ranker growth of midsummer, possess an unseasonable, ethereal, chaste, spring-like beauty.On some plants the flowers are white and exquisite; others, again, are dull and coarser.Why is this?
