TRAILING BUSH CLOVER

(Lespedeza procumbens) Pea family Flowers - Purplish pink or violet, veined, the butterfly-shaped ones having standard petal, wings, and keel, clustered at end of peduncles; the minute flowers lacking a corolla, nearly sessile. Calyx of 5 slender, nearly equal lobes. Stems: Prostrate, trailing, or



sometimes ascending, woolly or downy, leafy. Leaves: Clover-like, trefoliate. Fruit: A very small, hairy, flat, rounded, acute pod. Preferred Habitat - Dry soil open, sandy places. Flowering Season - August-September. Distribution - Massachusetts to the Gulf, and westward to the Mississippi. Springing upward from a mass of clover-like leaves, these showy little blossoms elevate themselves to arrest, not our attention, but the notice of the passing bee. As the claw of the standard petal and the calyx are short, he need not have a long tongue to drain the nectary pointed out to him by a triangular white mark at the base of the banner. Now, as his weight depresses the incurved keel, wherein the vital organs are protected, the stigma strikes the visitor in advance of the anthers, so that pollen brought on his underside from another flower must come off on this one before he receives fresh pollen to transfer to a third blossom. At first the keel returns to its original position when depressed; later it loses its elasticity. But besides these showy flowers intended to be cross-fertilized by insects, the bush clovers bear, among the others, insignificant-looking, tightly closed, bud-like ones that produce abundant self-fertilized seed. The petaliferous flowers are simply to counteract the inevitable evils resulting from close inbreeding. One usually finds caterpillars of the "dusky wings" butterfly feeding on the foliage and the similar tick trefoils which are its staple. At night the bush clover leaves turn upward, completely changing the aspect of these plants as we know them by day. Michaux named the group of flowers for his patron, Lespedez, a governor of Florida under the Spanish regime. Perhaps the commonest of the tribe is the VIOLET BUSH CLOVER (L. violacea), a variable, branching, erect, or spreading plant, sometimes only a foot high, or again three times as tall. Its thin leaves are more elliptic than the decidedly clover-like ones of the preceding species; its rose-purple flowers are more loosely clustered, and the stems are only sparingly hairy, never woolly. On the top of the erect, usually unbranched, but very leafy stem of the WAND-LIKE BUSH CLOVER (L. frutescens), the two kinds of flowers grow in a crowded cluster, and more sparingly from the axils below. The clover-like leaflets, dark green and smooth above, are paler and hairy below. Like the rest of its kin, this bush clover delights in dry soil, particularly in open, sandy places near woods of pine and oak. One readily distinguishes the SLENDER BUSH CLOVER (L. Virginica) by the very narrowly oblong leaves along its wand, which bears two kinds of bright rose flowers, clustered at the top chiefly, and in the axils. Yellowish-white flowers, about a quarter of an inch long, and with a purplish-rose spot on the standard petal to serve as a pathfinder to the nectary, are crowded in oblong spikes an inch and a half long or less on the HAIRY BUSH CLOVER (L. hirta). The stem, which may attain four feet, or half that height, is usually branched; and the entire plant is often downy to the point of silkiness. Dense clusters of the yellowish-white flowers of the ROUND-HEADED BUSH CLOVER (L. capitata) are seated in the upper axils of the silvery-hairy, wand-like stem. Pink streaks at the base of the standard petal serve as pathfinders, and its infolded edges guide the bee's tongue straight to the opening in the stamen tube through which he sucks. WILD or SPOTTED GERANIUM or CRANE'S-BILL; ALUM-ROOT (Geranium maculatum) Geranium family Flowers - Pale magenta, purplish pink, or lavender, regular, 1 to 1 1/2 in. broad, solitary or a pair, borne on elongated peduncles, generally with pair of leaves at their base. Calyx of 5 lapping, pointed sepals; 5 petals, woolly at base; 10 stamens; pistil with 5 styles. Fruit: A slender capsule pointed like a crane's bill. In maturity it ejects seeds elastically far from the parent plant. Stem: 1 to 2 ft. high, hairy, slender, simple or branching above. Leaves: Older ones sometimes spotted with white; basal ones 3 to 6 in. wide, 3 to 5 parted, variously cleft and toothed; 2 stem leaves opposite. Preferred Habitat - Open woods, thickets, and shady roadsides. Flowering Season - April-July. Distribution - Newfoundland to Georgia, and westward a thousand miles. Sprengel, who was the first to exalt flowers above the level of mere botanical specimens, had his attention led to the intimate relationship existing between plants and insects by studying out the meaning of the hairy corolla of the common wild geranium of Germany (G. sylvaticum), being convinced, as he wrote in 1787, that "the wise Author of Nature has not made even a single hair without a definite design." A hundred years before, Nehemias Grew had said that it was necessary for pollen to reach the stigma of a flower in order that it might set fertile seed; and Linnaeus had to come to his aid with conclusive evidence to convince a doubting world that this was true. Sprengel made the next step forward, but his writings lay neglected over seventy years because he advanced the then incredible and only partially true statement that a flower is fertilized by insects which carry its pollen from its anthers to its stigma. In spite of his discoveries that the hairs inside the geranium's corolla protect its nectar from rain for the insect's benefit, just as eyebrows keep perspiration from falling into the eye; that most flowers which secrete nectar have what he termed "honey guides" - spots of bright color, heavy veining, or some such pathfinder on the petals - in spite of the most patient and scientific research that shed great light on natural selection a half-century before Darwin advanced the theory, he left it for the author of "The Origin of Species" to show that cross-fertilization - the transfer of pollen from one blossom to another, not from anthers to stigma of the same flower - is the great end to which so much marvelous mechanism is chiefly adapted. Cross-fertilized blossoms defeat self-fertilized flowers in the struggle for existence. No wonder Sprengel's theory was disproved by his scornful contemporaries in the very case of his wild geranium, which sheds its pollen before it has developed a stigma to receive any; therefore no insect that had not brought pollen from an earlier bloom could possibly fertilize this flower. How amazing that he did not see this! Our common wild crane's-bill, which also has lost the power to fertilize itself, not only ripens first the outer, then the inner, row of anthers, but actually drops them off after their pollen has been removed, to overcome the barest chance of self-fertilization as the stigmas become receptive. This is the geranium's and many other flowers' method to compel cross-fertilization by insects. In cold, stormy, cloudy weather a geranium blossom may remain in the male stage several days before becoming female; while on a warm, sunny day, when plenty of insects are flying, the change sometimes takes place in a few hours. Among others, the common sulphur or puddle butterfly, that sits in swarms on muddy roads and makes the clover fields gay with its bright little wings, pilfers nectar from the geranium without bringing its long tongue in contact with the pollen. Neither do the smaller bees and flies which alight on the petals necessarily come in contact with the anthers and stigmas. Doubtless the larger bees are the flowers' true benefactors. The so-called geraniums in cultivation are pelargoniums, strictly speaking. In barren soil, from Canada to the Gulf, and far westward, the CAROLINA CRANE'S-BILL (G. Carolinianum), an erect, much-branched little plant resembling the spotted geranium in general features, bears more compact clusters of pale rose or whitish flowers, barely half an inch across. As their inner row of anthers comes very close to the stigmas, spontaneous self-fertilization may sometimes occur; although in fine weather small bees, especially, visit them constantly. The beak of the seed vessel measures nearly an inch long.

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