BITTERBLOOM ROSEPINK SQUARESTEMMED SABBATIA ROSY CENTAURY

(Sabbatia angularis) Gentian family



Flowers - Clear rose pink, with greenish star in center, rarely

white, fragrant, 1 1/2 in. broad or less, usually solitary on

long peduncles at ends of branches. Calyx lobes very narrow;

corolla of 5 rounded segments; stamens 5; style 2-cleft. Stem:

Sharply 4-angled, 2 to 3 ft. high, with opposite branches, leafy.

Leaves: Opposite, 5-nerved, oval, tapering at tip, and clasping

stem by broad base.

Preferred Habitat - Rich soil, meadows, thickets.

Flowering Season - July-August.

Distribution - New York to Florida, westward to Ontario,

Michigan, and Indian Territory.



During the drought of midsummer the lovely rose-pink blooms

inland with cheerful readiness to adapt itself to harder

conditions than most of its moisture-loving kin will tolerate;

but it may be noticed that although we may oftentimes find it

growing in dry soil, it never spreads in such luxuriant clusters

as when the roots are struck beside meadow runnels and ditches.

Probably the plant would be commoner than it is about populous

Eastern districts were it not so much sought after as a tonic

medicine.



It was the Centaurea, represented here by the blue ragged sailor

of gardens, and not our Centaury, a distinctly American group of

plants, which, Ovid tells us, cured a wound in the foot of the

Centaur Chiron, made by an arrow hurled by Hercules.



Three exquisite members of the Sabbatia tribe keep close to the

Atlantic coast in salt meadows and marshes, along the borders of

brackish rivers, and very rarely in the sand at the edges of

fresh-water ponds a little way inland. From Maine to Florida they

range, and less frequently are met along the shores of the Gulf

of Mexico so far as Louisiana. How bright and dainty and are!

Whole meadows are radiant with their blushing lovliness. Probably

if they consented to live far away from the sea, they would lose

some of the deep, clear pink from out their lovely petals, since

all flowers show a tendency to brighten their colors as they

approach the coast. In England some of the same wildflowers we

have here are far deeper-hued, owing, no doubt to the fact that

they live on a sea-girt, moisture-laden island, and also that the

sun never scorches and blanches at the far north as it does in

the United States.



As might be expected, blossoms so bright of hue as the marsh

pinks attract many insects. Guided by the yellow eye that serves

as a pathfinder to the nectary, they feast on the generour supply

of sweets; but all unwittingly they must pay for their

entertainment by carrying pollen from early to later flowers.

Like so many other blossoms, the sabbatias guard themselves

against the evils of self-fertilization by shedding their pollen

before they mature and spread their two-cleft style, which is now

ready to receive the golden, quickening dust on its stigmatic

inner surfaces.



The SEA or MARSH PINK, or ROSE OF PLYMOUTH (S. stellaris), whose

graceful alternate branching stem attains a height of two feet

only under most favorable conditions, from July to September

opens a succession of pink flowers that often fade to white. The

yellow eye is bordered with carmine. They measure about one inch

across, and are usually solitary at the ends of branches, or else

sway on slender peduncles from the axils. The upper leaves are

narrow and bract-like; those lower down gradually widen as they

approach the root.



Similar to the Rose of Plymouth is the even more graceful SLENDER

MARSH PINK (S. Campanulata - the S. gracilis of Gray), whose

upper leaves are almost thread-like in their narrowness. Its five

calyx lobes, too, are exceedingly slender, and often as long as

the corolla lobes. One of our soldiers in Cuba, during the

Spanish War, sent home to his sister in Massachusetts some of

these same little flowers in a letter. "You would just love to

see the marshes here," he wrote. "They are filled with beautiful

little pink flowers. I wish I knew their names." That soldier had

passed by New England marshes aglow with the blossoms all his

life, but he had never noticed them until all his perceptions

became quickened by the stimulus of travel and the excitement of

war. How blind and deaf we all are in some directions; having

eyes we see not, and ears we hear not, in the natural as in the

spiritual realm.



No danger of confusing the LARGE MARSH PINK (S. dodecandra - S.

chloroides of Gray) with its smaller, more branching relatives.

It displays few flowers to a plant, but each measures two and a

half inches or less across, and has from nine to twelve pink (or

rarely white) petals. This sabbatia often chooses the sandy

borders of ponds for its habitat.