(Coptis trifolia) Crowfoot family [Buttercup family]
Flowers - Small white, solitary, on a slender scape 3 to 6 in.
high.Sepals 5 to 7, petal-like, falling early; petals 5 or 6, inconspicuous, like club-shaped columns; stamens numerous carpels few, the stigmatic surfaces curved.Leaves: From the base, long petioled, divided into 3 somewhat fan-shaped, shining, evergreen, sharply toothed leaflets.Rootstock: Thread-like, long, bright yellow, wiry, bitter.
Preferred Habitat - Cool mossy bogs, damp woods.
Flowering Season - May-August Distribution - Maryland and Minnesota northward to circumpolar regions.
The shining, evergreen, thrice-parted leaves with which this charming little plant carpets its retreats form the best of backgrounds to set off the fragile, tiny white flowers that look like small wood anemones.Why does the gold-thread choose to dwell where bees and butterflies, most flowers' best friends, rarely penetrate? Doubtless because the cool, damp habitat that develops abundant fungi also perfectly suits the fungus gnats and certain fungus-feeding beetles that are its principal benefactors."The entire flower is constructed with reference to their visits," says Mr.Clarence Moores Weed; "the showy sepals attract their attention; the abnormal petals furnish them food;the many small stamens with white anthers and white pollen furnish a surface to walk upon, and a foreground in which the yellow nectar-cups are distinctly visible; the long-spreading recurved stigmas cover so large a portion of the blossom that it would be difficult even for one of the tiny visitors to take many steps without contact with one of them." On a sunny June day the lens usually reveals at least one tiny gnat making his way from one club-shaped petal to another - for the insignificant petals are mere nectaries - and transferring pollen from flower to flower.
Dig up a plant, and the fine tangled, yellow roots tell why it was given its name.In the good old days when decoctions of any herb that was particularly nauseous were swallowed in the simple faith that virtue resided in them in proportion to their revolting taste, the gold-thread's bitter roots furnished a tea much valued as a spring tonic and as a cure for ulcerated throats and canker-sore mouths of helpless children.
WHITE BANEBERRY
(Actaea alba) Crowfoot family Flowers - Small, white, in a terminal oblong raceme.Calyx of 3to 5 petal-like, early-falling sepals; petals very small, 4 to 10, spatulate, clawed; stamens white, numerous, longer than petals; 1 pistil with a broad stigma.Stem: Erect, bushy, to 2ft.high.Leaves: Twice or thrice compounded of sharply toothed and pointed, sometimes lobed, leaflets, petioled.Fruit: Clusters of poisonous oval white berries with dark purple spot on end, formed from the pistils.Both pedicels and peduncles much thickened and often red after fruiting.
Preferred Habitat - Cool, shady, moist woods.
Flowering Season - April-June.
Distribution - Nova Scotia to Georgia and far West.
However insignificant the short fuzzy clusters of flowers lifted by this bushy little plant, we cannot fail to name it after it has set those curious white berries with a dark spot on the end, which Mrs.Starr Dana graphically compares to "the china eyes that small children occasionally manage to gouge from their dolls' heads." For generations they have been called "doll's eyes" in Massachusetts.Especially after these poisonous berries fully ripen and the rigid stems which bear them thicken and redden, we cannot fail to notice them.As the sepals fall early, the white stamens and stigmas are the most conspicuous parts of the flowers.A cluster opening its blossoms almost simultaneously, the plant's only hope of cross-fertilization lies in the expectation that the small female bees (Halictus) which come for pollen - no nectar being secreted - will leave some brought from another flower on the stigma as they enter, and before collecting a fresh supply.The time elapsing between the maturity of the stigmas and the anthers is barely perceptible;nevertheless there is a tendency toward the former maturing first.
The RED BANEBERRY, COHOSH, or HERB-CHRISTOPHER (A.rubra; A.
spicata, var.rubra of Gray) - a more common species northward, although with a range, habit, and aspect similar to the preceding, may be known by its more ovoid raceme of feathery white flowers, its less sharply pointed leaves, and, above all, by its rigid clusters of oval red berries on slender pedicels, so conspicuous in the woods of late summer.
BLACK COHOSH; BLACK SNAKEROOT; TALL BUGBANE(Cimicifuga racemosa) Crowfoot family [Buttercup family]
Flowers - Fetid, feathery, white, in an elongated wand-like raceme, 6 in.to 2 ft.long, at the end of a stem 3 to 8 ft.
high.Sepals petal-like, falling early; 4 to 8 small stamen-like petals 2-cleft; stamens very numerous, with long filaments; 1 or 2 sessile pistils with broad stigmas.Leaves: Alternate, on long petioles, thrice compounded of oblong, deeply toothed or cleft leaflets, the end leaflet often again compound.Fruit: Dry oval pods, their seeds in 2 rows.
Preferred Habitat - Rich woods and woodland borders, hillsides.
Flowering Season - June-August.
Distribution - Maine to Georgia, and westward from Ontario to Missouri.
