WILD INDIGO; YELLOW or INDIGO BROOM; HORSEFLY-WEED(Baptisia tinctoria) Pea family Flowers - Bright yellow, papilionaceous, about 1/2 in.long, on short pedicels, in numerous but few flowered terminal racemes.
Calyx light green, 4 or 5-toothed; corolla of 5 oblong petals, the standard erect, the keel enclosing 10 incurved stamens and pistil.Stem: Smooth, branched, 2 to 4 ft.high.Leaves:
Compounded of 3 ovate leaflets.Fruit: A many-seeded round or egg-shaped pod tipped with the awl-shaped style.
Preferred Habitat - Dry, sandy soil.
Flowering Season - June-September.
Distribution - Maine and Minnesota to the Gulf States.
Dark grayish green, clover-like leaves, and small, bright yellow flowers growing in loose clusters at the ends of the branches of a bushy little plant, are so commonly met with they need little description.A relative, the true indigo-bearer, a native of Asia, once commonly grown in the Southern States when slavery made competition with Oriental labor possible, has locally escaped and become naturalized.But the false species, although, as Dr.Gray says, it yields "a poor sort of indigo," yields a most valuable medicine employed by the homeopathists in malarial fevers.The plant turns black in drying.As in the case of other papilionaceous blossoms, bees are the visitors best adapted to fertilize the flowers.When we see the little, sleepy, dusky-winged butterfly (Thanaos brizo) around the plant we may know she is there only to lay eggs, that the larvae and caterpillars may find their favorite food at hand on waking into life.
RATTLE-BOX
(Crotalaria sagittalis) Pea family Flowers - Yellow, 1/2 in.long or less, usually only 2 or 3 on a long peduncle.Calyx 5-toothed, slightly 2-lipped; corolla papilionaceous.Stem: 3 to 10 in.high, weak, hairy.Leaves:
Alternate, simple, oval to lance-shaped; stipules arrow-shaped above and running along stem.Fruit: An inflated oblong pod 1 in, long, blackish, seedy.
Preferred Habitat - Dry, sandy, open situations.
Flowering Season - June-September.
Distribution - New England and Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico.
These insignificant little yellow flowers attract scant notice from human observers accustomed to associate their generic name with some particularly beautiful relatives from the West Indies grown in hothouses here.But did not small bees alight on the keel and depress it, as in the lupine, next of kin (q.v.) there might be no seeds to rattle in the dark inflated pods that so delight children.(Krotalon = a castanet.)YELLOW SWEET CLOVER; YELLOW MELILOT
(Melilotus officinalis) Pea family Resembling the white sweet clover, except in color.(q.v.)YELLOW or HOP CLOVER
(Trifotium agrarium) Pea family Flowers - Yellow, scale-like, overlapping in a densely many-flowered oblong head about 1/2 in.long, becoming brown with age.Stem: Ascending, branched, 6 to 18 in.high.Leaves:
3-foliate, very finely toothed.
Preferred Habitat - Waste places, fields, roadsides.
Flowering Season - May-September.
Distribution - Virginia to Iowa, and far northward.
What did the sulphur butterflies provide as food for their caterpillar babies before the commonest clovers came over from the Old World to possess the soil? Wherever a trifolium grows, there one is sure to see "gallow-yellow butterflies, Like blooms of lorn primroses blowing loose, when autumn winds arise."The BLACKSEED HOP CLOVER, BLACK or HOP MEDIC (Medicago lupulina), with even smaller, bright yellow oblong heads which turn black when ripe, lies on the ground, its branches spreading where they leave the root.A native of Europe and Asia, it is now distributed as a common weed throughout our area, for there is scarcely a month in the year when it does not bloom and set seed.
It is still another of the many plants known as the shamrock.
YELLOW WOOD-SORREL; LADY'S SORREL
(Oxalis stricta) Wood-sorrel family Flowers - Golden, fragrant, in long peduncled, small, terminal groups.Calyx of 5 sepals; corolla of 5 petals, usually reddish at base; stamens, 10; 1 pistil with 5 styles; followed by slender pods.Stem: Pale, erect, 3 to 12 in.high, the sap sour.Leaves:
Palmately compound, of 3 heart-shaped, clover-like leaflets on long petioles.
Preferred Habitat - Open woodlands, waste or cultivated soil, roadsides.
Flowering Season - April-October.
Distribution - Nova Scotia and Dakota westward to the Gulf of Mexico.
An extremely common little weed, whose peculiarly sensitive leaves children delight to set in motion by rubbing, or to chew for the sour juice.Concerning the night "sleep" of wood-sorrel leaves and the two kinds of flowers these plants bear, see the white and violet wood-sorrels.
WILD or SLENDER YELLOW FLAX
(Linum Virginianum) Flax family Flowers - Yellow, about 1/3 in.across, each from a leaf axil, scattered along the slender branches.Sepals, 5; 5 petals, 5stamens.Stem: 1 to 2 ft.high, branching, leafy.Leaves.
Alternate, seated on the stem; small, oblong, or lance-shaped, 1nerved.
Preferred Habitat - Dry woodlands and borders; shady places.
Flowering Season - June-August.
Distribution - New England to Georgia.
Certainly in the Atlantic States this is the commonest of its slender, dainty tribe; but in bogs and swamps farther southward and westward to Texas the RIDGED YELLOW FLAX (L.striatum), with leaves arranged opposite each other up to the branches and an angled stem so sticky it "adheres to paper in which it is dried,"takes its place.
"Blue were her eyes as the fairy flax,"
wrote Longfellow, as if blue flax were a familiar sight on this side of the Atlantic.The charming little European plant (L.
usitatissimum), which has furnished the fiber for linen and the oily seeds for poultices from time immemorial, is only a fugitive from cultivation here.Unhappily, it is rarely met with along the roadsides and railways as it struggles to gain a foothold in our waste places.Possibly Longfellow had in mind the blue toad flax (q.v.).
