Author: Father Pitt

  • Ground Ivy (Glechoma hederacea)

    Ground Ivy, or Gill-Over-the-Ground, is the nemesis of every suburban homeowner who prizes purity in his lawn. For more tolerant types, it’s a friendly little plant. It never grows very tall; it has pretty blue flowers; and it makes your whole lawn smell minty when you mow it. This colony was growing in a lawn in Mount Lebanon, where it was blooming in late April.

    Gray places this in the genus Nepeta:

    NEPETA L. CAT MINT
    Calyx tubular, often incurved. Corolla dilated in the throat; the upper lip erect, rather concave, notched or 2-cleft; the lower 3-cleft, the middle lobe largest, either 2-lobed or entire. —Perennial herbs. (The Latin name, thought to be derived from Nepete, an Etruscan city.)

    N. hederacea (L.) Trevisan. (GROUND IVY, GILL-OVER-THE-GROUND.) Creeping and trailing; leaves petioled, round-kidney-shaped, crenate, green both sides; corolla thrice the length of the calyx, light blue. (Glecoma L.; Glechoma Benth.) Damp or shady places, near towns—May-July. (Nat. from Eu.)

  • Jack-in-the-Pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum)

    One of our oddest-looking spring flowers, a relative of the tropical Anthurium and the Calla so popular with funeral directors. Jack-in-the-pulpit blooms in open woodlands in May; this one grew on a wooded hillside in Mount Lebanon. The spathe (the leafy enclosure that forms the “pulpit”) is quite variable, with some plants showing deep maroon stripes and others almost no stripes at all.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    ARISAEMA Martius. INDIAN TURNIP. DRAGON ARUM
    Spathe convolute below and mostly arched above. Flowers monoecious or by abortion dioecious. Sterile flowers above the fertile, each of a cluster of almost sessile 2-4-celled anthers, opening by pores or chinks at the top. Fertile flowers a 1-celled ovary containing 5 or 6 erect orthotropous ovules; in fruit a l-few-seeded scarlet berry. Low perennial herbs, with a tuberous rootstock or corm, sending up a simple scape sheathed with the petioles of the simple or compound veiny leaves. (Name from aris, a kind of arum, and aima, blood, from the spotted leaves of some species.)

    A. triphyllum (L.) Schott. (INDIAN TURNIP, JACK-IN-THE-PULPIT.) Leaves mostly 2, divided into 3 elliptical-ovate pointed leaflets; spadix mostly dioecious, subcylindric or club-shaped, obtuse, much shorter than the spathe, which is smooth or corrugated in its tubular part and incurved-hooded at its flat ovate-lanceolate pointed summit. (A. pusillum Nash; A . Stewardsonii Britton.) Rich woods. May. Corm turnip-shaped, wrinkled, farinaceous, with an intensely acrid juice; spathe with the petioles and sheaths pale green, or often dark purple or variegated with dark purple and whitish stripes or spots.

    In her Wild Flowers: An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and Their Insect Visitors, Neltje Blanchan has an expansive (and sometimes cloyingly whimsical) article about the Jack-in-the-Pulpit:

    JACK-IN-THE-PULPIT; INDIAN TURNIP
    (Arisaema triphyllum) Arum family

    Flowers – Minute, greenish yellow, clustered on the lower part of a smooth, club-shaped, slender spadix within a green and maroon or whitish-striped spathe that curves in a broad-pointed flap above it. Leaves: 3-foliate, usually overtopping the spathe, their slender petioles 9 to 30 in. high, or as tall as the scape that rises from an acrid corm. Fruit: Smooth, shining red berries clustered on the thickened club. Preferred Habitat – Moist woodland and thickets. Flowering Season – April-June. Distribution – Nova Scotia westward to Minnesota, and southward to the Gulf States.

    A jolly looking preacher is Jack, standing erect in his particolored pulpit with a sounding-board over his head; but he is a gay deceiver, a wolf in sheep’s clothing,, literally a “brother to dragons,” an arrant upstart, an ingrate, a murderer of innocent benefactors! “Female botanizing classes pounce upon it as they would upon a pious young clergyman,” complains Mr. Ellwanger. A poor relation of the stately calla lily one knows Jack to be at a glance, her lovely white robe corresponding to his striped pulpit, her bright yellow spadix to his sleek reverence. In the damp woodlands where his pulpit is erected beneath leafy cathedral arches, minute flies or gnats, recently emerged from maggots in mushrooms, toadstools, or decaying logs, form the main part of his congregation.

    Now, to drop the clerical simile, let us peep within the sheathing spathe, or, better still, strip it off altogether. Dr. Torrey states that the dark-striped spathes are the fertile plants, those with green and whitish lines, sterile. Within are smooth, glossy columns, and near the base of each we shall find the true flowers, minute affairs, some staminate; others, on distinct plants, pistillate, the berry bearers; or rarely both male and female florets seated on the same club, as if Jack’s elaborate plan to prevent self-fertilization were not yet complete. Plants may be detected in process of evolution toward their ideals: just as nations and men are. Doubtless, when Jack’s mechanism is perfected, his guilt will disappear. A little way above the florets the club enlarges abruptly, forming a projecting ledge that effectually closes the avenue of escape for many a guileless victim. A fungus gnat, enticed perhaps by the striped house of refuge from cold spring winds, and with a prospect of food below, enters and slides down the inside walls or the slippery colored column: in either case descent is very easy; it is the return that is made so difficult, if not impossible, for the tiny visitors. Squeezing past the projecting ledge, the gnat finds himself in a roomy apartment whose floor – the bottom of the pulpit – is dusted over with fine pollen; that is, if he is among staminate flowers already mature. To get some of that pollen, with which the gnat presently covers himself, transferred to the minute pistillate florets waiting for it in a distant chamber is, of course, Jack’s whole aim in enticing visitors within his polished walls; but what means are provided for their escape? Their efforts to crawl upward over the slippery surface only land them weak and discouraged where they started. The projecting ledge overhead prevents them from using their wings; the passage between the ledge and the spathe is far too narrow to permit flight. Now, if a gnat be persevering, he will presently discover a gap in the flap where the spathe folds together in front, and through this tiny opening he makes his escape, only to enter another pulpit, like the trusted, but too trusting, messenger he is, and leave some of the vitalizing pollen on the fertile florets awaiting his coming.

    But suppose the fly, small as he is, is too large to work his way out through the flap, or too bewildered or stupid to find the opening, or too exhausted after his futile efforts to get out through the overhead route to persevere, or too weak with hunger in case of long detention in a pistillate trap where no pollen is, what then? Open a dozen of Jack’s pulpits, and in several, at least, dead victims will be found – pathetic little corpses sacrificed to the imperfection of his executive system. Had the flies entered mature spathes, whose walls had spread outward and away from the polished column, flight through the overhead route might have been possible. However glad we may be to make every due allowance for this sacrifice of the higher life to the lower, as only a temporary imperfection of mechanism incidental to the plant’s higher development, Jacks present cruelty shocks us no less. Or, it may be, he will become insectivorous like the pitcher plant in time. He comes from a rascally family, anyhow. (See cuckoo pint.)

    In June and July the thick-set club, studded over with bright berries, becomes conspicuous, to attract hungry woodland rovers in the hope that the seeds will be dropped far from the parent plant. The Indians used to boil the berries for food. The farinaceous root (corm) they likewise boiled or dried to extract the stinging, blistering juice, leaving an edible little “turnip,” however insipid and starchy.

  • Wild Stonecrop (Sedum ternatum)

    An attractive native Sedum that likes rocky hillsides in open woods. This one grew on a small stone outcropping on a wooded hillside in Mount Lebanon, where it was blooming in the middle of May.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    SEDUM [Tourn.] L. STONECROP. ORPINE
    Calyx-lobes and petals 4-5. Stamens 8-10. Follicles many-seeded; a little scale at the base of each. Chiefly perennial smooth and thick-leaved herbs, with cymose or one-sided inflorescence. Petals almost always narrow and acute or pointed. (Name from sedere, to sit, alluding to the manner in which these plants fix themselves upon rocks and walls .)

    S. ternatum Michx. Stems spreading, 7-15 cm. high ; leaves flat, the lower whorled in threes, wedge-obovate, the upper scattered, oblong; cyme 3-spiked, leafy; petals white. Rocky woods, Ct. to Ga., w. to Mich., Ind., and Tenn. May.

  • Sow Thistle (Sonchus oleraceus)

    Nasty prickly weeds that they are, the Sow Thistles have a certain architectural elegance. The buds are shaped like a fine glass vase, and the clasping leaves are a particulary attractive dark green. Sow Thistles are edible, apparently, if you catch them young or don’t mind sticking sharp things in your mouth. This one was blooming beside a telephone pole in Beechview in early November.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    SONCHUS [Tourn.] L. SOW THISTLE.
    Heads many-flowered, becoming tumid at base. Involucre more or less imbricated. Achenes obcompressed, ribbed or striate, not beake; pappus copious, of very white exceedingly soft and fine bristles mainly falling together. Leafy -stemmed coarse weeds, chiefly smooth and glaucous, with corymbed or umbellate heads of yellow flowers produced in summer and autumn. (The ancient Greek name.)

    Annual; flowers pale yellow.

    S. OLERACEUS L. (COMMON S.) Stem-leaves runcinate-pinnatifid, rarely undivided, slightly toothed with soft spiny teeth, clasping by a heart-shaped base, the auricles acute; involucre downy when young; achenes striate, also wrinkled transversely. Waste places, chiefly in manured soil and around dwellings. (Nat. from Eu.)

  • Woodland Sunflower (Helianthus divaricatus)

    Normally a late-summer flower, but this one was gamely blooming in early November after more than one frost, when perennial sunflowers are supposed to be settling in for the winter. It likes shade, and is happiest at the edge of a woodland clearing; this one was growing along a thickly wooded street in Beechview. Note the opposite lanceolate leaves with shallow teeth and the slightly sloppy downward-facing pointed bracts.

    Gray describes the genus and the species:

    HELIANTHUS L. SUNFLOWER
    Heads many-flowered; rays several or many, neutral. Involucre imbricated, herbaceous or foliaceous. Receptacle flat or convex; the persistent chaff embracing the 4-sided and laterally compressed smooth achenes, which are neither winged nor margined. Pappus very deciduous, of 2 thin chaffy scales on the principal angles, and sometimes 2 or more small intermediate scales. —Coarse and stout herbs, with solitary or corymbed heads, and yellow rays; flowering toward autumn. (Named from helios, the sun, and anthos, a flower.)

    H. divaricatus L. Stem simple or forked and corymbed at the top, 0.5-2 m. high, smooth below; leaves all opposite and divaricate, ovate-lanceolate, 3-nerved from the rounded or truncate sessile base, tapering gradually to a sharp point, 0.5-2 dm. long, serrate, thickish, rough both sides; bracts narrowly lanceolate, attenuate, ciliate, equaling the disk (1 cm. wide); rays 8-12, 2.5 cm. long. Thickets and barrens, s. Me. to L. Winnipeg, Neb., and southw.