Crabapple trees especially like the edge of the woods; this one was growing in Frick Park, where it was blooming at the end of April. The flowers vary from white through pink, the buds being much darker than the flowers.
Gray places the genus Malus as a section in the larger genus Pyrus, but most modern botanists treat Malus separately. Gray’s description:
PYRUS [Tourn.] L. Calyx-like receptacle urn-shaped, bearing б sepals. Petals roundish or obovate. Stamens numerous. Styles 2-5. Fruit a large fleshy pome, or smaller and berry-like, the 2-6 cells imbedded in the flesh, papery or cartilaginous, mostly 2-seeded. —Trees or shrubs, with showy flowers in corymbed or umbellike cymes. (The classical name of the Pear-tree.) A large genus, often subdivided, but with sections less strongly or constantly marked than our few species would suggest.
MALUS (Hill) S. F. Gray. (APPLE.) Leaves simple; orifice of concave receptacle open; flesh of large subglobular fruit copious, free from sclerotic cells. Malus [Tourn.] Hill.
Leaves and usually the outer surface of the calyx-lobes glabrate.
Calyx-lobes persistent in fruit.
P. coronaria L. (AMERICAN CRAB.) Tree, somewhat armed, 6-10 m. high; leaves ovate or elliptic, usually rounded or even cordate at the base; those of the sterile shoots somewhat triangular-ovate and lobed, sharply serrate; petals broadly obovate, white or nearly so; pome greenish-yellow, hard and sour, 2-2.6 cm. in diameter, depressed-globose. (Malus Mill.) — Thickets and open woods, N. J. to Ont., Kan., and southw.
A common tree in the forests around Pittsburgh, and also a favorite ornamental in urban and suburban yards. These trees were blooming in late April in open woods in Bird Park, Mount Lebanon.
Gray describes the genus and the species:
CÉRCIS L. REDBUD. JUDAS TREE. Calyx 6 toothed. Corolla imperfectly papilionaceous; standard smaller than the wings and inclosed by them in the bud; the keel petals larger and not united. Stamens 10, distinct, declined. Pod oblong, flat, many-seeded, the upper suture with a winged margin. Embryo straight.—Trees, with rounded heart-shaped simple leaves, caducous stipules, and red-purple flowers in umbel-like clusters along the branches of the last or preceding years, appearing before the leaves, acid to the taste. (The ancient name of the oriental Judas Tree.)
C. canadensis L (REDBUD.) Leaves pointed; pods nearly sessile above the calyx.—Rich soil, N. Y. and N. J. to Fla., w. to s. Ont., e. Neb., and Tex.—A small ornamental tree, often cultivated.
Also known as Early Meadow Parsnip, this is like a cheery golden Queen Anne’s Lace, with similar compound umbels of flowers, more delicate than the similarly yellow Wild Parsnip (Pastinaca sativa). It likes a damp open woods or meadow; these were growing in Frick Park, where they were blooming in early May.
Gray describes the genus and the species:
ZIZIA Koch. Calyx-teeth prominent. Fruit ovate to oblong, glabrous, with filiform ribs. Oil-tubes large and solitary in the broad intervals, and a small one in each rib; stylopodium wanting; seed terete. —Smooth perennials, with mostly Thaspium-like leaves, no involucre, involucels of small bractlets, yellow flowers, and the central fruit of each umbellet sessile. Flowering in spring. (Named for I. B. Ziz, a Rhenish botanist.)
Z. aúrea (L.) Koch. (GOLDEN ALEXANDERS.) Leaves(except the uppermost) 2-3-ternate, the radical very long-petioled; leaflets ovate to lanceolate, sharply serrate, acuminate; rays 15-25, stout, 2-5 cm. long; fruit oblong, about 4 mm. long. — River-banks, meadows,and rich woods, e. Que. to Sask., s. to Va., Ark., and Tex.
In Our Common Wild Flowers of Springtime and Autumn, Alice Mary Dowd describes the plant briefly, and also gives us a brief explanation of the word “umbel”:
Not far from the wood betony, on the same grassy slope, and blossoming at the same time, we may find the early meadow parsnip, sometimes called golden Alexanders. It is a common plant everywhere from Maine to South Dakota. The leaves are twice or three times divided at the base, and have long stems. The small, golden yellow flowers are in little radiating clusters. A flower-cluster in which the stems radiate from the end of the main stem, like the ribs of an umbrella turned wrong side out, is called an umbel. If the radiating stems end in little umbels instead of single flowers the whole cluster is a compound umbel. The words umbel and umbrella both come from the Latin word for shade.
Alphonso Wood, in his Class-Book of Botany, uses this plant (which he places in the genus Carum) as one of his botanical lessons:
Description.—The humid river-banks, the meadows behind them, and even the sunny hills above them, are frequently bedecked in June or May, with bright yellow umbels, which, with little discrimination, the country people call Golden Alexanders. We will suppose that our young botanists return from their morning rambles equipped with these plants complete—root, leaf, flower and fruit.
Analysis.—The Leaf Region.—After the lesson on the Cicely, the student will see in this plant striking analogies, with special differences. Both are to be carefully noted. The root is perennial, axial, branching, more woody than fleshy, from which annually arises a plant glabrous (smooth) and polished. The stems throughout are jointed, branching, with long, hollow internodes as in Cicely. The leaves are ternate and biternate, the lower on long petioles and sometimes pinnately 5-foliate, the very lowest being simple and cordate. The student will compare the leaflets with those of Cicely, and note their form of outline, base, apex, and margin. The petioles are sheathing and stem-clasping at the base, as in that plant.
The Flower Region.—The umbels are axillary and terminal.* Are they simple or compound? Do you find any involucre and involucels? Of what description? The flowers are 5-parted. Here also the calyx consists of a tube adhering to the ovary, with the limb or teeth obsolete. Each of the 5 yellow petals has its slender point inflexed, with the 5 stamens in like manner inflected. The ovary is inferior— placed below the flower and crowned by it, in consequence of being immersed in and adherent to the tubular calyx. The 2 styles are slender, longer than the ovary, and deciduous, for they are not seen on the full-grown fruit.
The Fruit is a cremocarp as in Osmorhiza, but with several remarkable differences. It is oval inclined to oblong, flattened on the sides. When the carpels separate, they show the forked carpophore between them. Each carpel has 5 conspicuous, equal, wavy ribs, 2 of which are marginal, i. e., on the border of the face or commissure. In each interval between the ribs is an oil tube—an oblong cell containing a fragrant oil. Botanists call these oil-tubes vittae. None are found in the fruits of Osmorhiza.
* Plants in which the inflorescence is arranged in a cyme, corymb, &c, may be termed the “Social Flowers.” Small flowers thus packed closely together are necessarily more attractive to insects than if they were scattered promiscuously over the plant. Besides, these groups of flowers are generally placed where they are not hidden by the leaves. So that one can but feel that this floral arrangement is not an accident, but designed for a purpose. Self-fertilization is guarded against in these masses of small flowers by the stamens ripening before the pistils. The former shed their pollen and wither before the latter have developed sufficiently to receive the pollen. Sir John Lubbock remarks that the honey in the flowers of this order is Inaccessible to butterflies, whose probosces are fitted for deep-throated flowers; but it is easily reached by other insects.
The Name in Latin is Carum aureum. It is associated with Caraway (Carum Carvi) whose native country is Caria in Asia Minor; hence the name. The specific term, aureum, means golden. Other plants called also Golden Alexanders, with yellow umbels in June, may perplex the student. One such, C. cordatum, is smooth all over like C. aureum, but its root-leaves are generally cordate and simple, and the stemleaves never biternate.
This rare greenish-yellow form of the Wake-Robin grew above the Squaw Run in Fox Chapel, where it was blooming at the beginning of May. Wake-Robins are most commonly red, but in Fox Chapel they are almost exclusively white (see pictures here and here); among countless thousands, this was the only yellow clump we found. The odor is described in the Flora of North America as “like a wet dog,” which is unmistakable, and accounts for another common name, Stinking Willie. It’s not a flower to sniff with delight.
Gray describes the genus and the species:
TRÍLLIUM L. WAKE ROBIN. BIRTHROOT. Sepals 3, lanceolate, spreading, herbaceous, persistent. Petals 3, larger, withering in age. Stamens б; anthers linear, on short filaments, adnate. Styles awl-shaped or slender, spreading or recurved above, persistent, stigmatic down the inner side. Seeds ovate, horizontal, several in each cell. — Low perennial herbs, with a stout and simple stem rising from a short and praemorse tuber-like rootstock, bearing at the summit a whorl of 3 ample, commonly broadly ovate, more or less ribbed but netted-veined leaves, and a terminal large flower; in spring. (Name from tree, three; all the parts being in threes.) — Monstrosities are not rare with the calyx and sometimes petals changed to leaves, or the parts of the flower increased in number.
Ovary and fruit 6-angled and more or less winged.
Flower pediceled; connective narrow, not produced; leaves subsessile.
Anthers at anthesis exceeding the stigmas.
T. eréctum L. Leaves very broadly rhombic, shortly acuminate ; peduncle (2—8 cm. long) usually more or less inclined or declínate; petals ovate to lanceolate (18-36 mm. long), brown-purple or often white or greenish or pinkish; stamens exceeding the stout distinct spreading or recurved stigmas; ovary purple; fruit ovoid, 2.5 cm. long, reddish. — Rich woods, e. Que. to Ont., southw. to Pa. and in the mts, to N. C. — Flowers ill-scented.
A foreign invader; it makes a fine hedge, but it is beginning to show up where it is not wanted. The red-leaved form is rarely found in the wild; this one was growing deep in the woods in Fox Chapel, where it was blooming in early May.
Japanese barberry is a dense, deciduous, spiny shrub that grows 2 to 8 ft. high. The branches are brown, deeply grooved, somewhat zig-zag in form and bear a single very sharp spine at each node. The leaves are small (½ to 1 ½ inches long), oval to spatula-shaped, green, bluish-green, or dark reddish purple. Flowering occurs from mid-April to May in the northeastern U.S. Pale yellow flowers about ¼ in (0.6 cm) across hang in umbrella-shaped clusters of 2-4 flowers each along the length of the stem. The fruits are bright red berries about 1/3 in (1 cm) long that are borne on narrow stalks. They mature during late summer and fall and persist through the winter.
