Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/97

Rh had recently made a similar observation in Europe on Anemone hepatica, as indicated in the "Journal of the Royal Microscopical Society" for April of the present year.

The next in order of time of our early-blooming plants comes the wild hazel (Corylus Americana, Walt.). This shrub would be passed by by the seeker of showy blossoms. Like most of the species of its order (Cupuliferæ), including the oak, chestnut, beech, and hornbeams, the staminate or male flowers are in drooping, cylindrical clusters, without any showy calyx or corolla. The pistillate or female flowers are elsewhere upon the same shrub, and are likewise inconspicuous. We have, therefore, in our first two flowering species, many widely different characteristics. The hepatica is a small herb that clings close to the earth, and may flourish under the protection that the hazel-bush yields it. The liver-leaf has showy flowers, which it holds up on long stalks in a conspicuous manner, and bears in each blossom both the essential organs (stamens and pistils) for the production of seed. The hazel has its sexes separated on the same shrub, and attempts no display of attractive color or forms. These two species, that bloom on almost the same early April day, have so little in common that they can not be rivals in any sense. They are moving along on independent lines, which for each, under its particular circumstances, are lines of least resistance. It may be that in this thought we find a solution of the problem of their very early blooming.

On April 11th two widely different plants were found in flower, namely, the first of the sedges (Carex Pennsylvanica, L.), and the blood-root (Sanguinaria Canadensis, L.). The little early sedge may claim some kinship with the hazel in this, that the flowers are of two kinds, and the staminate or pollen-bearing are more conspicuous than the inobtrusive pistillate or seed-bearing blossoms. Both the hazel and sedge depend upon the capricious winds for the transport of their pollen from the male to the female flowers. Darwin claimed that "Nature abhors continual close fertilization"; that is, the fertilization of the ovules of a flower by the pollen of the same blossom. In the hazel and the sedge we find the strongest sort of proof of such a doctrine. Close fertilization is impossible, from the simple fact that each flower is unisexual. The blood-root presents us with another side of the great and interesting subject of adaptations for cross-fertilization which was developed by Conrad Sprengel nearly a century ago, and given its present form by Darwin in 1862. What lover of flowers does not know the blood-root in its home among the decaying leaves along hedge-rows and out in the rich, open woods? Who does not recall the strangely and neatly lobed palmate leaf, up through the coil of which the plump bud pushes its way, and in a day has blossomed and gone? It may be some young botanists have been puzzled over the "sepals 2" of the manuals, forgetting that this wide-awake plant, having no further need for the firm, protective covering to the flower-buds,