TANSY OR BITTER BUTTONS

Tansy; Bitter-buttons
Tanacetum vulgare

Flower-heads—Small, round, of tubular florets only, packed within a depressed involucre, and borne in flat-topped corymbs. Stem: 1½ to 3 ft. tall, leafy. Leaves: Deeply and pinnately cleft into narrow, toothed divisions; strong scented.

Preferred Habitat—Roadsides; commonly escaped from gardens.

Flowering Season—July–September.

Distribution—Nova Scotia, westward to Minnesota, south to Missouri and North Carolina. Naturalized from Europe.

“In the spring time, are made with the leaves hereof newly sprung up, and with eggs, cakes or Tansies which be pleasant in taste and goode for the Stomache,” wrote quaint old Gerarde. That these were popular dainties in the seventeenth century we further know through Pepys who made a “pretty dinner” for some guests, to wit: “A brace of stewed carps, six roasted chickens, and a jowl of salmon, hot, for the first course; a tansy, and two neat’s tongues, and cheese, the second.” Cole’s “Art of Simpling,” published in 1656, assures maidens that tansy leaves laid to soak in buttermilk for nine days “maketh the complexion very fair.” Tansy tea, in short, cured every ill that flesh is heir to, according to the simple faith of medieval herbalists—a faith surviving in some old women even to this day. The name is said to be a corruption of athanasia, derived from two Greek words meaning immortality. When some monks in reading Lucian came across the passage where Jove, speaking of Ganymede to Mercury, says, “Take him hence, and when he has tasted immortality let him return to us,” their literal minds inferred that this plant must have been what Ganymede tasted, hence they named it athanasia! So great credence having been given to its medicinal powers in Europe, it is not strange the colonists felt they could not live in the New World without tansy. Strong-scented pungent tufts topped with bright yellow buttons—runaways from old gardens—are a conspicuous feature along many a roadside leading to colonial homesteads.

Common or Plumed Thistle
Cirsium

Is land fulfilling the primal curse because it brings forth thistles? So thinks the farmer, no doubt, but not the goldfinches which daintily feed among the fluffy seeds, nor the bees, nor the “painted lady,” which may be seen in all parts of the world where thistles grow, hovering about the beautiful rose-purple flowers. In the prickly cradle of leaves, the caterpillar of this thistle butterfly weaves a web around its main food store.

When the Danes invaded Scotland, they stole a silent night march upon the Scottish camp by marching barefoot; but a Dane inadvertently stepped on a thistle, and his sudden, sharp cry, arousing the sleeping Scots, saved them and their country; hence the Scotch emblem.

BUR OR SPEAR THISTLE

From July to November blooms the Common, Burr, Spear, Plume, Bank, Horse, Bull, Blue, Button, Bell, or Roadside Thistle (C. lanceolatum or Carduus lanceolatus), a native of Europe and Asia, now a most thoroughly naturalized American from Newfoundland to Georgia, westward to Nebraska. Its violet flower-heads, about an inch and a half across, and as high as wide, are mostly solitary at the ends of formidable branches, up which few crawling creatures venture. But in the deep tube of each floret there is nectar secreted for the flying visitor who can properly transfer pollen from flower to flower. Such a one suffers no inconvenience from the prickles, but, on the contrary, finds a larger feast saved for him because of them. Dense, matted, wool-like hairs, that cover the bristling stems of most thistles, make climbing mighty unpleasant for ants, which ever delight in pilfering sweets. Perhaps one has the temerity to start upward.

“Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall,”
“If thy heart fail thee, climb not at all,”

might be the ant’s passionate outburst to the thistle, and the thistle’s reply, instead of a Sir Walter and Queen Elizabeth couplet. Long, lance-shaped, deeply cleft, sharply pointed, and prickly dark green leaves make the ascent almost unendurable; nevertheless, the ant bravely mounts to where the bristle-pointed, overlapping scales of the deep green cup hold the luscious flowers. Now his feet becoming entangled in the cottony fibres wound about the scaly armor, and a bristling bodyguard thrusting spears at him in his struggles to escape, death happily releases him. All this tragedy to insure the thistle’s cross-fertilized seed that, seated on the autumn winds, shall be blown far and wide in quest of happy conditions for the offspring!

PASTURE OR FRAGRANT THISTLE

Sometimes the Pasture or Fragrant Thistle (C. pumilum or Carduus odoratus) still further protects its beautiful, odorous purple or whitish flower-head, that often measures three inches across, with a formidable array of prickly small leaves just below it. In case a would-be pilferer breaks through these lines, however, there is a slight glutinous strip on the outside of the bracts that compose the cup wherein the nectar-filled florets are packed; and here, in sight of Mecca, he meets his death, just as a bird is caught on limed twigs. The Pasture Thistle, whose range is only from Maine to Delaware, blooms from July to September.

CHICORY OR SUCCORY

Chicory; Succory; Blue Sailors; Bunk
Cichorium Intybus

Flower-head—Bright, deep azure to gray blue, rarely pinkish or white, 1 to 1½ in. broad, set close to stem, often in small clusters for nearly the entire length; each head a composite of ray flowers only, 5-toothed at upper edge, and set in a flat green receptacle. Stem: Rigid, branching, 1 to 3 ft. high. Leaves: Lower ones spreading on ground, 3 to 6 in. long, spatulate, with deeply cut or irregular edges, narrowed into petioles, from a deep tap-root; upper leaves of stem and branches minute, bract-like.

Preferred Habitat—Roadsides, waste places, fields.

Flowering Season—July–October.

Distribution—Common in eastern United States and Canada, south to the Carolinas; also sparingly westward to Nebraska.

At least the dried and ground root of this European invader is known to hosts of people who buy it undisguised or not, according as they count it an improvement to their coffee or a disagreeable adulterant. So great is the demand for chicory that, notwithstanding its cheapness, it is often in its turn adulterated with roasted wheat, rye, acorns, and carrots. Forced and blanched in a warm, dark place, the bitter leaves find a ready market as a salad known as “barbe de Capucin” by the fanciful French. Endive and dandelion, the chicory’s relatives, appear on the table, too in spring, where people have learned the possibilities of salads, as they certainly have in Europe.

From the depth to which the tap-root penetrates, it is not unlikely the succory derived its name from the Latin succurrere = to run under. The Arabic name chicourey testifies to the almost universal influence of Arabian physicians and writers in Europe after the Conquest. As chicorée, achicoria, chicoria, cicorea, chicorie, cichorei, cikorie, tsikorei, and cicorie the plant is known respectively to the French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italians, Germans, Dutch, Swedes, Russians, and Danes.

On cloudy days or in the morning only throughout midsummer the “peasant posy” opens its “dear blue eyes”

“Where tired feet
Toil to and fro;
Where flaunting Sin
May see thy heavenly hue,
Or weary Sorrow look from thee
Toward a tenderer blue!”
—Margaret Deland.

In his “Humble Bee” Emerson, too, sees only beauty in the

“Succory to match the sky;”

but, mirabile dictu, Vergil, rarely caught in a prosaic, practical mood, wrote,

“And spreading succ’ry chokes the rising field.”

Common Dandelion; Blowball; Lion’s-tooth; Peasant’s Clock
Taraxacum officinale (T. Dens-leonis)

Flower-head—Solitary, golden yellow, 1 to 2 in. across, containing 150 to 200 perfect ray florets on a flat receptacle at the top of a hollow, milky scape 2 to 18 in. tall. Leaves: From a very deep, thick, bitter root; oblong to spatulate in outline, irregularly jagged.

Preferred Habitat—Lawns, fields, grassy waste places.

Flowering Season—Every month in the year.

Distribution—Around the civilized world.

“Dear common flower that grow’st beside the way,
Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold.
*** **
“Gold such as thine ne’er drew the Spanish prow
Through the primeval hush of Indian seas,
Nor wrinkled the lean brow
Of age, to rob the lover’s heart of ease.
’Tis the spring’s largess, which she scatters now
To rich and poor alike, with lavish hand;
Though most hearts never understand
To take it at God’s value, but pass by
The offered wealth with unrewarded eye.”

Let the triumphant Anglo-Saxon with dreams of expansion that include the round earth, the student of sociology who wishes an insight into cooperative methods as opposed to individualism, the young man anxious to learn how to get on, parents with children to be equipped for the struggle for existence, business men and employers of labor, all sit down beside the dandelion and take its lesson to heart. How has it managed without navies and armies—for it is no imperialist—to land its peaceful legions on every part of the civilized world and take possession of the soil? How can this neglected wayside composite weed triumph over the most gorgeous hothouse individual on which the horticulturist expends all the science at his command; to flourish where others give up the struggle defeated; to send its vigorous offspring abroad prepared for similar conquest of adverse conditions wherever met; to attract myriads of customers to its department store, and by consummate executive ability to make every visitor unwittingly contribute to its success? Any one who doubts the dandelion’s fitness to survive should humble himself by spending days and weeks on his knees, trying to eradicate the plant from even one small lawn with a knife, only to find the turf starred with golden blossoms, or, worse still from his point of view, hoary with seed balloons the following spring.

Deep, very deep, the stocky bitter root penetrates where heat and drought affect it not, nor nibbling rabbits, moles, grubs of insects, and other burrowers break through and steal. Cut off the upper portion only with your knife, and not one, but several, plants will likely sprout from what remains; and, however late in the season, will economize stem and leaf to produce flowers and seeds, cuddled close within the tuft, that set all your pains at naught. “Never say die” is the dandelion’s motto. An exceedingly bitter medicine is extracted from the root of this dandelion. Likewise are the leaves bitter. Although they appear so early in the spring, they must be especially tempting to grazing cattle and predaceous insects, the rosettes remain untouched, while other succulent, agreeable plants are devoured wholesale. Only Italians and other thrifty Old World immigrants, who go about then with sack and knife collecting the fresh young tufts, give the plants pause; but even they leave the roots intact. When boiled like spinach or eaten with French salad dressing, the bitter juices are extracted from the leaves or disguised—mean tactics by an enemy outside the dandelion’s calculation. All nations know the plant by some equivalent for the name dent de lion = lion’s tooth, which the jagged edges of the leaves suggest.

After flowering, it again looks like a bud, lowering its head to mature seed unobserved. Presently rising on a gradually lengthened scape to elevate it where there is no interruption for the passing breeze from surrounding rivals, the transformed head, now globular, white, airy, is even more exquisite, set as it is with scores of tiny parachutes ready to sail away. A child’s breath puffing out the time of day, a vireo plucking at the fluffy ball for lining to put in its nest, the summer breeze, the scythe, rake, and mowing machines, sudden gusts of winds sweeping the country before thunderstorms—these are among the agents that set the flying vagabonds free. In the hay used for packing they travel to foreign lands in ships, and, once landed, readily adapt themselves to conditions as they find them. After soaking in the briny ocean for twenty-eight days—long enough for a current to carry them a thousand miles along the coast—they are still able to germinate.

Tall or Wild Lettuce; Wild Opium; Horse-weed
Lactuca canadensis

Flower-heads—Numerous, small, about ¼ in. across, involucre, cylindric, rays pale yellow; followed by abundant, soft, bright white pappus; the heads growing in loose, branching, terminal clusters. Stem: Smooth, 3 to 10 ft. high, leafy up to the flower panicle; juice milky. Leaves: Upper ones lance-shaped; lower ones often 1 ft. long, wavy-lobed, often pinnatifid, taper pointed, narrowed into flat petioles.

Preferred Habitat—Moist, open ground; roadsides.

Flowering Season—June–November.

Distribution—Georgia, westward to Arkansas, north to the British Possessions.

Few gardeners allow the table lettuce (sativa) to go to seed; but as it is next of kin to this common wayside weed, it bears a strong likeness to it in the loose, narrow panicles of cream-colored flowers, followed by more charming, bright, white little pompons. Where the garden varieties originated, or what they were, nobody knows. Herodotus says lettuce was eaten as a salad in 550 B.C.; in Pliny’s time it was cultivated, and even blanched, so as to be had at all seasons of the year by the Romans. Among the privy-purse expenses of Henry VIII is a reward to a certain gardener for bringing “lettuze” and cherries to Hampton Court. Quaint old Parkinson, enumerating “the vertues of the lettice,” says, “They all cool a hot and fainting stomache.” When the milky juice has been thickened (lactucarium), it is sometimes used as a substitute for opium by regular practitioners—a fluid employed by the plants themselves, it is thought, to discourage creatures from feasting at their expense. Certain caterpillars, however, eat the leaves readily; but offer lettuce or poppy foliage to grazing cattle, and they will go without food rather than touch it.

“What’s one man’s poison, Signer,
Is another’s meat or drink.”

Rabbits, for example, have been fed on the deadly nightshade for a week without injury.

Orange or Tawny Hawkweed; Golden Mouse-ear Hawkweed; Devil’s Paint-brush
Hieracium aurantiacum

Flower-heads—Reddish orange; 1 in. across or less, the 5-toothed rays overlapping in several series; several heads on short peduncles in a terminal cluster. Stem: Usually leafless, or with 1 to 2 small sessile leaves; 6 to 20 in. high, slender, hairy, from a tuft of hairy, spatulate, or oblong leaves at the base.

Preferred Habitat—Fields, woods, roadsides, dry places.

Flowering Season—June–September.

Distribution—Pennsylvania and Middle states northward into British Possessions.

A popular title in England, from whence the plant originally came, is Grimm the Collier. All the plants in this genus take their name from hierax—a hawk, because people in the old country once thought that birds of prey swooped earthward to sharpen their eyesight with leaves of the hawkweed, hawkbit, or speerhawk, as they are variously called. Transplanted into the garden, the orange hawkweed forms a spreading mass of unusual, splendid color.

The Rattlesnake-weed, Early or Vein-leaf Hawkweed, Snake or Poor Robin’s Plantain (H. venosum), with flower-heads only about half an inch across, sends up a smooth, slender stem, paniculately branched above, to display the numerous dandelion-yellow disks as early as May, although October is not too late to find this generous bloomer in pine woodlands, dry thickets, and sandy soil. Purplish-veined oval leaves, more or less hairy, that spread in a tuft next the ground, are probably as efficacious in curing shake bites as those of the Rattlesnake Plantain. When a credulous generation believed that the Creator had indicated with some sign on each plant the special use for which each was intended, many leaves were found to have veinings suggesting the marks on a snake’s body; therefore, by simple reasoning, they must extract venom. How delightful is faith cure!

COLOR KEY

BLUE TO PURPLE FLOWERS

MAGENTA TO PINK

WHITE AND GREENISH

YELLOW AND ORANGE

RED AND INDEFINITES

GENERAL INDEX OF NAMES