Title: American forestry
Identifier: americanforestry231917amer (find matches)
Year: 1910-1923 (1910s)
Authors: American Forestry Association
Subjects: Forests and forestry
Publisher: Washington, D. C. : American Forestry Association
Contributing Library: The LuEsther T Mertz Library, the New York Botanical Garden
Digitizing Sponsor: The LuEsther T Mertz Library, the New York Botanical Garden

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
22 AMERICAN FORES'rRY closed with the last day of December. Standing well up above the cari:)ct of snow, one may see a score or more of the curious and artistic-looking remains of the card teazels. These have already been illustrated and described in a former article in this Department; but not so the scattered band near them of the very interesting seed pods of last year's milkweeds. These appear to be of two or three different kinds, as their varying sizes and appearances would indicate. For the most part they are either of a pale gray, or of an equally pale tan color, and the pods are borne upon tall, rather stout stalks, in groups ranging from one or two to five or six, or maybe more. Al- most without ex- ception they are all split open length- wise, and their winged seeds ha\'e, weeks ago, been dis- tributed far and wide, b)' the wind or other agencies, over the cotmtry, in order that other colonies of these remarkable growths may be started next summer. But these pointed, big and little, empty pods, borne by their dried stalks well abo\-e the glis- tening January snow—out there— by no means con- stitute all there is to be said and learned about our milkweeds. In the first place, these plants have been given a distinct family in the vege- table world, and to it has been rele- gated some six other minor groups or genera. Now, as long ago as the fifth of June, 1656, there was bom at Aix, France, a boy who, in the years that followed.
Text Appearing After Image:
OUR MOST ABUNDANT MILKWEED Fig. 1.—^Hcrc we have the beautiful flowers of the Common Milkweed or Silkwecd (AscUpias syriacu). and also a head of buds belonging to another plant. Both are of natural size, and reproduced from one of the author's photographs of specimens collected in the District of Columbia, in the summer of 1916. In this common and very elegant species, the stem is tall and stout, frequently supporting the finest kind of vegetable hair, which may here be seen with a hand-lens. In other words, the stem is finely pubescent. Note the large and broad leaves which arc short-petioled,—that is, the "foot-stalk" of the leaf is short. Distally, some of these leaves are pointed and rather narrow; others are blunt, and all the wavy margins are entire. They are downy on their under-sides. Turning to the flowers, we find them typical of this family, and of a very complex structure (morphology). In color they are cream white, while specimens may be met with in which the flowers are a dull purple, the purple in other specimens shading off into white. This one of our American milkweeds is very prone to furnish hybrids with those species nearest related to it. A study of these hybrids is an interesting field for investigation. came to be one of the world's great botanists. His name was Joseph Pitton de Toumefort, and he died at the early age of fifty-two. In his short span of life, however, he described many beautiful flowers, and became professor of botany at the Royal Garden of Plants at Paris. Toiunc- fort studied, perhaps, only the milkweeds of Europe; and, in aidgeling his brain for a name for the group or genus to contain them, he somehow hit upon Ascleptas, having it in mind, for some reason or other, to commemorate the name of ^sculapius or As- klepios, the god of medicine of Greek mythology. How- evcrthismay be, our own famous as well as favorite botanist, Dr. Asa Gray, re- tained this name, and arrayed all of our different species of milkweeds in his Asclepiodora, which accounts for the name of the whole milkweed family— the AsclepiadacccB. Upwards of two thousand species and varieties of these have been de- scribed for the world's flora, and probably many an- other is still un- known to science. x\mbitious young students of wild flowers may remem- ber this fact; and when exploring in foreign and little known lands, they should not forget to gather specimens of thismost interesting and famous assem- blage of plants. T hey c a 11 them "weeds" in many places; but some- how I never think of any plant as a weed, the more so as the Century Dictionary defines a weed as "Any of those her- baceous plants which are useless and without special beauty, or especially

Note About Images