Vol. IV NOVEMBER, 1594 No. 11 ISSUED MONTHLY, $2.00 PER YEAR IN ADVANCE, SINGLE COPY 20 CENTS. <? PUBLISHED BY Thomas Meehan & Sons, Germantown, Philadelphia. THW MEEM COPYRIGHTED 1894. ENTERED AT THE PHILADELPHIA POST OFFICE AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER. Heehans' Thomas new. w and bmutifui.pi.bhts Monthly Meehan & Sons, ! STROBILflNTHES DYERIflNUS published monthly by Germantown, Phila. This is the most valuable novelty which has been intro- duced for years. For bedding it is superior to the finest - , , . /k/s aa coleus-withstands hot suns and dry weather better. Subscription Price $2.00 per year. pia„t.1:su"yg?""„.»(i™™?«o.'hon!e "d *re"h°"e Rare and Beautiful Evergreens, $1.00for Six Months. Back Numbers20 cts. Each. Ornamental Trees, Shrubs, Etc. Two Subscriptions for $3.50 per Year. ...JSStAS SSS,: M"'' Peeonies-A large collection of the finest in cultivation. ADVERTISING RATES ON APPLICATION etc. New and Standard Fruits, etc. ■■ on application. 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Full Morocco, gilt edge, $10.50 per vol. THOMAS MEEHAN & SONS = Germantown, Philadelphia. WHEN WRITING TO ADVERTISERS, TELL THEM YOU SAW THEIR CARD IN MEEHANS' MONTHLY. Vol. IV Plate 11. O.NTIANA CRINITA. GENTIANA CRINITA. FRINGED GENTIAN. NATURAL ORDER, GENTIANACE-E. Gentiana crinita, Frcelich.-Stem from one to two feet high, terete, branched ; branches opposite, axillary, erect, four- angled and slightly winged. Leaves one to two or three inches long, ovate-lanceolate, closely sessile. Flowers soli- tary, on long terminal naked peduncles; corolla about two inches long, bright blue, and beautifully fringed ; calyx four-angled. Seeds curiously echinate or hispid. (Darlington's Flora Cistrica. See also Chapman's Fin a of the Southern United States ; Gray's Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States, and Wood's Class Book of Botany.) Dr. W. P. C. Barton, in his Flora of Ten Miles Around Philadelphia, published in 1818, reports the fringed gentian as one of the rarest plants of that district. He had never known it to be collected anywhere but in one locality, on the River Schuylkill, and very rarely there. The writer of this had never collected it at all, near Philadelphia, and his first knowledge of it from Dr. Barton's district was from the speci- mens from which the drawing was made, and which were brought him by Miss Anna Howell, who gathered them on the upper portion of the Wissahickon. In other parts of the United States it is more abundant; but it is one of that class of plants which, though widely scat- tered, is seldom found in such abundance in any one place as to have any marked eflect on the natural scenery. It is recorded gen- erally as being found in open woods, - but those which have come under the author's observation, were growing in rather damp, grassy, open situations. Though not usually found in masses of great extent, the single plants are very beautiful, and attract the attention of any one who may be out gather- ing autumn flowers or faded leaves, at the end of the floral season. It is remarkable that a flower so suggestively beautiful should not have received more poetical attention,- but though the species are abundant in both the old world and in the new, and many of the species are so showy as to compel ob- servation, references to the gentian are not numerous. Mrs. Browning has to say about "Byes of Gentianella azure, Staring, winking at the skies." And generally such passing thoughts are all it has received. But there are two poems wholly dedicated to the gentian that are worthy of the subject, and it would be scarcely doing justice to the popular literature of the gen- tian, not to quote them here. One is by S. R. Bartlett. " I know not why, but every sweet October Down the fair road that opens to the sea, Dear in the wayside grasses tinging sober, Blooms my blue Gentian faithfully for me. The fretted spears of Solidago golden Dead to this quiet spot they half conceal; There, in her silken fringes soft enfolden, Year after year, my blue-eyed Gentians steal. Leaves of the scarlet Sumach glow and flitter, Warm rolls the western wave upon the shore ; The little birds of Autumn flit and twitter, The glorious day grows lovely, more and more. Won to expansion in the radiance tender, Upgazing to the Heaven whose hues they win, Serene and steadfast in the season's splendor, My blossoms blue beam beautiful again. Faith's emblem true, of all the flowers up- springing, I cannot say, I know not why she lives ; To every sweet October dearly bringing A lesson in each azure cup she gives ; I cannot say, I know not why I love her, Although the wherefore I so poorly tell; Yet all of Heaven's own love to me brims over In these fair blossoms of the wayside dell." Poets often draw largely on their imagina- tions or on the imperfect memory of things of which they have read ; but this picture of Bartlett's is very life-like. Among the sober tinging of October grasses, half hidden by golden rods, the silken fringed flowers of the gentian love to steal for protection. The scarlet leaves of the sumach and other colored- leaved plants fall around them under the influ- ence of the warm western autumn breeze, and the wrens and chipping-sparrows, with other 161 162 MEEHANS' MONTHLY-GENTIANA CRINITA. [Nov. little birds, usually abound at this season in the places where the gentians grow. But the faithfulness of the poet to his picture of nature is particularly marked in the description given of the expansion of the flower as the October day grows more glorious. If the day be dull the flower remains closed, as in Fig. 2. But if a sudden burst of sun occurs, the flower expands in a very few minutes, and appears as in Fig. 3. They close at night, or if the sky becomes overcast, and open the next day if the sun shines again. If the weather be dull for several days, they do not open at any time more than we see in Fig. 2, in which condition they remain till Fig. 4 is reached, after which they never open again. The pistils and stamens do not mature at the same time, and this is assumed to mean by some physiologists that the flower is arranged for cross-fertilization. The expanded flowers afford good opportunities, and bees could force their way into the closed ones ; but many closed flowers show no signs of having been rifled of their pollen, and these flowers are evidently self-fertilized, and produce seeds as freely as those which have been cross- fertilized by the bees. Besides this beautiful poem by Bartlett, there are Bryant's pretty lines, not quite so suggestive as Bartlett's, but yet a poem to be generally admired. " Thou blossom bright with autumn dew And colored with the Heaven's own blue, That openest when the quiet light Succeeds the keen and frosty night- Thou comest not when violets lean O'er wandering brooks and springs unseen, Or columbines, in purple drest, Nod o'er the ground-bird's hidden nest. Thou waitest late and com'st alone, When woods are bare and birds are flown, And frosts and shortening days portend The aged year is near his end. Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye Look through its fringes to the sky, Blue-blue-as if that sky let fall A flower from its coerulean wall. I would that thus, when I shall see The hour of death draw near to me, Hope, blossoming within my heart, May look to Heaven as I depart." Though so showy and attractive, many of the early botanists did not enjoy its acquain- tance. Linnaeus seems to have made his first acquaintance with it from Dr. Colden, of New- burg, New York, who made a catalogue Of the plants of his state, which was published at Upsal, in Sweden, in 1743. About the same time, John Bartram had sent seeds to England, as we learn from a letter of Peter Collinson to John Bartram. Under date of October 20, 1740, he says :-" I have several very curious flowers out of the mixed Virginia seeds. * * A very pretty dwarf gentian, with a large blue flower, the extremity of the flower-leaves all notched or jagged. The whole plant is not above three or four inches high. I am afraid it is an annual." He is not satisfied about this question of duration fifteen years later, for writ- ing on January nth, 1753, he inquires of John Bartram, "is that charming autumn Blue Gen- tian an annual, or biennial, or perennial?'' Exactly one hundred years later, we find Dr. Darlington, in the work from which we have quoted, asking the same question ; and even now the only point certain is that it dies after flowering. Some of the earlier botanists divided the genus according to the number of their floral parts. There are some which have four lobes to the calyx, four to the corolla, and four sta- mens ; and others which have five. Those with five were to be the true Gentiana-,-the others were called Gentianella. Our best modern botanists do not recognize this distinc- tion, because the natural resemblances are so uniform, that the division seems a shock to the natural system of botany. Under the sex- ual system of Linnaeus our species would have been in the class Telrandria, from its four sta- mens, and Gentiana proper in another. This, as a system, is so evidently unnatural, that it is no wonder such arrangements discouraged the student. But for generic classification, the characters, from the number of stamens, might have more value. Fig. 5 has just enough of the calyx and corolla cut away to show the arrangement of the four stamens. Gentiana crinita, or " fringed gentian,'' was so named by Joseph Aloysius Froelich, in a work published in Germany, in 1796, called "de Gentiana libellus "-a small treatise on gentians. It grows westward to Dakota, and through the Allegheny mountains to Georgia. Explanation of the Plate- i. Upper portion of a complete plant. 2. Closed flower. 3. Flower open under sunlight. 4. Flower finally closed. 5. Flower with portion of calyx and corolla cut away to show pistil and stamens.