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In the present plant the two lateral branches of the main flower-peduncle have been converted into a pair of tendrils, corresponding with the single "flower-tendril" of the common vine. The main peduncle is thin, stiff, and from 3 to 4.5 inches in length. Near the summit, above two little bracts, it divides into three branches.
Each has a glory now peculiar to itself and to June. There is much beauty of color in the woodland undergrowth. Tall torches touched with the crimson of the sunset sky are made of the shell-bark hickory whose inner bud scales enlarge into enormous, leathery bracts, often crimsoning into rare brilliance.
But it is very interesting that this same cohesion is to be seen in the shepherd's purse, in the wormseed and in the cabbage, as well as in the case of the Erucastrum and most of the other observed cases of atavistic bracts.
Hence the inference that crucifers are an exception to a general rule, and that they must have originated from other types which did comply with this rule, and accordingly were in the possession of floral bracts. Or, in other words, that the bracts must have been lost during the original evolution of the whole family.
It is not that certain flowers that came joyously in June are now but dry bracts and seed pods. She has given us other beauties and fragrance to take their places.
The elongation of stems and linear leaves, and the reduction of lateral organs in darkness, is manifestly an adaptation. Many plants have stolons with double adaptations which enable them to retain their character of underground stems with bracts or to exchange it for the characteristics of erect stems with green leaves according to the outer circumstances.
The edge of the cliff is lined with shad-trees. Each twig is a plume of feathery dainty white The drooping racemes of white blossoms, with the ruby and early-falling bracts among them look like gala decorations to fringe the way of Flora as she travels up the valley. The shad-trees have blossomed rather late. In them and under them it is fully spring.
On closer inspection it is easily seen how they originate. The normal flowers of the carnations are preceded by a small group of bracts, which are arranged in opposite pairs and therefore constitute four rows. In this variety the flower is suppressed and this loss is attended by a corresponding increase of the number of the pairs of bracts.
In a week or so it grows to a height of eight or twelve inches with a diameter of an inch and a half or two inches; then its long fringed bracts curl aside, allowing the twenty- or thirty-five-lobed, bell-shaped flowers to open and look straight out from the axis.
The petals are pure white, recurved, displaying the crown of yellow stamens, arranged in a ring about the rather small, rayed stigma. The tube is uniformly green, except that the scale-like bracts are edged with long, blackish, silky hairs. A native of Mexico; introduced about fifty years ago, when it was figured in the Botanical Magazine and elsewhere as a species of Echinocactus.
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