and westward to Missouri, grows only one or two feet high, and,
like its tall sister, bears fleecy, greenish-white flowers, the
staminate and the pistillate ones on different plants. These
produce no nectar; they offer no showy corolla advertisement to
catch the eye of passing insects; yet so abundant is the dry
pollen produced by the male blossoms that insects which come to
feed on it must occasionally transfer some, albeit this primitive
genus still depends largely on the wind. Not its flower, but the
exquisite foliage resembling sprays of a robust maidenhair fern,
is this meadow-rue's chief charm.

The PURPLISH MEADOW-RUE (T. purpurascens), so like the tall
species in general characteristics that one cannot tell the dried
and pressed specimens of these variable plants apart, is easily
named afield by the purplish tinge of its green polygamous
flowers. Often its stems show color also. Sometimes, not always,
the plant is downy, and the comparatively thick leaflets, which
are dark green above, are waxy beneath. We look for this
meadow-rue in copses and woodlands from Northern Canada to
Florida, and far westward after the early meadow-rue has
flowered, but before the tall one spreads its fleecy panicles.
Quite as decorative as the flower clusters are the compound
seed-bearing stars.


TWIN-LEAF; RHEUMATISM ROOT
(Jeffersonia diphylla) Barberry family

Flowers - White, 1 in. broad, solitary, on a naked scape about 7
in. high in flower, more than twice as tall in fruit. Calyx of 4