The plant turns
black in drying. As in the case of other papilionaceous blossoms, bees are
the visitors best adapted to fertilize the flowers. 'When we see the little,
sleepy, dusky-winged butterfly (Thanaos brizo) around the plant we may know
she is there only to lay eggs, that the larvae and caterpillars may find
their favorite food at hand on waking into life.
Baptisia tinctoria
Flowers—Bright yellow, papilionaceous, about 1 in. long, on short
pedicels, in numerous but few flowered terminal racemes. Calyx light green,
4 or 5-toothed; corolla of 5 oblong petals, the standard erect, the keel
enclosing 10 incurved stamens and 1 pistil. Stem: Smooth, branched, 2 to
4 ft. high. Leaves: Compounded of 3 ovate leaflets. Fruit: A many-seeded
round or egg-shaped pod tipped with the awl-shaped style.
Dark grayish green, lover-like leaves, and small, bright yellow flowers
growing in loose dusters at the ends of the branches of a bushy little plant,
are so commonly "met with they need little description. A relative,
the true indigo-bearer, a native of Asia, once commonly grown in the Southern
states when slavery made competition with Oriental labor possible, has locally
escaped and become naturalized. But the false species, although, as Doctor
Gray says, it yields "a poor sort of indigo," yields a most valuable
medicine employed by the homoeopathists in malarial fevers. The plant turns
black in drying. As in the case of other papilionaceous blossoms, bees are
the visitors best adapted to fertilize the flowers. 'When we see the little,
sleepy, dusky-winged butterfly (Thanaos brizo) around the plant we may know
she is there only to lay eggs, that the larvae and caterpillars may find
their favorite food at hand on waking into life.
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