Read About the Dogbane Family
DOGBANE FAMILY (Apocynaceae)
Spreading Dogbane; Fly-trap Dogbane; Honey-bloom; Bitter-root
Apocynum androsaemifolium
Flowers--Delicate pink, veined with a deeper shade, fragrant,
bell-shaped, about 1/3 in. across, borne in loose terminal cymes. Calyx
5-parted; corolla of 5 spreading, curved lobes united into a tube; within
the tube 5 tiny, triangular appendages alternate with stamens; the
arrow-shaped anthers united around the stigma and slightly adhering to it.
Stem: 1 to 4 ft. high, with forking, spreading, leafy branches.
Leaves: Opposite, entire-edged, broadly oval, narrow at base, paler, and
more or less hairy below. Fruit: Two pods about 4 in. long.
Preferred Habitat--Fields, thickets, beside roads, lanes, and
walls.
Flowering Season--June-July.
Distribution--Northern part of British Possessions south to
Georgia, westward to Nebraska.
Everywhere at the North we come across this interesting, rather shrubby
plant, with its pretty but inconspicuous little rose-veined bells suggesting
pink lilies-of-the-valley. Now that we have learned to read the faces of
flowers, as it were, we instantly suspect by the color, fragrance,
pathfinders, and structure that these are artful wilers, intent on gaining
ends of their own through their insect admirers. What are they up to?
Let us watch. Bees, flies, moths, and butterflies, especially the latter,
hover near. Alighting, the butterfly visitor unrolls his long tongue and
inserts it where the five pink veins tell him to, for five nectar-bearing
glands stand in a ring around the base of the pistil. Now, as he withdraws
his slender tongue through one of the V-shaped cavities that make a circle
of traps, he may count himself lucky to escape with no heavier toll imposed
than pollen cemented to it. This granular dust he is required to rub off
against the stigma of the next flower entered. Some bees, too, have been
taken with the dogbane's pollen cemented to their tongues. But suppose a fly
call upon this innocent-looking blossom? His short tongue, as well as the
butterfly's, is guided into one of the V-shaped cavities after he has
sipped; but, getting wedged between the trap's horny teeth, the poor little
victim is held a prisoner there until he slowly dies of starvation in sight
of plenty. This is the penalty he must pay for trespassing on the
butterfly's preserves! The dogbane, which is perfectly adapted to the
butterfly, and dependent upon it for help in producing fertile seed,
ruthlessly destroys all poachers that are not big or strong enough to jerk
away from its vise-like grasp. One often sees small flies and even moths
dead and dangling by the tongue from the wicked little charmers. If the
flower assimilated their dead bodies as the pitcher plant, for example, does
those of its victims, the fly's fate would seem less cruel. To be killed by
slow torture and dangled like a scarecrow simply for pilfering a drop of
nectar is surely an execution of justice medieval in its severity.
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