BLUE COHOSH FLOWERS

Also known as Papooseroot, this species has a single compound leaf borne by the same erect stem which terminates in a small cluster of yellowish green flowers. Plants reach a height of a foot to eighteen inches, producing the flowers before the leaves are fully developed. The mature seeds burst through the ovary wall, remaining attached by their seed stalks and resembling blue one-seeded fruits. Blue Cohosh is found in rich woods from New England to the mountainous parts of North Carolina and Tennessee, also westward to North Dakota and Nebraska. It flowers from April through June.

The Poppy Family

The Poppy family is a group of herbaceous plants, some annuals and some perennials, with about 250 species distributed chiefly in the temperate and subtropical portions of the northern hemisphere. A fairly reliable characteristic of the family is the presence of milky or colored sap, alternate leaves, regular flowers with a showy corolla, and a capsular fruit splitting open at maturity by pores or valves. Native wild flowers in the family in the East include less than a dozen species, of which the best known are bloodroot, prickly poppy, and celandine poppy. On the Pacific coast perhaps the best known member of the family is the California Poppy ( Eschscholzia ), famous for its painting of the landscape with acres of golden- yellow flowers.

BLOODROOT         

The common name of this plant is derived from the fact that the sap of the thick rootstock, as well as the stems, is red. Fortunately the bitter taste makes most animals ( and humans) avoid it; the sap contains a toxic alkaloid which affects the heart, nervous system and muscles; there have been reported deaths from this source. The sap was used as a dye by the American Indians Basal leaves, at first tightly rolled, spear their way through the accumulation of dead leaves and twigs on the woodland floor in late March. Within is the protected flowering stalk with its single terminal flower. Each flower, with two short-lived sepals and eight to twelve delicate petals which fall at a touch, is safely seated just above the notched base of the lobed and rounded leaf. The fruit is a narrow capsule, pointed at both ends. Bloodroot often grows in colonies along the edges of thickets and in open woods, from southern Canada to Florida and west beyond the Mississippi river; the first flowers appear with the hepaticas, in March, and continue through May. The leaves increase in breadth after the flowers are gone.