Yellow and Orange Wild Flowers

The YELLOW CLINTONIA (Clintonia borealis) is in the Lily-of-the-valley family. It has straw colored, or greenish yellow flowers less than one inch long. It usually features three to six flowers nodding on slender leafless pendicels on a plant that grows about six to fifteen inches tall. The plants leaves are dark and glossy, and usually grow in threes from the base of the plant. The upright pendicels produce oval blue berries too.

This plant likes to grow in moist, rich, cool woods and thickets. It blooms from May to June and does well from the Carolinas and Wisconsin far northward.

The INDIAN CUCUMBER-ROOT (Medeola Virginiana) is also in the Lily-of-the-valley family. This plant has greenish yellow flowers on fine, curving footstalks. The flowers tend to cluster loosely above a circle of leaves. The plant grows from one to two and a half feet tall and doesn't branch out. The stems seem cottony when the plant's young.

This plant has both a flowering and non-flowering variety, and produces round, dark purple berries. It likes to grow in moist woods and thickets, and blooms from May to June. It grows well in areas such as Minnesota, southward nearly to the Gulf of Mexico.

Again we see the leaves of a plant coming to the aid of otherwise inconspicuous flowers to render them more attractive. By placing themselves in a circle just below these little spidery blossoms of weak and uncertain coloring, some of the Indian cucumber's leaves certainly make them at least noticeable, if not showy. It would be short-sighted philanthropy on the leaves' part to help the flowers win insect wooers at the expense of the plant's general health; therefore those in the upper whorl are fewer and much smaller than the leaves in the lower circle, and a sufficient length of stem separates them to allow the sunlight and rain to conjure with the chlorophyll in the group below. While there is a chance of nectar being pilfered from the flowers by ants, the stem is cottony and ensnares their feet. In September, when small clusters of dark-purple berries replace the flowers, and rich tints dye the leaves, the plant is truly beautiful - of course to invite migrating birds to disperse its seeds. It is said the Indians used to eat the horizontal, white, fleshy rootstock, which has a flavor like a cucumber's.

YELLOW STAR-GRASS (Hypoxis hirsuta; H. erecta of Gray) is in the Amaryllis family. This plant produces flowers that are bright yellow on the inside, but a bit greenish and hairy on the outside. The flowers are about half an inch wide and have six parts. The leaves are a bit egg shaped and grass like, slightly hairy as well.

These flowers like to grow in dry, open woods, prairies, and grassy fields. They bloom from May to October and grow well from Maine far westward, and south to the Gulf of Mexico.

Usually only one of these little blossoms in a cluster on each plant opens at a time; but that one peers upward so brightly from among the grass it cannot well be overlooked. Sitting in a meadow sprinkled over with these yellow stars, we see coming to them many small bees - chiefly Halictus - to gather pollen for their unhatched babies' bread. Of course they do not carry all the pollen to their tunneled nurseries; some must often be rubbed off on the sticky pistil tip in the center of other stars. The stamens radiate, that self-fertilization need not take place except as a last extremity. Visitors failing, the little flower closes, bringing its pollen-laden anthers in contact with its own stigma.