THE milkweed is best known to most of us by its pods-long, rough cases, packed close with shining white silk attached to little brown seeds. The lightest wind that blows can carry these a stage or two on their journey with such lovely silken sails. But perhaps everyone has not noticed one rather strange thing about them. Almost always there are two pods, one vigorous of growth, large and full; the other stunted and ill-formed. They are like the two brothers or sisters of Fairy Tales, one fair and well-favored and gracious, the other ill-grown and dwarfish. But why this is so, is one of the many secrets of the milkweed. It is quite a large family of flowers, or weeds, as you may choose to call them. There is the gorgeous orange-colored butterfly weed, always surrounded by hovering or fluttering butterflies, most of them also orange or yellow in their coloring; the fragrant, rose-colored milkweed of June, the purple milkweed and its cousin of the marsh. But it is the common milkweed that is called the horned herb. It was once thought possessed of many heating virtues when the business of gathering and drying herbs was more important than it is now. Yet one needs no idea of this kind to look with interest on this curiously formed plant which grows in such profusion by the dusty roadside or by our very doorstep. A milky juice exudes from the stem when ever a flower is gathered, and the pollen is in such sticky masses that a feeble insect is often caught and cannot escape with its fatal treasure. The blossom cluster, reflexed so oddly, is pretty and quaint at first sight, but as we look deeper we find some unknown law of fives has ruled its structure — the recurved calyx is five parted, so too the deeply recurved corolla; five stamens there are surrounding, like a circle of courtiers, a fairy king and queen, the two pistils in the center, above which hangs “a large five-angled disk,” an awning of state.

But oddest of all is the crown of fivehooded nectaries above the corolla, each nectary enclosing an incurved horn. Is not this a strange honey-cup with the horn concealed under the silky flower-hood? The insects love the banquet thus spread for their delight and no doubt they know the secrets of the blossom. There is another family of wild flowers that abounds in horns and claws, especially the latter — the large crowfoot family. The hook-beaked crowfoot has little one-seeded fruits with long and hooked beaks, like those of birds of prey, collected into a head. The wild columbine, nodding so merrily from the high rocks, and the larkspur, have hooked spurs and claws and the larkspur hides its long spurs in its calyx. But the monk’s-hood is the more interesting of all. In early days, before stamens and pistils are ready for open air and wandering insects or pattering showers, you may find a dark blue bud in the meadow. The calyx is large and showy and blue like a flower, and its curved front sepals close the entrance before while the hindmost sepal, like a soldier’s helmet, or a monk’s hood, comes down over all as a covering. Then the sun shines and the blossom ripens and it is time to open. Wide fly the little doors, back falls the blue hood, and the golden heart of stamens and pistils is ready with a welcome. But where are the petals? Hidden under the hood are two tiny hammer-like claws, the only petals this flower possesses.