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Flowers And Plants - Natures Garden:
Wild or American Senna

Wild Indigo; Yellow or Indigo Broom; Horsefly-Weed

Rattle-Box

Yellow or Hop Clover

Wild or Slender Yellow Flax

Jewel-weed; Spotted Touch-me-not; Silver Cap; Wild Balsam ; Lady's Eardrops ; Snap Weed; Wild Lady's Slipper

Velvet Leaf; Indian Mallow; American Jute

St. Andrew's Cross

Common St. John's-wort

Long-branched Frost-weed ; Frost-flower; Frost-wort; Canadian Rock-rose

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Flowers - Rattle-Box

( Originally Published 1916 )




Rattle-Box

(Crotalaria sagittalis) Pea family

Flowers—Yellow, 1/2 in. long or less, usually only 2 or 3 on a long peduncle. Calyx 5-toothed, slightly 2-lipped ; corolla papilionaceous. Stem: 3 to to in. high, weak, hairy. Leaves: Alternate, simple, oval to lance-shaped ; stipules arrow-shaped above and running along stem. Fruit: An inflated oblong pod 1 in. long, blackish, seedy.

Preferred Habitat—Dry, sandy, open situations.

Flowering Season—June—September.

Distribution—New England and Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico.

These insignificant little yellow flowers attract scant notice from human observers accustomed to associate their generic name with some particularly beautiful relatives from the West Indies grown in hothouses here. But did not small bees alight on the keel and depress it, as in the lupine, next of kin (see p. 22), there might be no seeds to rattle in the dark inflated pods that so delight children. (Krotalona castanet.)



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