The Wild Filarees

Tell me the Truth, I pray
Does my Mother want me now?
Or may I longer play?

       Another common plant with divided leaves  is the Filaree. You have seen its rosettes of green  leaves springing up all over the ground after the  first rains. Is that not a pretty way to group the leaves?
       Take one leaf stem and lay it on paper. Draw your pencil around the outer edge. Make the little cut leaves all point the same way. There. You have drawn a Filaree leaf. It is not hard to do if you remember to look carefully at the outer
edge.
       As you fingered the leaves, you found them fragrant. They are said to be musky  because they carry this fragrance of musk. Has your Mother in her garden a Rose Geranium? Take some leaves of it and some of Filaree. You see they look somewhat alike. They smell somewhat
alike. Their flowers are somewhat alike too. They do not send out their stems alike. They do not grow to the same height. But, they really are cousins.
       The Filaree gets its green rosette placed early in the year. Then, it can send out its flowers early. Can you see its flower as far off as you can a Buttercup blossom? Neither can Mrs. Bug. But if the flowers rush out before the bright colored ones bloom, Filaree will have numbers of visitors.
       She sends up from her green rosette slender stems tinted red. These catch the eye of Mrs. Bug better than if they were colored green. On top of the stem, she pushes out a number of small flowers. Each has a little stem of its own, so it waves quite freely in the sunshine.
       The calyx has five sepals and the corolla five petals. The corolla is not always the same color. You find them pale pink or rose pink or lavender or purple. Whatever the color, you find little honey paths on all the petals. You know now that these paths show the insects the way to the honey bowls.
       You also know that while Mrs. Bug eats, she jostles the five stamens. Then the five anthers pour their pollen on her. When she goes into the next Filaree, she leaves the pollen on the stigmas. Then, a very wonderful thing happens.
       You would think that Filaree's tiny pistils would grow into small seed-cases. Now, wouldn't you? But you do not know Filaree. She suddenly grows tired of having small regular parts. She decides to make a surprising seed-case.
       There! See! Her seed-case is your old friend Clocks. Have you not stuck them on your sleeve and watched them unwind? We used to pretend to keep time by them when we were children.  We also made doll's scissors of them. Take two green seed-cases and stick the end of one partly through the other. They look like a pair of scissors. How well will they cut? Only the Fairies use them in their dressmaking...

Fliaree close up.

       Mrs. Filaree makes these wonderful seed-cases for her own use. She wants to get her seeds carried far off to new ground. She can get them carried off in two ways. Some seed-cases catch our clothing or the fur of animals. These carry them away from the Mother Plant and drop them somewhere.
       If no living thing passes, Mrs. Filaree has another plan to send her seeds over the earth. She has grown on their ends those long silky hairs. Some warm day in April or May along comes a nice warm wind.
       "Good-bye, children." says Mrs. Filaree. "Get aboard this soft wind. Its a fine chance for a free ride."
       The Filaree children give themselves a twist. That loosens them from the stem. They spread their long silky hairs on the breeze and sail away to new scenes.
       Look at the lower part of the seed-case to see what happens when it reaches the ground. See on its end the little hook. And on its sides the little bristles that curve upward and outward. These are what catch in your clothing as you pass.
       When the seed-case falls to the ground, if it is a warm day, it curls up its parts. When dew or fog falls, it straightens them out. When sunshine comes again, it curls them up. It does this over and over. Curls up with the sunshine. Straightens out with the dampness. It gets its little bill into the ground. It bores down farther until it is covered with earth. Then, it lies still and waits for the early rains. As soon as they reach it, Filaree's seed begins to work lively. It hurries and pushes up a lovely rosette of soft green musky leaves, and Filaree's circle of work goes on.
       These wonderful seed-cases have carried Filaree all over the World. She traveled in Asia and in Africa on a camel. She crossed to Spain on a goat.  She sailed to Mexico on a Merino sheep. She  rode up to California on a horse. What do you think of that for free traveling?
       The Filaree has repaid all these animals for acting as vehicles. They all love to eat her musky leaves. As she grows older, she sends out longer stems with little branches and many, many leaves on them. Look at the place where the little branches leave the stem. See how swollen it is. If you look at your Mother's geraniums, you will see that their stems swell out where the new branches start. If you look at the geranium's seed-case, you see it is like Filaree's. They both look like a crane's bill or a heron's bill. Botanists call the geranium a name that means crane's bill and Filaree a name that means heron's bill.
       Filaree‚ is a pretty word. It sounds like a song. It really is not an English word. It comes from the Spanish name of the plant. The little Spanish Californian boys took their horses to the pasture to eat Filerilla long ago. And today children can still see our horses munching on Filaree in the pastures. The Spanish name comes from needle, because the seed-case is sharp like a needle. As the years have passed, we have shortened the name to Filaree. Some children call it Stork's Bill. What do you call it?  

See wild Filarees or Stork's Bill up 
close from Battlefox Living Earth.

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