How to Know the Wild Flowers

The book that taught America botany by color: find your flower under White, Yellow, Pink or Blue, and read its name, its haunts and its folklore — the first field guide organized the way people actually look.

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Bastard Toadflax

Comandra umbellata. Sandalwood Family.

Stem.--Eight to ten inches high; branching; leafy. Leaves.--Alternate; oblong; pale. Flowers.--Greenish-white; small; clustered. Calyx.--Bell or urn-shaped; five-cleft. Corolla.--None. Stamens.--Five; inserted on the edge of a disk which lines the calyx, to the middle of which the anthers are connected by a tuft of thread-like hairs. Pistil.--One; slender. Fruit.--Nut-like; crowned by the lobes of the calyx.

In May or June we often find masses of these little flowers in the dry, open woods. The root of the bastard toadflax forms parasitic attachments to the roots of trees.

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