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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Yellow Pond-Lily. Spatter Dock

Nuphar advena. Water-lily Family.

Leaves.--Floating or erect; roundish to oblong; with a deep cleft at their base. Flowers.--Yellow; sometimes purplish; large; somewhat globular. Calyx.--Of five or six sepals or more; yellow or green without. Corolla.--Of numerous small, thick, fleshy petals which are shorter than the stamens and resemble them. Stamens.--Very numerous. Pistil.--One, with a disk-like, many-rayed stigma.

Bordering the slow streams and stagnant ponds from May till August may be seen the yellow pond-lilies. These flowers lack the delicate beauty and fragrance of the white water-lilies; having, indeed, either from their odor, or appearance, or the form of their fruit, won for themselves in England the unpoetic title of "brandy-bottle." Owing to their love of mud they have also been called "frog-lilies." The Indians used their roots for food.

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