During the Middle
Ages, when misdirected zeal credited almost any plant with
healing virtues for every ill that flesh is heir to, the
cinquefoils were considered most potent remedies, hence their
generic name.
The SHRUBBY CINQUEFOIL, or PRAIRIE WEED (P. fructicosa), becomes
fairly troublesome in certain parts of its range, which extends
from Greenland to Alaska, and southward to New Jersey, Arizona,
and California; as well as over northern Europe and Asia. It is a
bushy, much branched, and leafy shrub, six inches to four feet
high), with bright yellow, five-parted flowers an inch across,
more or less, either solitary or in cymes at the tips of the
branches. They appear from June to September. The honeybee,
alighting in the center of a blossom and turning around, passes
its tongue over the entire nectar-bearing ring at the base of the
stamens, then proceeding to another flower to do likewise,
effects cross-fertilization regularly. On a sunny day the bright
blossoms attract many visitors of the lower grade out after
nectar and pollen, the beetles often devouring the anthers in
their greed.
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