By FRANCIS GEORGE HEATH.
The fields and woods of January, when not covered by snow, offer much
better opportunities for the study of flowers than we ordinarily
believe. Mr. Heath has told, in his “Sylvan Spring,” of all the
early-comers of the year. If all the flowers which he mentions here
are not found this season in a locality, observation extending through
several seasons will undoubtedly reveal them. A carefully kept
note-book of all the changes in vegetation, the growth, blossoming,
etc., will be found most interesting.
January in temperate latitudes is popularly believed to possess no wild
flowers in our lanes, fields or hedgebanks; and the reason for the
common belief is that no one expects or looks for them, and there is no
conspicuous color to attract attention to them at that ordinarily cold
and apparently “dead” season of the year. Yet there are not less than
twenty-five of our wild flowers that may be found in bloom _somewhere_
in January.
A January has probably never yet been known during which it was
impossible to find out of doors a daisy (_Bellis perennis_) in flower:
not in the open meadow, or on the cold slope of the hillside, but at
least in some sheltered nook where a streamlet may flow, unhindered by
frost. Says Montgomery:
“On waste and woodland, rock and plain,
Its humble buds unheeded rise;
The rose has but a summer reign,
The daisy never dies.”
And this last line explains the true meaning of the specific botanical
name of the day’s “eye”—_perennis_—which does not mean, as it is
usually understood in botanical language, “perennial,” simply to
indicate that the daisy _plant_ lives beyond a period of two years.
It means “lasting throughout the year,” that is to say, lasting in
_blossom_ throughout the year, for our daisy is _always_ in bloom
somewhere.
Another January flower, and one whose blossoms, though it is an annual
plant, may be found throughout the year, is the purple dead nettle
(_Lamium purpureum_).
Though much like its relative, the later-blooming white or common dead
nettle, this pretty plant may be known from _Lamium album_, not only
by the purple color of its curious flowers, a color with which its
leaves and its leaf-hairs are sometimes suffused, but by its smaller
size and by the curious crowding of its alternately-paired heart-shaped
leaves on the upper part of the stem, a feature which is not common
to its white-flowering congener. The unobservant pedestrian who may
linger by the wayside to pluck something which strikes his fancy in the
low hedgebank, must often have dreaded the touch of the harmless dead
nettles, under the belief that these plants were the widely different,
though similarly leaved, “stinging” nettles. If disabused of this
impression and induced to handle a flowering stem of the purple dead
nettle, with square stem and whorl of stalkless axillary blossoms, he
will marvel at the singular-looking corolla, separated from its calyx
of five sepals. The generic name _Lamium_ comes from a Greek word
which means throat, and that, as referring to the blossom, it is aptly
applied, will be seen at once. From the depths of this throat, or the
corolla tube, in other words, rise the stamens on their long filaments,
covered by the upper and concave lip of the corolla, which hangs
hood-like over them, whilst the lower lip (for this species belongs
to the large natural order called _Labiatæ_, labiate or lip-flowered
plants) is prettily marked with spots of darker purple than the normal
color of the blossom.
Though the most we can do with the winter aconite (_Eranthis hyemalis_)
is to rank it among our doubtful wild flowers, we must at least give
it “honorable mention,” noticing its whorl of green leaves at the apex
of its solitary stem and its large, yellow, handsome blossom, for it
is among the hardy little group of plants which flower the nearest in
point of time to the first day of the new year.
We must not fail to allude in our enumeration of early January flowers
to that sweet little plant, the wild heartsease, or pansy (_Viola
tricolor_), the progenitor of its host of garden namesakes. Its natural
tendency to vary in the color as well as in the size of its blossoms,
under varying conditions of growth, will explain the ease with which it
can be made subservient to culture. Had it no beauty of its own, its
relationship to the violets would claim for it our love and regard; but
it is a flower which can not be passed over, for it seems to look at us
out of its yellow and darkly-empurpled face with a sort of thoughtful
earnestness.
The hellebores come within our enumeration of the January flora, and
of these the bearsfoot or fœtid hellebore (_Helleborus fœtidus_)
is the earliest in flower. It grows to a height oftentimes of two
feet. Its smooth stem and leaves are dark green; its leaves narrowly
lanceolate, serrated along the edges toward their apices. The large
flowers are cuplike, are produced in panicles, or branched clusters,
and are light yellowish green in color, the cluster of yellow-anthered
stamens forming a conspicuous center to each corolla. Every part of the
bearsfoot is highly poisonous, but the plant pleases the eye by its
striking and handsome form.
It must naturally follow that exceptional hardiness is indicated by
capacity to blossom in January. But among all our early flowering
plants, there are two which may fairly claim the possession of an
especial character for robustness of constitution; for, whilst those we
have already mentioned are more or less susceptible to the influence
of cold, and some of them will only produce their early blossoms in
sheltered nooks, the two we are about to notice can bravely withstand
hard frosts in exposed situations.
Of these, the first we shall name is the common groundsel (_Senecio
vulgaris_), and a hardier little plant than this, of its kind, it would
be scarcely possible to find. We have seen it in flower in the early
part of January, when every stream, pond, and ditch around was frozen
almost to the bottom, its soft leaves looking as fresh and glossy as if
it had been the height of summer. The groundsel is a member of a little
group which includes the ragworts, and they all bear yellow blossoms,
and have a strong family likeness. _Senecio vulgaris_ really flowers
all the year round, and that is why we have it so conveniently among
our early January blossoms. That it is so plentiful and so hardy is a
wise provision of nature; for its leaves, the florets of its blossoms,
and its seeds are very welcome additions to the food of our small
birds, who have at least this provision for their comfort during the
rigors of our frosts.
The other little wildling of the two we have especially mentioned
as being among the hardiest even of the hardy January flora is the
common chickweed (_Stellaria media_), a pretty little plant, which,
because of its marvelous power of reproduction, and its persistency
in intruding within the prim domain of the gardener, is by the last
named individual regarded with feelings of bitter enmity, and is
mercilessly exterminated whenever it comes into the realm of graveled
path and nicely-kept border. Very different are the feelings of the
small birds toward the chickweed, for it furnishes them with food
which is eagerly sought after and keenly appreciated. Its power of
branching and spreading is really marvelous, and it seems almost to
lead a charmed life, for the most persevering attempts to uproot and
banish it from the ground whereon it has once fairly established
itself, ordinarily fail. We have said that its flowers are pretty, but
perhaps some unobservant and unreflecting people hardly credit it with
the production of blossom, for the minute, oblong, white petals are so
much hidden by the green five-cleft calyx which is oftentimes larger
than the corolla, entirely enveloping them when in bud, that they are
inconspicuous among the mass of spreading green.
And now we have reached, in our pleasant task of enumerating our
earliest wild flowers, the delicate and beautiful snowdrop (_Galanthus
nivalis_), the botanical name indicating a milk-white blossom; and
though it can scarcely claim to take a place as
“The first pale blossom of the ripening year,”
it may be sometimes seen in bloom before the middle of January. Have
the incurious and unobservant noticed more about this beautiful flower
than that it is white and drooping, and early in appearing, and, of
course, pretty? We fancy not. Yet this delicate white blossom will well
repay careful and searching examination.
The advent of a buttercup in bloom in January would appear almost
impossible to those who associate this plant only with the golden
splendor of the May meadows; and it is a rare circumstance, but one,
nevertheless, which has been noted, and noted, also, of the very
buttercup (_Ranunculus repens_), to whose extensively creeping habit
we owe so much of the profuse magnificence of the later spring. In the
pretty lines familiar to almost every child,—
“While the trees are leafless,
While the fields are bare,
Golden, glossy buttercups,
Spring up here and there,”
we find the early-flowering fact recorded. And, again, the question
arises, why is it that “here and there,” before the general leafing
time, a buttercup may be found to rear its golden head in one spot,
while not far off—and, indeed, within sight it may be—there are tens of
thousands of plants of the same species which will not blossom until
months later? Sometimes the circumstances of position, in the case
of the plant in flower, are so obviously more favorable than those
of adjoining flowerless congeners, that the necessary explanation is
furnished. But oftentimes the early flowering remains a mystery, in
spite of all attempts at elucidation. Does not every one of us remember
some occasion when a long walk early in the year has revealed the sight
of but one daisy or buttercup in bloom in a locality, which, later on,
would have been thronged by countless members of the same species? The
mere recollection of the solitary flower which gladdened such a walk is
delightful. How much more delightful the event itself!
We need, surely, make no apology for giving something more than mere
mention of the dandelion (_Leontodon taraxacum_) in our enumeration
of early flowers. It is, doubtless, a very “common” flower: but
that we venture to think is the very reason why it should _not_ be
contemptuously dismissed as if it were not worthy of description or
consideration. Very often it will happen that the familiar yellow
blossom of _Leontodon taraxacum_ is the first which we encounter in the
early days of the year, and this hardy and persevering plant has this
especial claim upon our regard, that it selects ordinarily the most
desolate and dismal places as its habitats, covering them oftentimes
with a gorgeous sheet of color. Townspeople, and poor townspeople
especially, ought to love this plant, for it lights up with its
golden glow the surroundings of the most bare and wretched of human
habitations.
The dandelion is worthy of attention. The origin of its common name
has given rise to some little discussion. That it is a corruption of
the French _dents de lion_ is very generally accepted; but in spite
of varying opinions as to what part of the plant resembles a lion’s
teeth—whether its roots, by their whiteness, or its florets or leaves,
by their indentations, we incline to the leaf theory. The circumstance
to note in connection with the leaves is that their teeth-like lobes
are turned backwards towards the root from which they all directly
spring—a habit which is not at all common to plants with indented
leaves. If we look, with a glass to assist the eye, at a dandelion leaf
against the light, we shall find something to please us, and something
to admire in its venation, in the acute points of the serratures,
and in its smooth glossiness. Features of interest to note, too, are
its brittle, fleshy, tapering, milky root-stock and rootlets; its
hollow, brittle, milky and radical flower-stem; and its buds, with the
golden tips shining above the conspicuous involucre (a word derived
from _involucrum_, a case, or wrapper), the involucre in the case of
the dandelion consisting of two sets of green scales, the one set
enclosing the yellow florets in the manner of a calyx; the other, and
narrower set, consisting of a whorl of bracts, or leaf-like appendages,
reflexed or bent down. When the blossom opens the upper bracts remain
erect. And by-and-by the yellow florets disappear, and are succeeded,
each, by a feathery pappus, connected by a slender stalk with a seed,
and serving as a wing to bear the seed away when the ripening time
arrives. The convex receptacle, in form so much like a pincushion, is,
indeed, covered with seeds, whose feathery appendages are crowded into
semi-globular form, ready, however, to take flight on the least breath
of wind which may be strong enough to bear away to fresh fields and
pastures new the tiny germs of the hardy life which lends the beauty of
its presence to brighten forlorn waysides and neglected wastes.
We must include the crocus (_Crocus vernus_) among the possible flowers
of January, although the flowering calendar of the gardener will
ordinarily be found to assign a later date for its period of blossoming.
The crocus blossom offers the advantage of largeness to those who may
wish to carefully study the curious organs of plant flowers. The most
conspicuous external feature of the common crocus is the long-tubed
purple perianth, divided into six segments, or pieces, constituting the
vase-like flower head. Within the floral envelope are contained first
the ovary, surmounted by a style which traverses the whole length of
the long, narrow tube of the perianth, and is crowned just above the
point where the tube expands into its petal-like segments, by a curious
three-cleft stigma, each lobe of which is club-shaped or wedge-shaped,
and jagged at its extremity. Some little distance below the level of
the stigma are reared the anthers of the stamens, three in number.
When the pollen grains from these organs have fertilized the ovary,
by the agency of the stigma and style, the office of the perianth is
fulfilled, and it, with the stamens and stigma, begins to wither and
disappear. Then the ovary is enlarged, and rising on a slender stalk
from the top of the bulbous root on which it was seated when the floral
envelope was present, becomes exposed to the air, and ripens the seeds
within its three-celled capsule.
In some of our woods in January may occasionally be found, though it
is not widely distributed, the green hellebore (_Helleborus viridis_).
The five oval-shaped, green lobes which form the floral envelope
are not, as at first might be supposed, petals but sepals, the much
smaller petals, eight or ten in number, occupying the inner portion of
the blossom, and immediately surrounding the numerous stamens. These
petals, or, as they might be called, nectaries, contain a poisonous
honey, and the whole plant, indeed—leaves and flowers—is very poisonous.
We may perchance, before the month is out, light upon the pretty blue
blossoms of the field speedwell (_Veronica agrestis_), with its hairy,
deeply-indented and somewhat heart-shaped leaves, placed in opposite
pairs along its branching stems, or, perhaps, upon its relative,
_Veronica buxbaumii_.
In wood and copse before the close of January, we may note the sylvan
precursor of the green splendor of the later spring—the leafing
honeysuckle, the earliest harbinger of sylvan verdure in the days to
come. The little leaves have not yet revealed their size and form, and
without close examination the light-brown, spiry twigs would appear to
wear only their normal wintry aspect. But if we look narrowly at them
we shall note the tiny spots of green at the stem knots, where the
minute leaves are struggling to emerge from the bud cases. Earliest
in leaf among the shrubs and trees of the hedgerow and forest, the
woodbine is the latest in flower—spreading, even late in autumn, its
sweet fragrance through thicket, copse and dell.
* * * * *