SPRING BEAUTY.
_Claytonia Virginica._
Where the fire had smoked and smouldered
Saw the earliest flower of Spring time,
Saw the beauty of the Spring time,
Saw the Miskodeed[1] in blossom.
HIAWATHA.
THIS simple delicate little plant is one of our earliest April flowers.
In warm springs it is almost exclusively an April flower, but in cold
and backward seasons, it often delays its blossoming time till May.
Partially hidden beneath the shelter of old decaying timbers and fallen
boughs, its pretty pink buds peep shyly forth. It is often found in
partially cleared beech-woods, and in rich moist meadows.
In Canada, there are two species; one with few flowers, white, both
leaves and flowers larger than the more common form; the blossoms of the
latter are more numerous, smaller, and of a pale pink colour, veined
with lines of a deeper rose colour, forming a slender raceme; sometimes
the little pedicels or flower stalks are bent or twisted to one side, so
as to throw the flowers in one direction.
The scape springs from a small deep tuber, bearing a single pair of
soft, oily, succulent leaves. In the white flowered species these leaves
are placed about midway up the stem, but in the pink (_C. Virginica_)
the leaves lie closer to the ground, and are smaller and of a dark
bluish green hue. Our SPRING BEAUTY well deserves its pretty poetical
name. It comes in with the Robin, and the song sparrow, the hepatica,
and the first white violet; it lingers in shady spots, as if unwilling
to desert us till more sunny days have wakened up a wealth of brighter
blossoms to gladden the eye; yet the first, and the last, are apt to be
most prized by us, with flowers, as well as other treasures.
How infinitely wise and merciful are the arrangements of the Great
Creator. Let us instance the connection between BEES and FLOWERS. In
cold climates the former lie torpid, or nearly so, during the long
months of Winter, until the genial rays of the sun and light have
quickened vegetation into activity, and buds and blossoms open,
containing the nutriment necessary for this busy insect tribe.
The BEES seem made for the Blossoms; the BLOSSOMS for the BEES.
On a bright March morning what sound can be more in harmony with the
sunshine and blue skies, than the murmuring of the honeybees, in a
border of cloth of gold crocuses? what sight more cheerful to the eye?
But I forget. Canada has few of these sunny flowers, and no March days
like those that woo the hive bees from their winter dormitories. And
April is with us only a name. We have no April month of rainbow suns and
showers. We miss the deep blue skies, and silver throne-like clouds that
cast their fleeting shadows over the tender springing grass and corn; we
have no mossy lanes odorous with blue violets. One of our old poets thus
writes:
“Ye violets that first appear,
By your pure purple mantles known,
Like the proud virgins of the year,
As if the spring were all your own,
What are ye when the rose is blown.”[2]
We miss the turfy banks, studded with starry daisies, pale primroses and
azure blue-bells.
Our May is bright and sunny, more like to the English March; it is
indeed a month of promise—a month of many flowers. But too often its
fair buds and blossoms are nipped by frost, “and winter, lingering,
chills the lap of May.”
In the warmth and shelter of the forest, vegetation appears. The black
leaf mould, so light and rich, quickens the seedlings into rapid growth,
and green leaves and opening buds follow soon after the melting of the
snows of winter. The starry blossoms of the hepatica, blood-root,
bellwort, violets, white, yellow and blue, with the delicate Coptis
(gold-thread), come forth and are followed by many a lovely flower,
increasing with the more genial seasons of May and June.
But our April flowers are but few, comparatively speaking, and so we
prize our early Violets, Hepaticas and Spring Beauty.
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[1] Miskodeed—Indian name for Spring Beauty.
[2] Sir Henry Wotton—written in 1651.
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[Illustration: _PLATE II._]
3 AQUILEGIA CANADENSIS
(Wild Columbine)
2 TRILLIUM GRANDIFLORUM
(Large white Trillium)
1 ERYTHRONIUM AMERICANUM
(Yellow adders tongue)
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